Course Catalog

The course is taught as a directed study by the chair of the CSMES department or by a faculty member appointed by the chair. The course requires students approaching completion of their Environmental Studies Major course sequence to assemble all their undergraduate academic achievements into a coherent body of work, linked by overarching themes and goals, leading to a proposal for a senior project

Concentrates on the production, social reproduction and effects of the mass media, drawing on the theories of classical sociologists, including Marx and Weber, as well as more contemporary ones including Bourdieu, Habermas and Lazarsfeld, and Merton. Students learn to think sociologically and critically about diverse mass media, including the print media, radio, television and the Internet. Use of course Web site and small group discussions facilitates the accessing and understanding of peer-reviewed articles in contemporary media sociology. Students develop a reflexive awareness of their own role in media production and consumption.

This course considers the construction of the visual world and our participation in it. Through a transcultural survey of materials, contexts and theories, students will learn how visual practices relate to other cultural activities, how they shape identity and environmental basic ways, and how vision functions in correspondance with other senses.

Gender in the Italian Renaissance Examines the art and culture of the Italian Renaissance from the ever-expanding modern perspectives of Gay and Women's studies. Studies the art of Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and lesser-known artists, as well as Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, within the broad context of early modern history and in relation to contemporaneous sexual practices and gender roles. Includes Louvre visits.

Focuses exclusively on modern women artists and writers from the 17th century with particular attention to France and England. Considers the problematic of female careers and male canons, and issues such as motherhood, creativity, subjectivity, political engagement, stylistic innovation, sexuality, and psychoanalysis against a backdrop of interdisciplinary feminist theory.

From the early Romantic period to the end of the XIXth Century, women’s folie furieuse or melancholia have been the subject of fascination and depicted in numerous literary works, from the French novelist Balzac’s Adieu to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or the American Charlotte Perkins’ The Yellow Wallpaper.

The lives and works of French women artists such as Camille Claudel, the sculptress Louise Bourgeois, the writers Marguerite Duras or Chloé Delaume, the recent legitimization and recognition of the bodies of work of Séraphine de Senlis, of Aloïse Corbaz, are testimonies of a drastic evolution in the way French society views women’s contributions to art history and culture but also to mental health and imagination: not only has the social gaze drastically changed its judgment of women, but madness and reason, “Art brut” and “official Art” have appeared closer to each other, certainly not the polar opposites our “enlightened” ancestors had made them to be. By including the study of Art Brut (Outsider Art) in particular, the course thus aims at bringing students to questions their views of art, and their judgement on complex, sometimes intricate personalities.
Visits to the Halle Saint-Pierre in Montmartre and the Collection ABCD in Montreuil, study trips to the Lausanne Collection de l’Art brut and/or to Villeneuve d’Asq’s LAM museum will allow students to visualize the disconcerting works created by rebellious, marginal and often solitary artists, experience the complexities of human expressions and the therapeutic value of art.