This course examines the terrain of black popular culture and its enduring yet shifting relationship to forms of social and political resistance employed by African-Americans in the US. This course offers a deep dive into two complex, related questions central to the field of Black Cultural Studies: 1) what is "black popular culture" and what can we learn by studying it in a social context? 2) How do black popular cultural forms both reproduce the status quo as well as enable black people to resist the status quo?

Between 1950 and 1980, the United States witnessed a mobilization of radical social movements led by Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American communities. In addition to these racial movements, gender and sexuality were themselves having parallel and intersecting calls for equality. This course recounts the histories of these movements.

What makes the South “the South”? This course is designed to introduce you to the literature, culture, and history of the American South as a diverse and complex region. As suggested by the title of the course, we will examine narratives of the South, either of it as a region in decline or changing to fit a changing world, and how these narratives have played out both historically and today.

More and more athletes are stepping off the court, the field or the pitch to leverage their voices and platforms to push for social change. Whether you are an athlete yourself or have never picked up a ball, this course will provide an opportunity to delve into fascinating case studies of leadership and also foster a better understanding of social causes around the globe. In this course, you will have the opportunity to reflect on the issues that matter to you, develop your sense of purpose, and increase your motivation to create change.

Horror films are a wildly popular form of entertainment, however the representations of fear and terror that they traffic in can also teach us about the relations of power that structure our world. This course is designed to introduce you to critical bodies of thought by analyzing horror film as genre and medium. You will be exposed to feminist theory, psychoanalysis, black studies, semiotics, and film theory. The goal of this course is for you to emerge as more critical consumers.

Do you enjoy making meaningful art, being creative, and being part of an engaged and caring community? This course will provide an opportunity for you to cultivate a creative practice, engage in dialogue about the potential for art to be a catalyst for social change, and build a critical toolbox of resources and experiences to strengthen individual and collaborative art-making. Experienced and novice art makers, musicians, dancers, poets, and multimedia creators will find new ways to channel your creative energies into an Action Plan with community impact. Through a contemporary and historical lens, you will explore the relationship between the self and the collective to understand better the collaborative relationship between the “artist” and the “audience.” You will leave this course prepared to continue developing a socially-conscious creative practice in their community.

Is gender a social construct rather than a biological one? Can you explain why some feminists argue that engaging in sex work empowers women? Do you know why many queer folks in East Asian cultures consider “coming out” irresponsible and ineffective in fighting for equal rights? Why do some Muslim women think wearing hijabs is a positive expression of identity, while some westerners believe this practice is oppressive? In this class, you will have the opportunity to study thought-provoking case studies across cultures and historical periods—ones that will provide you with a solid foundation on gender, sexuality, and queer studies.

What does food have to do with politics? In the US, politicians rarely talk about our food system, yet this weighty topic is connected to nearly every pressing and contentious issue in our society. From immigration to climate change, racial justice to corporate power, we will dissect a subject central yet rarely centered in American politics: food, from the field to your plate. Explore ways to combine a passion for food studies, current debates, and socially responsible leadership in this engaging course.

This course will combine action-based projects with theory to understand how activists change the world–whether they are Black women campaigning for peace in Colombia, Indigenous land rights activists on Turtle Island, caste abolitionists in India, or youth advocating for change in Rhode Island. As an introduction to visual anthropology, this course combines creative assignments with readings and screenings from the field of anthropology and social movement studies.

Study with Brown University in Rome, Italy! Practice conversational Italian as you delve into Roman history and culture in this two-week program. From your home base in the quaint Monteverde Vecchio neighborhood in Italy’s capital, you will learn Italian organically as you order cappuccino and gelato, and complete a scavenger hunt. Each day, you’ll visit a variety of historic sites—from the Colosseum to Palatine’s Hill to Saint Peter Basilica—allowing you to analyze their connections to institutions and people, and evaluate their importance in the formation of Rome’s distinctive identity.

If you tried to live for one day without generating any data, how would you spend it? In the Information Age, the use of data has proliferated and is pervasive. This course will tackle problems of privacy; artificial intelligence, big data, bias, and accountability; and mis/disinformation, hate speech, and objectionable content. You will come away with useful tools to understand and craft answers to some of the most pressing problems of our time.

Engineering has changed tremendously in the past few decades. Some of the most notable changes can be found in how computers are used by engineers to quickly develop and communicate ideas. Recent advances in the technology of computers and software have made using Computer Aided Design (CAD) central to the art of Engineering. In this course, CAD software will be used to help you create solutions for unique engineering design challenges.

She speaks in spells and incantations, cursing enemies and unlucky strangers alike. You might spot her stirring a cauldron in the shadows or riding a broomstick across the night sky. With pale white - or sometimes green - skin, she typically lives apart from society, either alone in the woods or among a coven of her own. Many know her by the name “witch.” Looking at popular media, this course will analyze how witches prompt a reevaluation of cultural norms through their very violation of them.

Have you ever wondered about how the events of the previous century shaped the perceptions of the people existing in the contemporary world?The innumerable layers of the human mind can be explored through the study of the past, in the present age, to comprehend the perplex relationship between time and the human mind. Re-live and re-visit history of the 20th century by reading the theories and movements that were born out of the wars, economic recessions, psychological and technological shifts.

This course will explore the possibilities of what we can make, quite literally, from our own experience: what happens when our hand doesn’t stop moving, goes from writing to visual art, and back again? We will draw on a combination of creative nonfiction, poetry, and collage, and, working from personal experience and the world around us, make physical objects (chapbooks, hybrid essays, comics, etc.) that blend forms and themes and ask: what is “creative work”? In what ways can social media and technology contribute to the creative process, and how can they help us see alternative examples of the “book”? How can they hinder it? How can we look at the personal—our past and present experience, the ways we interact with the world, the ways we talk to ourselves and synthesize our surroundings—as a way to connect with individuals and the world at large?

Is comedy possible in the twenty-first century? Ours is an age of disappointment, plagued by unprecedented violence and crisis, and the familiar tools of satire (insult and shame chief among them) have all but lost their edge in the face of daily life. But does this necessarily mean that ours is a tragic age? This course will give us an opportunity to investigate the conditions that allow a tragic situation to become a comedic one.

This course will introduce you to the various styles and traditions of writing. We will explore new media (such as online publishing) and traditional publishing formats while also preparing students for the college writing workshop experience. Those interested in fiction, essays, screenwriting, or hybrid writing practices will gain access to some of the most cutting-edge writing techniques of the moment. The conclusion of the course will be a publication in the author's chosen medium.

This course considers how law and literature contribute jointly to our sense of justice and our understanding of injustice. Through novels, poetry, film, legal writings, and legal opinions, we examine how law and literature create interrelated narratives that shed light on issues like identity, sexuality, injury, policing, speech, and silence.

America has been described as a melting pot and a nation of immigrants, but what does it mean to be an “American” and to claim an “American” identity? This course will introduce students to the study of personal and group identity in U.S. literature and culture. Crossing multiple genres, historical periods, and cultural forms (fiction, film, TV), we will examine a diverse range of texts by African American, Asian American, Chicano/Latino, Jewish American, and Native American writers. We will ask how these writers have come to understand the United States, and how they have used literary and cultural expression to represent their own experiences and the experiences of their communities in the U.S.

Why are cultures so fascinated with monsters? What makes a monster? Is it their strange-looking body, or the unfamiliar world they represent? Monsters often represent our worst fears. But rarely do we examine those fears and ask what our anxiety about monsters tells us about our society and ourselves. In this course, we make sense of the monstrous in popular culture by seeing how “the monster” acts as social index for anxieties over the new, the unknown, the threatening, and the unimaginable.

Through a series of short assignments, we will explore how the stories we tell are affected by the use of audio, visual, and performative tools. The course cumulates in a final project where each student will pursue a long-form story of their choice of subject and medium.

Prerequisites: None

Every day, we encounter more language that can’t be page-turned away: advertisements with hidden “close” buttons, collaborative social media posts, self-driven phone notifications, and more. As this crowd of digitized texts grows thicker, mobile text becomes more legible than static text. And so it is urgent that literature, too, moves. This course teaches coding for the web, so that you can make literature built for contemporary readers.

Environmental detective meets product designer: You. A single plastic bag can take up to 1000 years to decompose. Americans dispose of 365 plastic bags per person per year, on average. As of November 12, 2021 there are 331,648,943 Americans. Patented in 1965 by a Swedish company, this singular product, the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag, has become an iconic global staple for toting items and is consumed worldwide at the rate of one million a minute. Can you solve this environmental conundrum?

How can art not just look good, but do good? How can science not just help us know, but help us act and feel? This course combines concepts in environmental studies, ecologically-based art, and leadership, with a mission to develop socially responsible and creative leaders.

Study with Brown University in Segovia, Spain!
Why Spanish? Because learning Spanish will change you. You will be able to communicate with more than 550 million new people. That is a lot of people, that is a lot of experiences to learn from, a lot of open doors to new places and new professions. Spanish matters!

This course engages students with social justice issues in the Spanish-speaking world (the US, Latin America, and Spain), analyzing recent films addressing topics such as: racial, gender, and sexual identities; socioeconomic inequality; immigration, the border, and displacement; civil conflict, dictatorship, and their aftermath; the environment and climate change; postcolonial legacies and the impact of neoliberalism and globalization.

"The people want the fall of the regime!" This cry has resonated across the Middle East and North Africa for over a decade, echoing from the mouths of the young and old, rich and poor, regardless of religion, gender, or ethnicity. Those in this course will interrogate the roots of these calls for change by exploring the history of popular politics across the region, discussing movements rooted in anti-colonialism, nationalism, anti-authoritarianism, and the politics of religion and class.

What is the role of power in the production of history? In this course, we’ll focus on what is remembered and celebrated in historical narratives—and what is forgotten. We’ll explore these questions by looking at archives, public monuments, and museums in the United States. We’ll discuss how activist histories are recorded, who decides where monuments go, and whether or not museums are neutral. Finally, we will collectively curate our own small scale exhibition as a response to these questions.

Study with Brown University in Segovia, Spain! Segovia’s rich history and dramatic architecture make it an ideal place for you to explore Spain’s history and culture from the Middle Ages to the present while developing your communication skills in Spanish. Once ruled by Romans, Moors, and Christians, Segovia’s architecture and layout illustrate how different cultural communities coexisted throughout history. You won’t be just sitting in a classroom, however: you’ll cook typical Spanish meals, read Antonio Machado’s poetry and visit his home, and learn to write text messages in Spanish.

This course will introduce you to the art of Egypt, Greece, and Rome in the collections of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum. We will also discuss the history of museums, their role in society and and how they emerged as Western institutions of knowledge. Students will learn about ancient art, how to apply this knowledge to museum collections, do presentations in the RISD galleries and devise their own fictitious museum exhibit.

Fashion is one unifying element in our world - everyone gets dressed - however, how we choose to get dressed is another story entirely. Modern fashion, and the unique periods that created them, exist within the intersection of modern artists, designers, and aesthetics, impacting culture forever. From the radical and the innovative to the comfortable and the convenient, this course explores the ways fashion has come together to create the modern aesthetic and shape the clothing industry.

This course investigates the major movements of European and American painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography from the late-19th century to the present. We will look at the rise of urbanization and industrialization as well as the origins of an “avant-garde.” Through lectures and class discussions, we will consider the ways in which modern artists subverted traditional art and experimented with new ways of seeing.

In this course, you will take the positions of tourist and researcher as you travel around the world to understand the social construction of tourist spaces. From Mount Everest to tropical islands, US National Parks, and Disney World, you will analyze how these spaces and others were produced, how they are culturally represented, and the social dynamics that uphold their continued existence.

Exploring major themes in film theory, this course asks the question, why do movies matter today? What does cinema have to do with life—and with death? Screening cultural and social taboo —including sensory/sensual pleasure, material decay, social death, archival absences, labor, and killing—is the focus of this course. By investigating film form and materiality (from celluloid to digital), can we envision opportunities for subversive participatory spectatorship today?

Everyone has a story to tell and, increasingly, the modes of production and distribution to share their story with a wide audience. But how best to tell it effectively and ethically? In three weeks, students will harness their passion for digital communication to build technical skills in production and post-production as they are exposed to a wide range of non-fiction narrative approaches. Learning will culminate in an original work of non-fiction narrative in a time-based medium.

Television’s modes of content creation, distribution, and consumption are changing rapidly. Some would argue that television has usurped film as the preeminent visual medium of our age, while others would suggest that television and film are converging to the point that these very labels are becoming meaningless. Regardless, alternative modes of production and distribution allow for a plethora of diverse shows that no longer have to “play in Peoria.” Concurrently, issues of race, gender, and class on television are more prominent and pervasive than ever. But is increased representation—of minority, female, and LGBTQ characters—enough? What is “good” or “bad” representation, or should we eliminate this binary altogether? How do we define quality and/or relevant television? The purpose of this course is to collect the tools that we need in order to think critically about what we watch.

This course is designed as a general introduction to film analysis. The main objective will be to help you develop the analytic tools necessary for understanding how meaning is constructed in narrative cinema.

The rapid influx of digital technology and so-called “new media” around the new millennium has led some to suggest that cinema—conceived as an analog technology experienced in public space as a mid-twentieth-century cultural phenomenon—is dead or dying. This course uses this suggestive claim to ask what it might mean to live through a moment of media transition from the analog twentieth-century cinema to the digital twenty-first new media landscape.

With this class, an Emmy Award-winning journalist will provide you with the tools to ask and answer critical questions. Our objective is to provide a framework for defining accuracy in the media, for distinguishing between truthful and (ahem) less than truthful reporting. Democracy depends on both public trust and media truthfulness. With this class, you will be able to better assess the cultural and political impact we have seen when misinformation forges extremist views and actions.

From Serial to Hulu's Only Murders in the Building, true crime content is inescapable in our current moment. However, while the media through which we consume these stories may be new, our obsession with them is not. This class will explore how crime and the trial have remained foundational staples of our popular entertainment from colonial America to the present. This course asks how race and gender shape the very concepts of criminality and what it means to be an American in popular media.

From Beyoncé’s sold-out shows headlining festivals like Coachella to Lizzo’s promotion of body positivity, women are taking up greater space in the music industry now than ever before, using their music as a public testimony of their life experiences. In this course, you will trace the music of various artists as it relates to the evolution of women’s rights, gender politics, and empowerment through performances, social media, and video analyses.

Through examining historical and social aspects of music creation, find your musical voice and learn the technical aspects of music production. What lies behind the music that we like and what influences our preferences and musical practice? We will examine the history of music technology, the social aspects that surround it, and the resulting aesthetics. At the same time, we will work on honing practical skills from forming a musical idea to creating a final product using musical software.

One might believe in gender equality and participate in different gender equality movements yet still exhibit gender bias in one’s behaviors without being aware of it. Similarly, one might believe in racial equality yet still experience anxiety when walking past African American people. It is very likely that the manifested gender bias and anxious reaction are due to implicit bias. How should we understand implicit bias? What’s the mechanism of it? Are we morally blameworthy for it?

Feminism is one of the leading social justice movements of our day. This course uses the tools of analytic philosophy to investigate a diverse range of feminist issues. Topics include: the metaphysics of sex and gender, sexual orientation, and systems of social oppression such as sexism and misogyny, bodily autonomy, consent, reproductive rights, and the impact of social movements aimed at gender equality and justice.

This course is an intensive introduction to contemporary feminist political theory for students of all backgrounds. This class is motivated by concern for inequality in everyday life. You will learn how feminist political theory provides a philosophical framework to address injustice while also interrogating the essential conditions of those who identify as women, trans, or genderqueer.

Study with Brown University in Segovia, Spain!
In a globalized and interconnected world, events taking place on one side of the planet can have important repercussions on those living on the other side. Who are the main actors in the international system? Are they adversaries or allies? Can they cooperate? In this course, you will discuss the role of different actors in international relations (states, MNCs, NGOs, the UN, the EU) in addressing global challenges that affect us all, including poverty, development and global security.

Where do you spend most of your waking hours nowadays? Online, of course! Glued to smartphone screens, staying safe in zoom classrooms, or relaxing in online gaming communities – a lot of our lives have become digital. Such a revolutionary change is not without consequences, least of all on how we get involved politically. From #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo to the Alt-Right and QAnon: This course explores digital media's role in transforming politics.

Comic books have always reflected the politics of the day. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is currently one of the most popular iterations of comic book stories and includes many well-known movies and television shows. By examining the politics of these popular forms of media, we can better understand our own politics. The course will use a combination of MCU films and political science readings to explore topics including American exceptionalism, regulation, and representation, and will conclude with an independent research project.

How does culture influence the way we interact with each other? Does Western psychology differ from Eastern psychology? What are implicit and explicit biases, and how do we recognize them? What does it mean to be in an inter-racial relationship? There are many interesting guiding questions when you think about the cultural influences on the human psyche. This course will provide a comprehensive introduction to general theories and methods related to multicultural psychology.

What does it mean to know yourself? Why can love be so painful? What is the source of someone's belief in God? How does history repeat itself? Why do our dreams haunt us? What is an Oedipus complex, and do you have one? Sigmund Freud devoted his life to answering these questions. In this course, we will dive deep into the theories of psychoanalysis to explore how Freud’s work shapes our modern understanding in theory and practice.

Media is a part of our daily lives. It is hard to imagine spending 24 hours away from our phone for many of us. In "Media and Mental Health," we will explore and evaluate how media intersect with mental health and well-being. You will learn about the positive and negative effects of social media. You will also develop skills for critically evaluating media and understanding how digital media can promote public health.

In this course, you will reflect on your high school educational experience and use it as a lens to analyze inequities in the education system. Course topics include high school and college student activism, debates around standardized testing, college admission standards, and the relationships between race, class, and educational access. Over the two weeks of this course, you will define an education issue that is important to you and formulate a feasible project to address it.

Despite the best efforts of Instagram and TikTok’s finest body-positive influencers, the word “fat” has garnered almost as much power and weight (no pun intended) as the other F-word, but why? How do we interpret fatness? In this course, we will investigate the controversies and discourses surrounding larger bodies through a critical, sociocultural lens, focusing on the implications of fatness for people with varying ethnic, racial, and gender identities.

Despite the advancement of women in society over the past century, in recent years, local, national and global movements and activists have courageously stepped forward to expose the pervasive challenges and unique barriers women continue to face in educational, career, social and political arenas.

Acting is about doing! Explore your unique potential. You will develop valuable acting, collaboration, and communication skills. This is a useful, challenging, and fun exploration of the art of acting. In class, students work on scenes, applying new techniques. There will be multiple presentations of scene work, the final one open to the public. Develop physical, vocal, emotional, and intellectual skills. CREATE a supportive collaborative space. Have fun exploring!

From TikTok to the New York City Ballet, anarchist art collectives to the sculptures on Brown’s campus, the American cultural sector encompasses a complex array of creative practices. How money, power, technology and the state are deployed through- or in the service of- culture is the subject of this class. With emphasis on emerging technologies and business practices, “Culture War Bootcamp” will arm you with the tools necessary to produce work in the contemporary cultural economy.

Communicating effectively is an essential professional and personal skill. This course will help you achieve greater confidence and expertise as a communicator while further developing your unique voice and style.

This course is designed for anyone who wishes to improve their public speaking skills in a supportive and open environment. We will be learning to speak in front of an audience and to be persuasive using various modalities, including reading a manuscript, educational talks, interviews, and impromptu speeches.

An intensive workshop for students who have little or no previous experience in writing plays. Students will be introduced to a variety of technical and imaginative considerations through exercises, readings and discussions. Course is not open to those who have taken Advanced Playwriting (TAPS 1500, formerly LITR 1010C and TSDA 1500). Enrollment is limited to 14 undergraduates per section. A limited number of spaces are reserved for incoming and transfer students.

Want to make amazing presentations and influence people? Learn the tips, tricks, tactics, and tools of giving effective public presentations. This course will introduce you to fundamental methods of public speaking and designing effective graphic presentations.

Humans not only communicate through stories, we build our lives around them. We inherit stories, invent them through both necessity and imagination; we justify wars based on stories, we create borders based on stories, we make stories out of love and family and fear and longing and joy. The ability to focus on a story, to follow a line of curiosity, or inquiry, has powerful implications for discovery and for how we shape the future of our world. Constructing a rigorous creative practice is one of the most exciting and important things we can do. This course will provide a workshop setting in which those who are interested in storytelling, in writing, in play (playwriting, play-making), in the big ideas that shape our lives, will focus on the development of a single performance text.

Drawing Intensive introduces you to a totally immersive drawing experience. This course gives you a head start in preparing for college art classes by creating a more advanced, unique portfolio that shows a range of drawing skills. Observational, imaginative, planning, and process drawing will all be covered, while allowing students the space to nurture their own unique vision.

In the design world, women make up over half of the designers today, yet gender bias continues to alter the historical canon of female contribution within art and design. Just as Beyonce sang that a woman’s “persuasion can build a nation”, historically women have conceived and built more than they got credit for. This course expands the narrative of design history unearthing the widely influential histories of female designers pioneers not typically included in foundational art and design teachings.

Painting in acrylics for a variety of interests and aptitudes - basic instruction in media and painting procedure, emphasis on development of the image as a visual statement. Will cover basic color principles, painting techniques and concepts. Assignments cover a wide range of approaches including painting from observation, the model, individual research, and imagination. Images, related books, and articles are discussed.

This class is a wide ranging technical and conceptual introduction to photography. Through weekly projects, students will be exposed to 19th-21st century photo processes.Topics covered include cameras, lenses, software, darkroom overview, scanning, natural and artificial lighting, alternative processes as well as concepts such as selective focus, color temperature, composition. Short readings and in-class slide presentations on a diverse range of photographers will introduce students to the history of photography.

Q: What did the fool say to the trickster? A: Have you seen the shapeshifter? Foolery, trickery, and shapeshifting are embedded in queer interactions with the world. In this class, we explore the subtle, intentional, and effective ways that queer & trans people use these as active strategies, both to resist dominant hegemonies, and to find and form community in the margins.

This is an extensive study in form and structure to develop spatial understanding and the fundamentals of 3-dimensional design and construction. Students will explore the structural, compositional and conceptual implications of basic materials, such as wood, metal, plaster and found objects. Projects are designed as a means for investigating a variety of sculptural processes. Students will learn casting techniques, safe usage of power tools and welding equipment.

Covers the basics of drawing and 2D design while cultivating the capacity for visual thinking.