Commitments

Macaulay Honors College Seminar 1

The Arts in New York City

Professor Sondra Perl

Lehman College

Fall 2010

Class Time: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30-1:45

Office Hours: 12:00 -12:30 and by appointment

Office: Honors Seminar Room

Email: sondra.perl@gmail.com

Phone: 718 601 8811 (home), 917 232 5266 (cell)

Instructional Technology Fellow: Sam Han

Office hours: Tuesdays & Wednesdays, 11:00AM-2PM

Office: Library, Room 315

Email: shan@gc.cuny.edu

Phone: 646 657 8603

Commitments Expected of Students in the Course

This seminar will be conducted as an inquiry into issues related to understanding the arts. It will involve all of us in extended conversations that will occur orally and in writing, both during class and outside of it, at art exhibits, plays, music recitals, and other performances. Your success in the course depends, in large part, on your willingness to make and fulfill the following commitments:

1.  To attend all scheduled classes and events on time (for performances, early is good). There are no excused absences. If you must miss a class, email me immediately with an explanation and check in with your classmates to find out what you missed. Also check our class blog every few days for changes and updates. Excessive absence will affect your grade.

2.  To write frequently and extensively during the course and at home.  This includes several different types of writing:

The Blog: Our class blog will be the primary place for ongoing and sustained communication. You will be expected to read the blog regularly (at least two or three times a week) and to go there for updates and changes in our schedule or reading assignments. Blog posts will be organized by events and by class reading assignments and will take the following forms:

Responses to events and performances

You are expected to respond in writing to each event and performance we attend (as soon after the event as possible but within two or three days at the most) and to respond, weekly, to the writing and reflections of your classmates. These entries can be informal; you are invited to write honestly and personally (no plot summaries, please) about what you are thinking and feeling and to raise questions about things you want to know more about. Experiment, at times, with writing in the present tense…as if the event is occurring as you write. And always proofread your entries! If you miss a scheduled event, you must visit another venue in NYC and write about your experience.

Responses to readings

These are open-ended entries, also posted on the blog, in which you record your questions, responses and reactions to whatever we are reading, citing page numbers, using quotes from the text, and writing out any arguments you may have with the author as well as random thoughts, speculations, insights, etc.; these responses will often be discussed in class.

Photos, art work, links

You are invited to enlarge our understanding of the arts by uploading photos of events we attend or links to art work or websites of interest to you.

Shaped Pieces: this refers to one piece of creative writing that you take through drafts and revisions until you have reached a point of satisfaction. This writing will be the basis for the creation of a digital prose poem that will be posted on the blog.

3.  To participate in collaborative reading, writing and presentation groups. During the course, you will be asked to work with other members of the class as follows:

The Writing Group: When we work on shaped pieces and digital stories, you will be asked to bring in copies of your work-in-progress and to share them with others in your group for feedback and response. Learning how to listen to and to respond respectfully and generously to your peers will be one goal for this activity. The other will be to help you create work that speaks to others in thoughtful, honest, revealing, and powerful ways.

Community Arts Project: This is the final project for the seminar. To complete it, you need to select a location in any borough of New York City and a cultural community, (e.g.:  Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, Jamaican, Cuban-American, Italian-American, African-American, Hasidic, Caribbean, Russian, Greek etc.) and then explore the relationship of this community to the expression of art. You may look at its museums, performance arts, music, exhibits, rituals, and crafts. This may include food, fairs, parades, and other acts of creativity. Your report may take many forms but must include a class presentation accompanied by a digital story. Previous community arts projects at Brooklyn College included:  subway arts; Caribbean costume and step-dancing; Greek folk dance; Indian dances, food, and dress; orthodox Jewish ritual, music/food; Chinatown art; Soho street artists; Brighton Beach/Sheepshead Bay Russian community; arts and the homeless; breakdancing; jazz culture in NYC; Staten Island architecture; Brooklyn visual artists; Williamsburg—the two cultures (hipsters and the Chasidim); Italian festival—photography and food, Catholic, Indian, and Jewish weddings: art and culture. May be done in pairs, groups, or singly.

4.  To visit four exhibits in New York City using your Cultural Passport and to post your reflections on the blog. You may comment on the architectural space itself, the type of work exhibited (describing at least one work in depth), the audience viewing the exhibit, and your sense of what you were seeing. In class, we will discuss the various venues available to you.

5.  To participate in all required Macaulay Honors College events, including “Meet the Writers” and Snapshot Day and its exhibition in December.

6. To be cognizant of the CUNY Policy on Academic Integrity (go to www.lehman.edu/lehman/about/policies_pdf/CUNYAcademicIntegrityPolicy.pdf) and to submit work that represents your own thinking and/or that of others with appropriate citations.

Grades

Grading in a course based on collaboration has as much to do with how you work with others as with your own submissions. As a result, good will and active involvement count almost as much as written and oral presentations. Roughly speaking, one third of your grade will be derived from your written work, one third from your oral presentations, and one third from overall participation, attendance, and the visible signs that the work of the seminar and that of your peers have become important to you in ways that may not be quantifiable.

Absence from Performances and Events

It inevitably happens that someone has to miss a scheduled event. If so, please contact me or a classmate as soon as you realize that you cannot attend the event. Sometimes you can see the event on your own at a later date. If not, you will need to substitute another event for the one you missed and write a brief reflection on it.