The Arts in New York City

Seminar 1 explores the diverse arts in New York City. During the semester, students attend performances and exhibits of the current cultural season. In addition to the four genres (opera, dance, theater, and the visual arts) covered in all sections of the Seminar, faculty choose from a variety of textual, photographic, musical, and performance genres. Students tackle such questions as: What does each genre offer? How does each speak to us? How does art create, serve, and represent the people of the city and its diverse communities? Aesthetic appreciation is supported by social and historical investigations so that students are provided with opportunities for different kinds of engagement with art forms, including interpretation, analysis, and creative endeavors. The culminating event of the Seminar, Snapshot NYC, is an ongoing accumulation of photographs of student views of New York City.

Our section of the course we will focus on the theme “Ways of Seeing” We will examine the ways artists and works of visual art, performance, dance, and opera question, respond, or interact with the social, political and local or global dynamics of the contemporary moment, past and present, and how we interact with those choices. Our long range interest is in the social exchange behind experiencing works of art and art-making processes. The class is interactive in design in order to allow you to collaborate, design, and create at least three projects in stages using digital media, storytelling, and performance, leading to an independent final scrapbook project.