As a student, you have probably come across something called the ‘Model United Nations (MUN).’ But how much do you really know about the institution that we call the United Nations (UN)? Do you know how it came about? Have you read its charter? As much as the UN symbolizes the last hope for international cooperation for some, it also represents an enduring legacy of global inequality and hierarchy for others. Given this ‘Rorschach’ quality to the UN, this course endeavors to focus wholly and specifically on the UN itself: the good, the bad, and the ugly. In addition to getting to know the UN inside out, students will explore the portrayal of the UN in film, thereby adopting an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding and evaluating the UN and its activities.

In this class, we will read and write essays and stories that attend to---and create greater awareness and support for---the body. Most of the writers we will study are women, BIPOC, and trans and non-binary people who share their experiences with illness and impairment, as well as its effect on their artistic and creative writing practices. This includes authors living with chronic pain, who experience mental health issues or have autoimmune-related and mysterious forms of illness---all of which are largely misunderstood by the “medical industrial complex” and amidst the increasing impact climate change has on our health. Foregrounding the course are distinctions between the medical, the social, and the production models of disability. This class further examines the structures within writing disciplines that dictate how we are to write and who has privilege within creative process systems. By identifying and describing the various physical and virtual spaces we write in, we can begin to study organizational frameworks in the teaching and reproduction of creative writing—what can be referred to as the architexture of writing, in which structural mechanisms create disability and set-off various inequities. We will discuss values around work ethic and labor/productivity, grammar and standard white English language supremacy, writing as a technological construct, pathways to publication, and access to social/institutional support and resources. We will look at expectations around creative writing output, and then challenge traditional modes that are injurious, ableist, exclusionary, and disabling. Ultimately, we will ask ourselves, What is the relationship between writing disciplines and our personal and collective health? What is the relationship between authorship and social justice? We will be introduced to liberatory writing and revision, as well as various experimental practices that accommodate embodied experience and prioritize ecosystems of care, so that we might all find greater agency in how we can approach and cultivate our strongest relationship to our own writing.

In this course, students will interrogate assumptions, structures, processes, and meanings within the concept of “manifesto”; study film manifestos from different artists, movements, and time periods in cinema; and watch films deriving from these manifestos, examining – through close reading and visual and narrative analysis – how each film puts its guiding manifesto’s theory into practice. Drawing upon this study and a series of personal creative and craft responses, students will write their own film manifestos, then put these manifestos into practice by making short films representative of their manifestos’ articulated concepts. They will then reflect upon the process of theorizing and of creating from theory an original work of art.

In this course, we will engage in creative practices that contribute to a richly lived life and study creativity as a field of inquiry. The creativity we cultivate is designed to support students in their future academic and professional endeavors and to enrich their personal lives. No artistic ability is required.

“For there is no subject which is so much wrapped up in mystery and on which one can write whatever one likes without any risk of being proved wrong.” I.K. Taimni wrote these words about yoga, highlighting how prone the practice is to non-evidence-based claims. In this course, we will explore what it means for evidence to be “scientific,” and use the topic of yoga to practice differentiating between quality science and pseudoscience. Along the way, we will study the biological basis for the benefits and harms of yoga and mindfulness practices. This class will include a significant movement component (daily yoga practice), so please let the instructor know as soon as possible if you will benefit from modifications to make this more accessible.

How do we question, make meaning, and communicate stories using the creative processes of theatre? In this course, we will engage in theatrical vocabularies and methodologies to both investigate pre-existing texts and to develop original content for live performance. Students will create solo and group compositions inspired by and adapted from various textual and non-textual forms (e.g. scripts, interviews, visual art, music, literature, oral histories). Prior experience in theatre is optional for this process-oriented class. Together we will build an inclusive theatrical learning community encouraged to play, research, collaborate, and perform. Classwork will culminate in an informal public presentation at the end of the block.

In this course, you will interrogate assumptions, structures, processes, and meanings within the concept of the “manifesto.” We’ll study film manifestos from various artists, movements, and time periods in cinema and watch films relevant to these manifestos, examining – through close reading and visual and narrative analysis – how each film puts its guiding manifesto’s theory into practice. Drawing upon this study and a series of personal creative and craft responses, you will write your own film manifestos, then make short films that exemplify your manifestos’ ideals. This course meets the requirements for the Creative Process designation by asking you to investigate and clarify, for yourselves, “Why me? Why this work? Why now?” Serious consideration of the artistic possibility and power of the manifesto will ground attention to your own experiences and creative ideas, helping you codify vague senses of “taste,” preference, and personal values into an aesthetic and ideological framework that explicitly guides your filmmaking processes and reflections.