For the Love of Bollywood Faculty: Shoumik Bhattacharya Meeting times: Wednesday & Friday, 1:00 - 2:30 PM
Bollywood, once a tongue-in-cheek term used by the English language media in India, has come to be the dominant and globally recognized term to refer to the prolific Hindi-Urdu language cinema and culture industry. Bollywood is, and has been, critiqued and taken lightly by scholarship for producing merely “technicolor fantasies” that cater to the masses, with the industry being characterized by music and dance numbers, melodrama, lavish production and an emphasis on stars and spectacles. It is only since the 1990s that Bollywood, one of the largest film industries in the world in terms of the number of movies produced as well as the sheer size of its audience, has been understood as an integral part of the study of contemporary Indian culture. In this course we will look at films from after the 1991 economic liberalization of the Indian economy, a moment when India more fully became part of the global capitalist markets. We will think through the ways in which Bollywood has moved from what Ashis Nandy had called “a slum’s eye view of politics” in the early 1990s, that is a bottom-up view of politics, towards an aspirational assemblage of what the politics of a “modernized,” that is capital-friendly, India should be. We will look at “masala films,” which lie at the intersection of romantic comedy and family drama, to think through the ways in which changing levels of consumerism and access to new international markets transformed the films as well as the society that produced them. Some films we will watch include Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Kal Ho Na Ho, QUEEN, Kapoor and Sons, Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhaan and more.
Climate change and economic inequality are the top challenges of the twenty-first century. Energy transition has been considered as a crucial solution to both challenges. Energy transition proposals such as the Green New Deal have the potential of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, stimulating economic growth, creating jobs, and alleviating poverty at the same time.
Achieving the green transition requires large sums of finance. A key question is whether the current financial system is compatible with the green and just vision of the energy transition. This course provides a data-driven evidence-based political economy analysis of the issue, and examines: (1) how US renewable energy companies are spending their money; (2) are they spending money on renewable energy technology innovation and creating green jobs, or enriching financial interests such as shareholders and corporate executives; and (3) how do they impact inequality and economic instability in the US economy?
The course will utilize an innovative and highly engaged learning approach. You will learn how to track a company's financial activities using open/public data, and how to utilize the power of data to understand the critical social issue.
Preventing and mitigating the effects of climate change, ensuring access to clean air and water, providing healthy living spaces and sustenance for all species, while simultaneously ensuring citizens’ social and economic welfare, are among present-day sustainability challenges. Yet, however promising the concept of sustainability may be, it must also consider an equity-driven lens that recognizes the disproportionate environmental burdens faced by minoritized communities. In a world rife with social injustice, economic instability, and environmental uncertainties, higher education has the capacity to serve as a means for social change and to catalyze a future that is more sustainable and thus, more just. In this context, this course will explore fundamental concepts of sustainability and climate justice, and leverage how we can apply these concepts to become climate justice activists within and beyond the Sarah Lawrence College community.
This course provides an introduction to the field of media studies by means of three key concepts: technology (acting on environment), medium (rearrangement of the senses), and dispositif (network of elements under a power relation), as articulated by theorists such as Ernst Kapp, Marshall McLuhan, Giorgio Agamben, and others. Each concept will be explored through particular examples, whether it be techniques of orality and writing (technologies), the microscope and telescope (media), the movie theater or the Jamaican “sound system” dance (dispositifs)--although as students will soon discover, any example could just as well be described by the two other concepts. The goal is to give students a flexible vocabulary that attunes them to different aspects of the same object, and ultimately to allow them to use media studies to better understand the landscape in which they live. Since the class is taught on Zoom, we will also use this “space” reflexively to discuss education as technology, medium, and dispositif. Questions of power, perception, and the meaning of our “humanity” will never be far from all our discussions.
Students in this 1-credit summer course will learn the fundamentals of video editing. The course will introduce basic editing principles such as montage and narrative continuity before expanding our focus to the power of editing as the fundamental language of cinema. Students will edit a short action scene, a dialogue scene and a short documentary as well as work in groups to edit a short film. We will study each other’s edits, learning to see the differences in each approach. We will explore how the combination and order of shots manages to convey both information and emotion and how the art of editing works to shape story. We will consider the filmmaker’s intention and ask if a cut works and, if it does, why it works. Just as importantly, we will ask why a cut does not work. We will explore the tools of digital editing and how they can be used to achieve the filmmaker’s desired artistic results. The class will use either Adobe Premiere if licenses can be provided or Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve editing platform, which is free and available for both Mac and PC. Once that decision is made, we’ll all use the same software for the work of the class. Students should have access to a computer with a minimum of 16GB of RAM, a webcam and microphone. It is possible to edit on an “older” and “slower” machine - but performance may be an issue. To be “present” in class, a webcam is expected to be on. This course is open to students of all levels and requires no previous editing experience. All footage will be provided by the start of the first class.
A scene is a story in and of itself. Often a mini drama within a larger narrative, the scene contains all the elements of storytelling in a succinct, brief package. In this introductory screenwriting class, students will learn the essentials of visual storytelling and story structure through the analysis and composition of stand-alone scenes. After scrutinizing and breaking down the various elements of conflict, character, dialogue, action, style, and format in various published screenplays, students will then attempt to write their own scenes. During class we will table read students’ work and give pointed feedback aimed at improving their technique and helping them achieve their vision. Students will break into small groups of 2 or 3 and write scenes that take place during a Zoom class or meeting, which they will perform, record on their desktops, and screen for the class.
This course is an introduction to health advocacy. In this course, we will explore the multiple roles that health advocates assume as they create productive change on behalf of patients/consumers, families, and communities. Advocacy is practiced by improving the way health care is delivered within existing systems, by restructuring or reinventing areas of the health care system, and by eliminating barriers to health caused by environmental destruction, poverty, and illiteracy. Throughout the course, students will consider practices in diverse arenas within this interdisciplinary field, including clinical settings, community-based organizations, advocacy organizations, the media, interest groups, governmental organizations, and policy settings. They will learn to analyze organizations and communities in order to understand hierarchies and decision-making within them, and to be exposed to frameworks for conceptualizing and promoting the right to health. The course will also explore strategies to give health advocates and consumers more power in making decisions, defining issues, designing programs, and developing policies. The experiences of individuals and communities, as well as how systems respond to those experiences, will remain a central focus as students explore concepts, models, and practices of health advocacy.
This course will follow the history of the mid-twentieth century through the stories of American women, from many different perspectives. From Susan Glaspell’s 1917 “A Jury of her Peers” in 1917, to Gertrude Stein’s 1922 “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene,” to Anzia Yezierska’s 1927 “Wild Winter Love,” through the Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen’s 1929 Passing, to agrarian radical Josephine Johnson’s Pulitzer prize-winning Now in November in 1934. We would then move to the postwar era, with Shirley Jackson’s chilling “The Lottery” in 1948, Hisaye Yamamoto’s 1949 “Seventeen Syllables” about the life of a picture bride, Valerie Taylor’s 1959 lesbian pulp, and Jewish writer (and former Sarah Lawrence professor) Grace Paley’s acute renderings of New York City. A new openness characterizes the humorous posters and passionate manifestas of the Women’s Liberation Movement that we would look at next, before turning to Toni Morrison’s scathing The Bluest Eye, inspired in part by the Civil Rights Movement. We will end with Chinese American Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1976 Woman Warrior about the perils of assimilation, and Chicana Sandra Cisneros’s 1984 House on Mango Street. Significantly, the cultural and political world looks quite different through the eyes of women.
Short lectures will provide context, and students will use break out rooms to discuss questions and then facilitate conversations when they rejoin the class. Assessments will be a series of one to two page thought pieces for each reading, and two longer five-page essays on students’ choice of poetry, short stories, plays or screenwriting devised by women but not on the syllabus. (There will be two short “conferences” one-on-one with the professor to discuss those choices and the submitted essays.) A final oral exhibition, three students at the time, will look back for patterns in the writing over time.
This course aims to develop students’ knowledge of the fields of visual culture and media studies through an intersectional framework. We will examine how visual culture, including the arts and mass media, produce meanings through which we construct our social identities and negotiate reality. Students will be introduced to key terms, theories, and scholars in these fields, enabling us to decode a variety of media texts with an effective set of analytical tools. As a class we will create a visual archive of historical and contemporary images (drawn from film, television, social media, and the arts) through which we can apply these tools and learn how to engage more critically with our visual culture landscape.
Though often acknowledged, Latin America has been at the center of global process. La Malinche’s mediation of the encounter between the Old and the New Worlds and Castro and Che Guevara’s path for Third World liberation movements are two primary examples. In turn, global events and structures have shaped the destiny of the Americas. Among those are the expansion of European empires, the massive movement of people from Africa, and the most recent connection to China have shaped and continue to reconfigure the destinies of the people in the continent. The course attempts to situate Latin America’s history within global history while understanding the influence of Latin America history in global processes. This summer course will help students approach these topics by discussing a different primary source each class including archival documents, short stories, films, and images. Students are expected to write a short paper based on a primary source of their choice.
Infinity is both broadly used in mathematics, and has a history of being controversial. Artists have solved the problem of perspective, and have deeply considered infinity. In this course we will explore infinity in mathematics via Ordinals, Hilbert's Hotel, Zeno's paradox, the Fibonacci sequence, the Golden Ratio, Pascal's triangle, the Power Set, and finally: Cantor's many levels of infinity. Each week we will create an art project based on our mathematical investigations. This is a class about the concept of infinity in mathematics, and how infinity is expressed visually. There are no prerequisites, just an interest in art, mathematics, or both.
How does listening promote wellness? This course takes a broad, critical approach to the ways listening, with its accompanying technologies, can be understood as a form of healing. Using a cross-cultural perspective, we will engage specific examples of music making to better understand various experiences of musical healing and the mediating role of technology. We will analyze cultural and historical assumptions associated with ideas about music and healing in different cases around the world, and question how these sonic and ideological legacies persist. Course themes will include music as a form of resilience, anxious and celebratory discourses about technologies of listening, community building through music, the influence of European Romanticism on contemporary notions of music and listening, and musical responses to colonialist and imperial traumas. Course topics may include ethnographic studies of music and healing in Liberia and Tajikistan,
Native American and First Nations musicians, ambient music, music and empathy, music therapy, indie folk music, mobile listening, entrainment, autonomous sensory meridian response, Lofi hiphop, and EDM. No prior experience in music is necessary.
The majority of the members of the current Supreme Court of the United States were appointed by Presidents who were elected despite losing the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate in which a majority of its members represent a minority of the population, a minority that differs substantially from the majority in terms of both demographic characteristics and political views. This Supreme Court, in turn, is increasingly overturning decisions that represented the settled constitutional law relied upon for generations and produced by Supreme Courts with less questionable legitimacy, while also invalidating legislation like campaign finance reform or the Voting Rights Act supported by the majority of Americans as integral to the protection of democracy and our basic rights. This is perhaps the most obvious nexus of features in the American Constitution that amplify minority power and that could threaten the very legitimacy of the Court and the Constitution if the Supreme Court Justices come to be identified, in Justice Elena Kagan’s biting description, as “black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices.” Is there any way the Court can speak for “We the People” of a diverse democracy, given the rapid demographic diversification of American society, and the extraordinary partisan polarization of American politics in the 21st century? In this summer seminar we will examine issues at the intersection of philosophy, political science, history and constitutional law by focusing on the reasons why modern representative democracy tends to be structured by constitutions that limit the power of the majority. Is constitutional democracy a contradiction in terms, a ploy used by the powerful to secure popular consent to camouflaged elite rule? Or is there a case to be made that a carefully crafted constitution does not constrain but instead enables the practice of democracy? And, if we conclude that democratic constitutionalism is a coherent idea, is assigning the role of interpreting and preserving the constitution exclusively to a constitutional court the best way to institutionalize these tasks? To examine these issues, we will focus on the 18th century debate surrounding the adoption of the American constitution and the institutionalization of judicial review, on the one hand, and contemporary debates about whether we remain convinced nearly 250 years later that these issues were correctly decided. Special attention will be paid to the role the Court has played in American history in promoting or thwarting the civil rights and political equality of racial minorities and women. The overall aim is to think carefully about these pressing issues while also introducing students new to college level work to the intersection and overlap of distinct disciplines (philosophy, history, political science, and legal theory) and their power to illuminate pressing practical problems we face.
This comprehensive, step-by-step online course focuses on developing the skills and tools that the young actor needs to work in the fast-paced world of film and television. Through intense scene study and script analysis, we will expand each performer's range of emotional, intellectual, physical, and vocal expressiveness for the camera. Specifically designed for the online format, this class will focus on the technical skills needed for the actor to give the strongest performance “within the frame,” while maintaining a high level of spontaneity and authenticity.
For the class, students will act in assigned scenes from film and television scripts, with specific feedback given by the instructor after each take. Scenes will be recorded and later uploaded to a private class page, available for students to download and review. Finally, students will be taken through the process of auditioning on-camera for various film and television roles through cold reads, prepared reads, and mock auditions.
Beyond jazz hands and kicklines, Broadway has the power to transform, inspire, enlighten, and reinvent itself. In this 6 week intensive, we will examine notable theatremakers in the turn of the 21st century and the sociopolitical discourse of their creative work on Broadway. What do we learn from risk taking artists like Tony Kushner, Jonathan Larson, August Wilson, Julie Taymor, Mary Zimmerman, Jeanine Tesori, Edward Albee, and Lin Manuel Miranda? How has their work redefined Theatre as a beacon of hope in a broken America? How do we as theatre artists use our own creativity, joy, truth, passions, and stories to make brave new work in challenging times?
This course will introduce students to the practice and theory of decolonization and how it can be embedded in theatrical practice, from production to administration, specifically focusing on EDI practices and understanding consent. Students will be introduced to decolonial theorists throughout the five weeks and compare them to their current understanding of the theatre industry as well as complete self-reflective exercises and writings. They will look at the foundational work of intimacy choreography, consent-based practice, and global majority representation and what we have learned through the pandemic to discover how these can be centered moving forward. By comparing decolonization and intimacy choreography (which both center the importance of caretakers) students will leave with an understanding of how they can challenge their respective areas of study and the importance of the work. This class will introduce these theories and allow students to discover their ideas and theories as they progress forward.
Drawing as an art form is integrally tied to thinking. When we jot notes on a scrap of paper, brainstorm a diagram, sketch an idea, or even doodle while daydreaming, we’re drawing. This course will help you improve your drawing skills while also introducing you to a diverse group of contemporary artists who center drawing in their creative practices. Each class, we’ll begin by looking at and discussing a new approach to drawing (process and subject matter) through images and demonstrations. You’ll then create your own drawings in response to related yet open-ended prompts. These prompts will simultaneously help you to improve your observational skills, while also facilitating new and creative ways of drawing. We won’t settle on a particular style, but will investigate many forms of drawing, including realism, abstraction, conceptual, sculptural, even mixed media. We’ll discuss your drawings in critiques, and will explore ways of working within your everyday environment. A gift card for drawing supplies will be provided for each student. This class is suitable for everyone, from total novices to those with experience who are looking for new ways of sparking their creativity.
Often the creative process is hindered by our self-criticism and preconceptions of what art is before we even venture to mark the page. This five-week course prioritizes physical artmaking through a series of unconventional drawing techniques, Dadaist parlor games, and time-based puzzles. Thoughtful analysis and critical, yet supportive review will follow. We will use collage, watercolor, ink, paper, and found objects as our primary materials. If you tend to judge your creative abilities, you will be enthusiastically invited to set aside worry and trust in the generative process each week. Through word prompts, students will create a set of abstract compositions and subsequently follow gut level impulses to add hues, tones, and values to their work. Students will be asked to make a found-object based sculpture in two, five, and ten minute increments. This restriction levels the playing field where everyone takes the same leap of faith and simply responds in action rather than preponderance. The results are unexpected and thought-provoking. Best practices for cleanly and simply documenting artwork will be reviewed. Work will be uploaded for regular class discussion and critiques. Our goal is to open our complex inner worlds and translate it into positive concrete outer form. This class is open to all levels.