Founded in 1967 as part of the State University of New York comprehensive system, Purchase College was the fulfillment of Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s vision to create a learning community which combined professional conservatory programs in the performing and visual arts with rigorous studies in the liberal arts and sciences.
This vision continues to be the guiding force in our quest to provide an exceptional educational experience.
We are grateful to our many alumni and community members who support the college through scholarships, professorships, and distinguished programs. We will continue to provide access to scholarship and creativity to meet the needs of all of our constituents.
Purchase College, SUNY, offers a unique education that combines programs in the liberal arts with conservatory programs in the arts in ways that emphasize inquiry, mastery of skills, and creativity. Our graduates contribute to the arts, humanities, sciences, and society.
Vision
Purchase College will be recognized nationally and internationally as the leading public institution to pair conservatory programs in the arts with liberal arts programs. We will continue to create opportunities for transformative learning and training in a community where disciplines connect, intersect, and enhance one another.
Values
Purchase College celebrates individuality, diversity, and creativity in a community of educational excellence.
Purchase College combines, in one college and on one campus, four distinctive yet interacting academic foci: film and media studies, humanities, the natural and social sciences, and the performing and visual arts.
As of this year, the college offers:
50 undergraduate majors, 33 minors
5 graduate programs
post-baccalaureate performers certificates and post-master’s artist diplomas in music
numerous internship and study abroad opportunities
Approximately 70 percent of the matriculated students at Purchase College are enrolled in the BA, BS, and MA programs; the remaining 30 percent are enrolled in the BFA, MusB, MM, and MFA programs. In response to our rapidly changing global society, the college is continuing to develop integrative and interdisciplinary programs as well as innovative opportunities for international and online studies.
Detailed information on the Purchase College School of the Arts and School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, their academic units, and the programs offered is available in the Academic Programs and Courses section of this catalog. In addition, Purchase College has one of the largest and most diverse continuing education programs in the State University of New York system. The School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education offers the liberal studies degree completion program with four majors, specifically designed for adults and transfer students who need to complete their Bachelor’s degree within a tight time-frame and with a flexible schedule. The school also offers both credit-bearing and noncredit courses for adults, college students, and eligible high school students; Professional certificate programs; And noncredit programs in the arts for children and teens.
In addition, the school administers the college’s online winter session and its summer sessions, which attract students from colleges and universities across the nation.
Purchase College is committed to fostering a diverse community of outstanding faculty, staff and students, as well as ensuring equal educational opportunity, employment, and access to service, programs, and activities, without regard to an individual’s race, color, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, familial status, pregnancy, predisposing genetic characteristics, military status, domestic violence victim status, or criminal conviction. Employees, students, applicants, or other members of the Purchase community (including vendors, visitors, and guests) may not be subjected to harassment that is prohibited by law or treated adversely or retaliated against based upon a protected characteristic.
Purchase complies with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination and harassment. These laws include the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as Amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, and the New York State Human Rights Law. These laws prohibit discrimination and harassment, including sexual harassment and sexual violence.
Sexual harassment is defined as: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when:
submission to such contact is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment or education
submission or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment or educational decisions affecting the individual
such conduct has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an individual’s welfare, academic or work performance, or creating an intimidating, hostile, or demeaning learning or work environment
Sexual harassment may include:
subtle persistent pressure for sexual activity
unnecessary touching, pinching, and/or brushing against a person
sexual coercion or assault
demanding sexual favors with implied or overt threats concerning work or academic decision or preferential treatment
unwelcome verbal/expressive behavior of a sexual nature (e.g., jokes, sounds, obscene phone calls, demeaning graphic portrayals)
stalking, cyber stalking, and failure to accept the termination of a consensual relationship with repeated overtures or other aberrant or negative behavior
Sexual violence has been defined as “physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or where a person is incapable of giving consent,” including rape, sexual battery, and sexual coercion.
Domestic victim status has been defined by the Human Rights Law as an individual who is a victim of an act which would constitute a family offense under N.Y. Family Court Act § 812. It is unlawful to discriminate against a domestic violence victim in hiring for a job, job advancement, requests for use of leave time, or other terms, conditions or privileges of employment. It is also unlawful for an employer to take an action in retaliation for filing a complaint of discrimination.
On-campus inquiries or complaints regarding violations of the Nondiscrimination Policy or Title IXmay be addressed to:
Jerima DeWese Affirmative Action/Chief Diversity Officer and Title IX Coordinator Purchase College 735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577 (914) 251-5992 Jerima.DeWese@purchase.edu
Inquiries may also be directed to:
New York Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Education 32 Old Slip, 26th Floor New York, NY 10005-2500 Tel: (646) 428-3800, Fax: (646) 428-3843 TDD: (800) 877-8339 OCR.NewYork@ed.gov
Stand in the middle of campus and you’re 30 miles north of midtown Manhattan, but with nature as far as the eye can see.
Tucked away on a 500-acre former estate in Westchester County, our unique sprawling campus was designed by master architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Almost all the buildings on the Purchase campus are the same color. Why is that? Well, there’s a historical reason and a metaphorical one.
The Story Behind the Brick
Our campus master plan relied upon several highly renowned architects to design the buildings on the Main Plaza. To unify these diverse structures and bring coherence to the campus, the architects were required to use the same shade of brick.
We like to think the consistency and order of the buildings’ facades is offset by the explosively colorful, diverse, and unconventional intellectual and artistic activity that happens inside them. Behind our uniform brick walls are classrooms, laboratories, performance spaces, and studios—those spaces where the real heart of campus can be found.
The Purchase Experience
Life here is hands-on and community-focused. We all pitch in to make Purchase a sustainable and diverse home for creative minds.
We’re DIY meets intellectualism, boundless intensity infused with an inquisitive spirit.
The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 contains numerous federal reporting and disclosure requirements for information from various administrative areas of higher education institutions. This website has been created to provide quick access to this information.
To the right are general consumer information subject areas, which provide links to references, reports, and additional details. For related information, please refer to Public Reports, which includes the college’s designated contacts for public institutional data and for the annual campus security report.
The Board of Trustees is the governing body of the State University of New York. It consists of 18 members, 15 of whom are appointed by the Governor, with consent of the NYS Senate. The president of the Student Assembly serves as a voting member, and the presidents of the University Faculty Senate and Faculty Council of Community Colleges serve as non-voting members.
The core curriculum at Purchase College satisfies the SUNY general education requirements and engages all undergraduate students in essential learning.
All Purchase undergraduates complete coursework in a common core curriculum as they progress toward graduation in their chosen majors. The core curriculum ensures that students in all majors develop a foundation in a broad range of general education knowledge and skill areas, expressed in terms of student learning outcomes (SLOs).
Because these SLOs are shared across all 64 SUNY campuses, meeting a general education requirement at Purchase satisfies that requirement at any SUNY campus and vice versa.
Completing the Purchase College core curriculum satisfies all SUNY general education requirements.
Transfer students who have completed 30 general education credits and any 7 of the 10 SUNY general education content categories before admission to Purchase College will be awarded credit for fulfilling the Purchase core curriculum.
The student’s advisor and the registrar monitor each student’s progress toward the fulfillment of the core curriculum requirements; however, the final responsibility for completing the requirements rests with the student.
This site, maintained by the SUNY System Administration, provides links to lists of approved general education courses at each SUNY campus, including Purchase core curriculum courses that satisfy SUNY general education requirements.
Undergraduate Degrees
Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Science (BS)
Earn a minimum of 120 credits. Of the 120 credits, a minimum number of credits in the liberal arts are required: 90 for the BA, 60 for the BS. A total of 45 credits must be earned in upper-level (3000- or 4000-level) courses. A maximum of 4 physical education credits may be applied toward the degree.
Complete a minimum of 60 credits outside the student’s board of study (major).
The goal of a liberal arts education is to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to critically appreciate, analyze, and resolve problems—both those encountered in the classroom and in society. To achieve this, the liberal arts curriculum is designed so that students are exposed to many fields of study while they gain mastery in a single discipline. Striking the right balance between in-depth study in a narrow area and exposure to a broad array of disciplinary perspectives enhances personal and professional success. Programs are designed to provide students with the concepts and critical thinking abilities necessary to understand, create, and communicate, as well as the requisite analytical skills to work effectively in their chosen fields of study.
Academic Organization
In the liberal arts and sciences at Purchase College, majors, interdisciplinary programs, and numerous concentrations and minors are offered by the School of Film and Media Studies, the School of Humanities, and the School of Natural and Social Sciences. Most undergraduate majors lead to the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. A Bachelor of Science (BS) degree is also available in biology, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree is offered in film. In the School of Humanities, the Master of Arts (MA) degree is offered in 20th-century art history.
Interdisciplinary Studies
Within the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, it is possible to major in one of three interdisciplinary BA degree programs: gender studies, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies, and liberal arts. Students who wish to pursue an individualized program of study that cannot be accommodated within any of the conventional majors can work with faculty members from different departments to create a program of study leading to the BA in liberal arts. In addition, interdisciplinary minors are available in Asian studies, gender studies, global black studies, and Latin American studies.
Departments
Faculty in the liberal arts and sciences are organized by departments—groups of faculty members in the major disciplines. Departments assume major responsibility for the development of specific programs, the determination of program requirements, and student advising. In the case of interdisciplinary programs, faculty from various departments collaborate to provide those functions. When a student is ready to select a major, the appropriate department identifies a qualified advisor for the student. It is the student’s responsibility to be aware of the requirements of each program. New departments are created to shape and supervise new programs as student needs require and faculty resources permit.
Faculty
Faculty appointments in the liberal arts and sciences are made on the basis of effectiveness in teaching and dedication to undergraduate education, with attention to scholarly accomplishment and to the intellectual breadth essential to implement programs. Of our full-time faculty, approximately 92 percent hold a doctorate or other terminal degree; Others are award-winning authors, journalists, and filmmakers. In addition to general teaching and advising responsibilities, faculty members guide tutorials and supervise independent research projects and senior theses.
Academic Advising
All students in the liberal arts and sciences have faculty advisors and plan their semester’s work in consultation with these advisors. Students are also strongly encouraged to use the services of the Advising Center. In particular, students who have not declared their major are encouraged to meet with an advisor in the Advising Center for guidance.
School of Film and Media Studies
Welcome to Film and Media Studies at Purchase.
Get involved in the production and critique of film, media, and video art.
The cinema studies major offers students an opportunity for intensive study of the art of film through a broad range of courses in history and aesthetics.
All students begin with yearlong introductory surveys of film and modern art, then proceed to more advanced courses that focus on a wide variety of directors, national cinemas, genres, modes (narrative, documentary, avant-garde), and critical/theoretical approaches.
In their senior year, students explore and extend their knowledge of cultural, historical, industrial, philosophical, and artistic perspectives on the medium in their senior project.
Interdisciplinary and Rigorous
This interdisciplinary degree program is rigorous and highly selective, with official admission to the program contingent on successful completion of Introduction to Cinema Studies I and II during the freshman year and a qualifying examination in film history and aesthetics, which is given at the end of the freshman year.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all cinema studies majors must meet the following requirements (53–54 credits):
CIN 1500/Introduction to Cinema Studies I (4 credits)
CIN 1510/Introduction to Cinema Studies II (4 credits)
One art history course (3–4 credits), chosen from the following or approved by the cinema studies program coordinator:
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II
ARH 1060/Touchstones of Modern Art
ARH 1070/The Work of Images: The Function of Art in Western Culture
ARH 2050/Introduction to Modern Art
ARH 2060/Art Since 1945
One of the following courses (4 credits):
CIN 2000/Close Analysis
CIN 2500/Principles of Montage
CIN 3005/Cinema and the Archive
Six upper-level elective courses in cinema studies* (24 credits total)
*Learning assistantships, internships, and independent studies cannot be used to satisfy this requirement.
A grade of B or higher is required in CIN 1500 and 1510.
To advance to the sophomore year, students must pass a qualifying examination in film history and aesthetics, which is given at the end of the freshman year.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Screenwriting and Film
BFA, Purchase College, SUNY
Courses
An overview of the development of film as an art and as an industry from silent to digital cinema. Students learn the stylistic, narrative and industrial developments of cinema through the analysis of classic films.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
An intensive study of film history with analysis of specific films that represent stages in the evolution of the formal aspects of cinematic expression. Film showings, lectures, seminars.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
A continuation of CIN 1500.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500
Department: Cinema Studies
The techniques of filmic expression are examined through a focused, detailed analysis of cinematography, editing, lighting, mise-en-scène, and soundtrack in celebrated cinematic works from around the world. Course content is organized around the establishment or subversion of narrative, generic, and stylistic conventions through the works of one director, a particular genre, or a film movement.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Examines the history of music videos, studying their effectiveness as a sales mechanisms as well as their influence on how today’s movies, television and commercials are photographed. Students are required to shoot practice exercises throughout the semester, complete a final paper, and shoot a music video on their own for a campus band or musician. Students must have experience operating a video camera and have access to a digital editing platform or be familiar with Final Cut Pro.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
The goals of this course are two-fold. First, the history of silent film through the advent of sound is explored to reveal what early cinema can teach about the present and future of visual culture. Second, students use this exploration into early cinema to improve their film research skills, from data gathering to revision.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An intensive course for cinema studies majors that combines hands-on practice with close analysis. Students explore the art of montage by analyzing the film language of great directors and by shooting and editing short video projects, with an emphasis on the major principles of montage.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Research and practice in film programming practices and histories. Students research historical and contemporary case studies in film programming and exhibition while engaging in their own on-campus programming. They organize film series and screenings, gaining hands-on experience with and studying diverse perspectives on programming, distribution, curating, fundraising, advertising, engaging in audience outreach, event managing, researching, and writing.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Third cinema was a movement proposed by Latin American directors in the 1960s and further developed by African directors in the 1970s. It addresses important questions about independent national cinemas, colonialism, race, and identity. This course examines the movement and its global influence, with emphasis on the cinemas of Latin America, Africa, black Britain, and American minorities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An intensive focus on the intersection between cinema and history. Students examine the debates around cinema’s status as historical document, surveying different approaches to the relationship between cinematic formal traditions and social history. The course emphasizes the analysis of primary sources, such as reviews, posters, magazine and newspaper articles, personal correspondence, trade publications, and blogs.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Through a historical survey of documentary and ethnographic film, this course explores documentary theory, aesthetics, and ethics. Topics include early cinema, World War II propaganda, cinema verité, radical documentary, the essay film, counter-ethnographies, and contemporary mixed forms. Films by the Lumières, Flaherty, Marker, Rouch, Minh-ha, and others.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Asian cinema is often rechanneled by the socio-political and cultural situations created by colonialism, wars, revolutions, and global capitalism. This course examines Asian cinemas within the context of international film history and explores significant genres, movements, and themes from the 1920s to the present. The course investigates how the transnational cinematic flow engages with discourses on nationalism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1510 Or CIN1030
Department: Cinema Studies
Students in this course will write, shoot and edit short documentary and/or fiction films reflecting the culture and country where the films are shot. International student teams work together on locations in USA, Haiti and Africa to produce films which will be screened at cultural events and film festivals.
Credits: 1
Department: Cinema Studies
Working in collaboration with students from film schools in France and Africa, students engage in preproduction via video conference on film projects they will complete together during a subsequent summer study abroad session. Students also examine contemporary cinematic trends in France and Africa, with special focus on diverse geographical settings, cultural and aesthetic histories, and conditions of production and exhibition.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An intense focus on sound technology, with careful attention to the way image, dialogue, music, and sound interact in both film and video. The history of sound technology and sound theory are explored by comparing sound innovations in other fields (music, radio, television) to developments in film/video. Films include The Jazz Singer, The Conversation, Pi, and Run Lola Run.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An exploration of cult films and the subculture surrounding them. What elements determine the second life of films beyond their initial phase of consumption? Do these films share certain characteristics, or does their cult status depend entirely on viewing practices? How do these subcultures police their boundaries? What reading strategies do these subcultures employ? These questions also allow students to reflect on their attachment to films.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Examines the state of television today, with special attention to new genres, narratives, technologies, audiences, and corporate practices, with special attention to the growth of cable networks, online sites, streaming serials, new modes of spectatorship, and new forms of fan culture.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A survey of the development of broadcasting and electronic media in the United States. It emphasizes the cultural and institutional history of the medium, as well as the aesthetic of televisual genres.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1500
Department: Cinema Studies
A survey of the history of Mexican cinema from the early 1930s to the present. Students examine popular genres like la comedia ranchera (Mexican cowboy musical), el género cabaretil (dancehall film), and el cine de luchadores (wrestling film) as well as the work of the most prominent Mexican filmmakers (e.g., Arturo Ripstein, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Nicolás Echeverría, María Novaro, Guillermo del Toro).
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
The films covered offer an opportunity to deeply analyze the formation of national identity, migration, gender and race relations, social inequalities, the rural and urban worlds, and political events that have had an impact on the contemporary societies of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A survey of animated filmmaking from the inception of cinema to the contemporary era.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Explores the role of cinematic representation in shaping the urban imagination. Taking both a historical and a comparative approach, students study the figuration of American, European, and non-Western cities from the silent era to the digital age. Discussions include how cinema has portrayed these metropolitan areas and their people, cultures, and public and private spaces.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An examination of improvisation in scripts, performances, and the directorial design and production process. Students study the techniques of such filmmakers as John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh, the basics of improvisation taught by Viola Spolin and others, and theories of aleatory form; participate in improvisatory scenes; and make a film using improvisational techniques.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An advanced seminar on theories of cinematic and computational media via “the war machine.” Focus is on the relationship between cinematic and military techniques and technologies—what Virilio dubbed “the deadly harmony” between eye and weapon. Emphasis is also placed on the sociopolitics of code, the ramifications of informatic capture and the formation of coded bodies, and the rise of new machines of war and resistance.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Students discuss and analyze films in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
As people migrate across the globe, their media forms move with them—sometimes following them, documenting their movement, other times traveling with them, as traces of their home cultures. Focusing on a variety of transnational media forms, this course examines how media producers treat themes of home, nation, belonging, migration, immigration, displacement, alienation, border crossing, and mobile identities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or MSA2200 Or NME2100
Department: Cinema Studies
A detailed examination of a filmmaker’s career. Students analyze films in light of a filmmaker’s entire output while situating the artist’s creative process in relation to the industrial and historical context. The course also introduces students to the tradition of auteur criticism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Designed to foster screenwriting, beginning with creation of the script and working toward completion of a short film by the end of the term. Creative writing and cinema studies students collaborate at all stages of the process, including writing, producing, directing, and editing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
In this course, affect is considered as a form of power—the embodied capacity to affect and be affected. Students explore affective genres of visual culture, such as horror, comedy, melodrama, and pornography. The course draws on a range of theoretical perspectives on affect and emotion, emphasizing work from psychoanalysis, philosophy, feminism, and queer theory.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A study of contemporary global cinema and recent trends in cinematic style and narrative. The course focuses on non-American/non-European cinemas and co-productions and on important developments in the regional cinemas of Africa and Latin America. The final quarter examines “cinema” from a global perspective, particularly the extent to which new technology and cultural circuits have fostered techniques, styles, and narrative forms.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Examines recent debates in media theory, offering critical frameworks to understand the complexities of what a “medium” is, its forms and aesthetics, how it circulates and interacts with subjects and objects, and how it culturally signifies. Critical inquiry is grounded in a range of media texts, from films to reality TV, video games, and artworks.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Focuses on the changing landscape of national and regional cinemas of Europe from the 1980s to the present, including the advent of the MTV-influenced cinéma du look movement in France and the neorealist, indie-inspired filmmaking in the Balkan and former Soviet states. The contested (re)definition of what now encompasses ”European cinema” is a defining undercurrent of the course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An introduction to the history and modes of film criticism, using the films of Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford (depending on the instructor) as the focal point. The goal is to familiarize students with the diversity of critical approaches in film studies, to make them better critics, and to do so by understanding both the aesthetic qualities and social forces that have made Hitchcock (or Ford) not only one of the great film personae of the 20th century, but also a marketing device, an aesthetic, a genre, and a field of study.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Networked computing has reconfigured cultural production, distribution, textual practices, and consumption. Students investigate how cinema registers these shifts by analyzing films that address the internet and by examining the ways that computing technologies renew film’s significance. Readings cover the latest conversations in media theory, addressing such issues as photographic indexicality, database narratives, digital aesthetics, software studies, and social media.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Historical trauma has characterized the 20th century. Traumatic events return in unexpected forms, haunting communities and shaping both collective memory and mourning practices. Taking a comparative approach across national cinemas, this course analyzes the historical context, style, and narratives of films that circle around the question of trauma. The course covers German, Israeli, Chilean, Japanese, Russian, and American cinemas.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Major tendencies in Eastern European cinemas between World War II and the late 1980s are explored. Focusing on Polish, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, and Yugoslav films, students examine the development of these national cinemas in the sociopolitical context of state socialism, and the flourishing of these cinematic traditions into internationally recognized movements and schools. Major thematic and stylistic preoccupations of Eastern European filmmakers are addressed through a close study of works by Polanski, Wajda, Forman, Jancso, Makavejev, Kusturica, and others.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Racial imagery in the U.S., from the minstrel era to the present, is examined. Students interrogate the mythologies of this imagery as depicted in U.S. literature and film; rethink key analytical categories in cinema and literary studies in light of U.S. race history (genre and spectatorship); and study the racial uses of and meanings behind certain technical innovations in U.S. literature and filmmaking.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Emerging queer cinema is explored in its historical contexts and its relation to contemporary theories of gender, sexuality, and their intersection with race, class, and nationality. The course focuses on the “queering of the gaze,” interrogating conventional notions of representation, desire, identification, filmmaking, and spectatorship. Featured directors: Warhol, Fassbinder, Haynes, Von Trotta, Akerman, Rozema, La Bruce, Araki, Denis, Jarman.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
An in-depth look at French-language cinema “beyond the hexagon”—that is, film and media originating from regions of the world outside of France, including Africa, the Middle East, the French Caribbean, Belgium, Switzerland, and Québec. The impact of diverse geographical settings, cultural histories, and conditions of production and exhibition are addressed, along with such factors as colonialization, hybridity, diaspora, and globalization.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Stanley Kubrick was one of the most original and cinematic of all film directors. His films were highly original in form, with an innovative use of the medium’s primary elements, including editing, composition, and camera movement. Most were also adaptations of classic and contemporary literature. His ability to transform an author’s literary vision into his cinematic vision was one of the keys to his genius. This course analyzes his films on their own terms and in comparison to their literary sources.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An exploration of the cinema of David Cronenberg from the beginning of his career to the present.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A detailed examination of the notion of film genre, and consideration of one or more classical Hollywood genres, including the western, musical, melodrama, and film noir.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
In light of a resurgence of the western in film and television, this course spans the history of the genre, from the earliest silent screen versions of dime store novels to its contemporary manifestations. While paying careful attention to the western as myth, epic, and landscape art, the course also explores themes of freedom, justice, and individualism as embedded and transformed in the genre.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Film noir represents the intersection of theme and style that gave American films from 1941 to 1955 a new cynicism, moral ambiguity, and atmosphere of terror. This course attempts to define and explore the concept of film noir by close analysis of films like The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Detour, The Big Heat, The Big Combo, Somewhere in the Night, and Kiss Me Deadly.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Film and theories of the American avant-garde cinema since 1943. The approach is historical, surveying the various periods in the American avant-garde and their relation to contemporary cultural phenomena. Among the artists considered are Harry Smith, George Landow, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, Ernie Gehr, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Michael Snow, and Hollis Frampton.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Examines the historical, cultural, and production contexts of experimental and avant-garde filmmaking. This course attempts an internationalist breadth of coverage by examining the European historical avant-gardes, the American avant-garde of the pre– and post–World War II periods, the underground and independent film movements of the 1960s, and the function of experimental cinema in shaping personal and communal identities (feminist, queer, and minorities).
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
History of American independent filmmaking from the 1940s to the present. Focuses on a range of directors, including Sam Fuller, Morris Engel, John Cassavetes, and Robert Altman.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An examination of the political imaginary of 21st century Hollywood film. Drawing on the writings of Siegfried Kracauer, students place contemporary American cinema in a comparative historical framework in order to understand the complex ways that ideological formations (imperialism, authoritarianism, racism, neoliberalism, leftism/progressivism) are encoded within the imagery and narratives of popular film and related media.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A survey of the most important developments in film theory. Early theoretical discussions were mostly guided by the need to understand and to legitimize film as a distinct art form and as a new technology of seeing. As a result of the legitimization of film as a cultural fact, film theory became more specialized and a field of its own, alongside art history, literary theory, and philosophy. This course explores how each of these fields has contributed to a deeper understanding of cinema.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Investigation of a range of filmmakers who attempt to convey the spiritual through manipulation of film form. Films by Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Tarkovsky, and others.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
In this course on internationally acclaimed auteurs of East Asian cinema (Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea), emphasis is placed on the concepts of “national cinema” and “new waves.” In particular, the critique of nationalism via a radicalization of both content and form in the various new waves is examined.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A key element of the classical Hollywood tradition (e.g., classical form, the auteur, the star system, or studio practices) is considered in detail.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
American cinema underwent significant upheaval during the 1950s with the crumbling of the studio system, the proliferation of television, fallout from the McCarthy hearings, and the Cold War. This course examines how such directors as Minnelli, Fuller, Welles, Preminger, Sirk, and Ray responded to these extremes, with attention to the historical circumstances and formal innovations that defined the era.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder—two of Hollywood’s greatest directors—made sophisticated, brilliantly crafted variations on such genres as the gangster film, comedy, western, musical, and film noir. This course examines the complex issues surrounding authorship in Hollywood film, while considering films to be artworks, social artifacts, and commercial entities shaped by genre expectations and factors beyond the control of any individual creative figure.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
A study of American mainstream films of the “New Hollywood” or “New American” period of cinema, c. 1965 to the present. Students explore the evolution of American popular cinema in relation to stylistic innovation in international cinema, shifting audience demographics in the domestic market, and industrial and social change in the U.S.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Andy Warhol was the most influential visual American artist to emerge during the 1960s, redefining the practice and meaning of fine art and popular culture. Turning his studio, the Factory, into an avant-garde version of a Hollywood soundstage, Warhol created films that are astonishingly rich in pictorial and behavioral nuance. This course examines Warhol’s films and his legacy in film/video art.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Survey of Italian cinema of the postneorealist era, with special focus on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An advanced seminar focusing on the criticism of André Bazin, a co-founder of the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and prolific author (What is Cinema? Vol. 1 and 2); the cinema that he championed, including Italian neorealism; his influence on post–World War II film studies and criticism; and his current renaissance in contemporary filmmaking and criticism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Examination of the rise of New German Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, with special attention paid to cultural, political, and aesthetic contexts. Directors studied include Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlondorff, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Helma Sanders-Brahms.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An examination of cinema in the Israeli and Palestinian context, from the Lumière brothers’ actualities to contemporary productions by Ari Folman, Amos Gitai, Michel Khleifi, and Elia Suleiman. What role has the medium played in articulating ethnoreligious identity, national ideology, traumatic historical experience, and conflicting territorial claims? How do Middle Eastern films challenge traditional conceptions of cinematic space and time?
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
The French refer to filmmaking as the seventh art, i.e., an art form on the level of other fine arts. This course examines French cinema from the silent era to 1970, with special focus on poetic realism and the French New Wave. Films by Vigo, Carné, Renoir, Melville, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Resnais, Marker, Varda, and others.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
The profile of what people think of as “French” cinema has undergone considerable change from the turbulent post-1968 period to the present. This course focuses on major developments in contemporary French cinema from the vantage points of aesthetics, industry, and culture. The role of government subsidies, large European co-productions, and shifts in cultural attention from high-art auteurs (individual authors) to the banlieue (suburb) are studied closely.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Melodrama is both a historical genre and a mode of imagination that operates across media. To bridge these two aspects of melodrama, the course examines its theatrical origins, the film genres that employ its rhetorical devices (the woman’s film, action and disaster films, horror), and its further development in television series and soap operas.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An examination of how environments are represented across media forms and how they mediate cultural practices. Media forms include landscape painting, nature photography, art installations, music, nature writing, science fiction writing, and eco-cinema. Cultural practices include romantic, philosophical, and aesthetic traditions; indigeneities, nationalism, environmentalism, warfare, eco-mafias; and the arts and sciences of biomedia.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or MSA1050 Or ANT1500
Department: Cinema Studies
A survey of the most important developments in film theory. The goal is to familiarize students with the diversity of critical approaches in film studies and increase understanding of both the aesthetic qualities and social forces at work. Topics include the relationship of film to other forms of media and alternative or counter-hegemonic conceptions of cinema.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
In this advanced seminar comparing the directors Welles and Resnais, their entire oeuvres and their engagement with contemporary theories and philosophies are addressed.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Science fiction is addressed as an expanded field of inquiry into bodies, machines, science, and technology. The course focuses on narratives about metropolis, colony, utopia, and other technologies of state, self, gender, race, and capital. It also focuses on various figures (e.g., automaton, android, cyborg, avatar, alien) that have populated films from the birth of cinema to the present.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
Prepares cinema studies majors for the conception and writing of their senior project. The course emphasizes research skills, the formulation of a prospectus and a literature review, the development of a bibliography and a filmography, and the outline of a schedule for completion of the project.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Cinema Studies
An introduction to the craft of digital filmmaking: cinematography, lighting, staging, sound mixing, and editing. Students work in groups on short exercises to develop their skills and collaborate on a final short film.
Credits: 3
Department: Cinema Studies
In this introduction to the basics of documentary filmmaking, students learn what it means to construct a visual argument, with attention to process, place, documentary ethics, and good interviewing techniques. Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400
Department: Cinema Studies
In this continuation of Documentary Filmmaking, students design, research, and produce their own documentary film. Screenings, class discussions, and group critique complement the production of the film.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM3025 Or CIN3320
Department: Cinema Studies
An intensive production-oriented course designed to familiarize students with the fundamentals of storytelling in narrative film. The course covers dramatic and stylistic elements of filmmaking. Students direct and edit three short films during the semester, each assignment demonstrating specific principles covered in class.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400
Department: Cinema Studies
Students closely analyze the construction and purpose of a short sequence in the context of the overall story. This course examines the various emotional and intellectual levels layered within a scene that can and do impact the audience. Students write, direct, and edit a short film during the semester.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: CIN1100 Or FLM3050
Department: Cinema Studies
An overview of the development and tradition of Chinese cinema through representative screenings of important films from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Students gain a comprehensive understanding of the historical and political context(s) that informed the creation and reception of these films and learn critical scholarly terminology and historical issues related to the analysis of Chinese film.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Students explore the underlying historical narratives of films from 1930 to 1960 that address topics from early America. These narratives are compared to the ways Hollywood recast historical lessons to suit modern circumstances and to promote “American values” challenged by economic depression and the rise of fascism and communism. Special emphasis is on the works of Ford and Capra.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Considers the intersections of sexual difference and cinema. Topics include theories of enunciation and sexual difference, female authorship and the idea of “women’s cinema,” gender and genre, woman as spectacle, the female spectator, and feminist film theory. Representations of sexual difference in films by selected male directors are studied as a means of examining the institution(s) of cinematic expression. The bulk of the course is devoted to studying women directors as they attempt to work within and against that institution.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Surrealist literature, films, and art in France, Spain, and Latin America. Artists include Aragon, Breton, Buñuel, Césaire, Char, Dali, Eluard, and Lorca. Works are read in translation and lectures given in English; students with French and/or Spanish are encouraged to read in the original language.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
In 1991, The Real World pioneered a genre of “unscripted” television that reshaped national media culture, culminating in the reality of the 2016 election. Students study theories of Hall, Habermas and Gramsci to explore how the genre reflects and shapes attitudes of U.S. audiences to surveillance, class conflict, and the performance of truths. Examples include Jersey Shore and American Idol.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Cinema Studies
Students collaborate with students in other cultures, using the Internet to produce videos on subjects of mutual interest. Because the focus is on developing a cross-cultural dialogue, basic video production experience is expected. Before moving to video, the two groups collaboratively write fiction. During the semester, they meet in video conferences with their peers abroad to discuss their productions. Previous semesters have included collaborations with students at universities in Belarus, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, and Lithuania.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
An interdisciplinary examination of the subject of happiness, using a variety of ancient and modern literary and philosophical works as well as films. Students analyze the texts and films for their specific content but also for a deepened sense of the possible relationships between visual and discursive representations of narratives.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
Do photographic images have privileged access to truth? This course explores the complicated relationship between truth and visual (particularly filmic) images. It begins with Plato on the “fakery” that is painting, turns to 17th-century “faithfulness” and “sincerity” in still-life painting and scientific drawing, and looks in depth at 20th-century writings about the nature of photography and realism in representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Cinema Studies
A critical examination of influential attempts to understand the nature of the cinematic medium. Questions raised include: Is film a fine art? Must a movie “represent reality” if it is to succeed as a movie? Are there certain insights into human experience that are better expressed through film than through other media? Readings include Siegfried Kracauer, André Bazin, and Stanley Cavell.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Cinema Studies
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Spain and Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Films are discussed and analyzed in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
The BFA film program provides highly motivated and talented students with intensive conservatory training in all aspects of filmmaking. Students develop significant skills in directing, cinematography, editing, production, screenwriting, and film analysis. By the end of the sophomore year, students consult with the film faculty and choose to focus on either narrative, documentary, or experimental film production in their junior year.
The primary emphasis of the BFA program is on writing/directing. At the end of the junior year, however, film majors who have demonstrated exceptional talent in cinematography or screenwriting have the option of specializing in those areas, subject to approval by the program faculty. The faculty’s decision is based on demonstration of the student’s technical and artistic proficiency.
Facilities
Film majors enjoy a high equipment-to-student ratio and have access to fully equipped newly renovated sound stages, a mix studio, an equipment store, state of the art screening rooms, and digital editing studios.
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all film majors must complete the following requirements (104–106 credits, outlined below by year) and maintain the board-of-study standards for academic and professional conduct.
Requirements for the major include:
A minimum of 24 credits in film history, criticism, and/or theory: CIN 1500 and 1510 plus four additional courses
Satisfactory completion, as determined by the Film Board of Study, of the 16-credit senior thesis film
Note: Criteria for advancement also include the student’s fitness and potential for a professional life in the field, as determined by the board of study. Advancement each year is by invitation of the board of study following a scheduled, mandatory review of each student’s work. Any student on warning or probationary status is reviewed at the end of the semester (fall or spring). There is an ongoing assessment of professional growth in all work for all students.
An introduction to the craft of digital filmmaking: cinematography, lighting, staging, sound mixing, and editing. Students work in groups on short exercises to develop their skills and collaborate on a final short film.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
A series of weekly exercises to develop the student’s ability to write short stories. The problems of exposition, characterization, conflict, and action are discussed and studied. Limited to freshman film majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
A series of weekly exercises to develop the student’s ability to write short stories. The problems of exposition, characterization, conflict, and action are discussed and studied. Limited to freshman film majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Introduces the possibilities of film technique. Short projects in motion picture cinematography, lighting, sound recording, and continuity editing, augmented by lectures, demonstrations, film analysis, and readings. In the spring, systems of cinematic structure and form are emphasized.
Credits: 5
Department: Film
Introduces the possibilities of film technique. Short projects in motion picture cinematography, lighting, sound recording, and continuity editing, augmented by lectures, demonstrations, film analysis, and readings. In the spring, systems of cinematic structure and form are emphasized.
Credits: 5
Department: Film
An introduction to the role of the actor in filmmaking situations. Freshman film students engage in actual acting training to learn how actors and filmmakers can best interact and to experience how best to understand the acting process.
Credits: 2
Department: Film
Practical aspects of documentary filmmaking. Students produce four to five short films each term (including describing a process, a place, an interview, and a film portrait). Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.
Credits: 5
Department: Film
Students learn the fundamentals of film language through editing and are provided with professionally produced picture and sound rushes that they sync-up, structure, and edit into a complete film. Additional individual and group projects are assigned.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Students learn the fundamentals of film language through editing and are provided with professionally produced picture and sound rushes that they sync-up, structure, and edit into a complete film. Additional individual and group projects are assigned.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Practical aspects of documentary filmmaking. Students produce four to five short films each term (including describing a process, a place, an interview, and a film portrait). Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.
Credits: 5
Department: Film
Basics of photography, camera operation, crew organization, picture composition, and lighting.
Credits: 2
Department: Film
Camera movement, angles and blocking, studio lighting procedures, and introduction to gaffing and electrics.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: FLM2090 Or TFI2090
Department: Film
In this introduction to directing narrative film, students produce scenes from their own original and previously produced scripts. They chose materials and cast, direct, and edit four to five short narrative films each term.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
The techniques of writing for the screen in both the narrative and documentary forms. Emphasis on the construction of dramatic material without the use of spoken dialogue leads to a better understanding of the power and importance of visual imagery as a prime component in storytelling, and to a heightened awareness of the camera’s role in the writing process.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
In this introduction to the basics of documentary filmmaking, students learn what it means to construct a visual argument, with attention to process, place, documentary ethics, and good interviewing techniques. Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400
Department: Film
In this continuation of Documentary Filmmaking, students design, research, and produce their own documentary film. Screenings, class discussions, and group critique complement the production of the film.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM3025 Or CIN3320
Department: Film
An intensive production-oriented course designed to familiarize students with the fundamentals of storytelling in narrative film. The course covers dramatic and stylistic elements of filmmaking. Students direct and edit three short films during the semester, each assignment demonstrating specific principles covered in class.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400
Department: Film
Students closely analyze the construction and purpose of a short sequence in the context of the overall story. This course examines the various emotional and intellectual levels layered within a scene that can and do impact the audience. Students write, direct, and edit a short film during the semester.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: CIN1100 Or FLM3050
Department: Film
Individual projects in advanced cinematography.
Credits: 2
Department: Film
Advanced techniques in cinematography and lighting, with group and individual projects.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: FLM3090 Or TFI3090
Department: Film
An advanced two-semester course designed to explore the technique, practice, and theory of motion picture directing. Exercises in mise-en-scène, screenwriting, and fiction filmmaking. Students must write, cast, and direct a complete narrative short film for presentation at the end of the spring term.
Credits: 4
Department: Film
An advanced two-semester course designed to explore the technique, practice, and theory of motion picture directing. Exercises in mise-en-scène, screenwriting, and fiction filmmaking. Students must write, cast, and direct a complete narrative short film for presentation at the end of the spring term.
Credits: 4
Department: Film
Examines the role of the director in casting the right actor, and aiding actors in creating character and performances through rehearsal, discussion, improvisation, and on-set techniques. Students study directing, learning techniques of acting and what actors need from the director in terms of preparation and performance.
Credits: 2
Department: Film
A practical course in the writing of screenplays. A preliminary screenplay for the senior thesis film must be completed by the end of the semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
An intermediate-level course in the practice of documentary filmmaking. A series of exercises in 16mm and video documentary production are complemented by screenings, class discussions, group projects, and demonstrations. Students research, design, and complete a documentary film.
Credits: 4
Department: Film
An intermediate-level course in the practice of documentary filmmaking. A series of exercises in 16mm and video documentary production are complemented by screenings, class discussions, group projects, and demonstrations. Students research, design, and complete a documentary film.
Credits: 4
Department: Film
Students conceptualize and produce experimental media projects using techniques and concepts of avant-garde filmmaking, video art, and performance art. Nontraditional and personal forms are emphasized. Construction of a DVD anthology and off-campus excursions are also required. Both FLM 3610 (fall) and 3620 (spring) are required for film students planning an experimental thesis project for junior review.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Students conceptualize and produce experimental media projects using techniques and concepts of avant-garde filmmaking, video art, and performance art. Nontraditional and personal forms are emphasized. Construction of a DVD anthology and off-campus excursions are also required. Both FLM 3610 (fall) and 3620 (spring) are required for film students planning an experimental thesis project for junior review.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Committed to using sound tracks as fully as the image track, this course implements theory by teaching choice and placement of microphones, dialogue track prep, music editing, use of sound FX and tone, and prepping for a professional sound mix. Students visit with a professional sound editor and attend foley, dubbing, and mix studio demonstrations.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Strategies for the structuring and pacing of films, taught through the editing of specific film projects.
Credits: 3
Department: Film
Prepares students for entry into the film industry. Covers basic techniques used to raise money for, produce, and distribute films.
Credits: 2
Department: Film
Construction and writing of screenplays, with exercises in characterization, plotting, etc. Story treatments for both fiction and documentary films are stressed.
Credits: 2
Department: Film
An intensive, one-semester workshop course in which students write, produce and direct a short documentary or narrative film. Production proceeds only after faculty approval of the screenplay, casting, and production schedules. Students assist in the production of one fellow classmate’s film. Projects developed for this course may be used in conjunction with senior theses requirements of other majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (FLM3050 And FLM3025 ) Or (FLM3610 And FLM3620 )
Department: Film
Students work under faculty supervision in the field on student-generated documentary productions.
The minor in film/video production is designed for students who want to integrate production skills with their major. After completing two foundation courses in screenwriting and basic digital production, students take specialized courses in narrative and documentary, or experimental filmmaking. The final capstone course allows students to spend an entire semester developing a single film project of their choice.
Students should have attained sophomore status (or completed a total of 32 credits) before signing up for this minor. It is ideal for students who are interested in pursuing a senior project that involves a film or video.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Film/Video Production
Five courses, as follows:
FLM 1050/Introduction to Digital Filmmaking
PSW 1010/Screenwriting I
One of the following two-course sequences:
FLM 3025/Documentary Filmmaking and FLM 3050/Directing the Scene
FLM 3460/Documentary Workshop and 3620/Experimental Workshop
FLM 4010/Short Film Production
Additional elective courses: CIN 2200/Music Video and Popular Culture
CIN 2500/Principles of Montage
CIN 3040/Film Sound: Technique and Theory
NME 3010/Cross-Cultural Video Production
PSW 3120/The Writer and the Documentary
PSW 3400/The TV Writer’s Room
PSW 3500/Writing the Web Series
CIN 1100, being replaced in fall 2018 by FLM 3050, satisfies the requirement for FLM 3050.
COM 1400/Introduction to Video Techniques and Technology, offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education, may be taken in lieu of FLM 1050.
COM 3320/Documentary Production, offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education, may be taken in lieu of FLM 3025.
In the media studies program, students learn how to combine cultural theory, critical cultural production, and do-it-yourself (DIY) aesthetics to explore the roles that media technologies and the arts play in everyday life.
Creative practices are approached historically and ethnographically, and considered within their rich cultural, geographic, and political economic contexts. This includes students’ own low-cost, open-ended, and tactical DIY productions, such as mashup advertisements, sound installations, and performance art—practices of experimentation, protest, and speculation that engage contemporary social concerns.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, students majoring in media studies must complete a minimum of 10–11 courses with a grade of C or higher and an 8-credit senior project (40 credits minimum total) as follows:
MSA 1050/Introduction to Media Studies (3 credits)
MSA 2200/Media Institutions and Forms (3 credits)
MSA 3400/Critical Perspectives on Media, Society, and the Arts (4 credits)
MSA 3450/Research Methods in Media, Society, and the Arts (4 credits)
Three electives (at least 9 credits total)
One course in art history (visual or performing) or media history (at least 3 credits)
Two or three courses in studio art and/or media production (at least 6 credits total)
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I (4 credits)
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II (4 credits)
New courses may be added to the following lists. Students should consult their advisor to determine whether a course not on these lists fulfills the elective requirement.
Anthropology (School of Natural & Social Sciences):
ANT 2175/Language, Culture, and Society
ANT 2250/Film and Anthropology
ANT 2320/Performing Arts in Cross-Cultural Perspective
ANT 2340/Drugs, Bodies, Design
ANT 2470/Museum Anthropology
ANT 2555/Magic, Witchcraft, and Modernity
ANT 2610/Introduction to Ethnomusicology
ANT 2730/New Black Ethnographies
ANT 3185/Global Media, Local Cultures
ANT 3345/Media and Performance in Africa
ANT 3350/Myth, Ritual, and Performance
ANT 3380/Avant-Garde Cultures and Everyday Life
ANT 3410/Anthropology of Art and Aesthetics
ANT 3415/Anthropology of Sound and Listening
ANT 3540/Sensing and Knowing in Anthropology, Psychology, and the Arts
The minor in media studies is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge and understanding of theories and methods of analysis of media and the arts, while at the same time allowing for skill development in an art form.
An introduction to theories of the media, visual, and performing arts. Using semiotics as a point of departure, students explore the language and iconography of visual communication. The course focuses on works of art, advertising, television, and the web as social contexts of cultural production and analyses the role that ordinary people play in the production of media.
Credits: 3
Department: Media Studies
An examination of media forms (e.g., postcards, radio, TV, internet, mobile media technologies) and media institutions (e.g., movie studios, marketing and advertising companies, regulatory agencies) within historical and cultural contexts. Students explore the multiple ways that human engagements with the world are mediated and how media forms contribute to the production of social norms, practices, and senses of identity and community.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Media Studies
Students focus on how humans are represented and configured across media platforms, how the self is culturally constructed, and how technology continually redefines the meaning of “human.” The class also considers what these figurations indicate about contemporary political subjectivities, gender identities, and species belonging. The work of notable thinkers, including William Gibson, Masamune Shiroh, Stellarc, and Spike Jonze, is studied.
Credits: 3
Department: Media Studies
Examines the connections between computers and culture, with a critical look at how computers may be changing and shaping culture, and how culture affects people’s use and understanding of computers. The course focuses in particular on the ways in which gender, race, and class affect people’s experiences with and understanding of computers. Both work and leisure uses of computers are considered.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050
Department: Media Studies
Examines cultural representations of poverty, work, and wealth in American popular culture. Students consider how mediated narratives of class conflict reflect and reinforce divisions between social classes (the 99 and 1%) and within them (immigrants and “white working class”). Students develop a deeper appreciation of how class “works” as an economic and political system, and how it is lived.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Media Studies
In 1991, The Real World pioneered a genre of “unscripted” television that reshaped national media culture, culminating in the reality of the 2016 election. Students study theories of Hall, Habermas and Gramsci to explore how the genre reflects and shapes attitudes of U.S. audiences to surveillance, class conflict, and the performance of truths. Examples include Jersey Shore and American Idol.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Media Studies
Media convergence refers to large-scale changes in the ownership and production of media content, as well as the role that audiences and consumers have in its development. This course examines media convergence from the perspectives of queer theory and history, and asks how queer identities, sensibilities, styles, and practices both shape and are shaped by media convergence.
Credits: 4
Department: Media Studies
An intensive examination of critical and theoretical work on media, society, and the arts. Classic and contemporary theories (e.g., Marxism, structuralism, organizational and cultural production, various cultural studies approaches) and topics (e.g., hegemony, cultural capital, high vs. low culture, elite and commercialized culture) are explored.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) And MSA2200
Department: Media Studies
Ethnography, one of the key methodological innovations of anthropology, is used in this course to examine life in a media-saturated world. Focusing on an emergent ethnographic literature that examines the relationships between mass media, popular culture, and social and technological networking, the course situates everyday interactions with media within broader theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) And MSA2200
Department: Media Studies
Students look at forms of production and exchange in various contexts throughout the world that are alternatives to dominant, formal economies. These include trash picking and trash art-making, piracy and counterfeiting, independent farming, and alternative banking. Students consider the notion of value in a variety of ways and trace how production, exchange, circulation, and consumption elaborate new forms of social life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) Or ANT1500 Or CAN1500
Department: Media Studies
Focuses on the histories, politics, and aesthetics of drag. Students engage a variety of work in gender and queer studies, and they also learn how to do drag through a series of practice-based workshops.
Credits: 4
Department: Media Studies
The topics, which vary, are selected from among the special interests of faculty.
The New Media B.A. Program at Purchase College offers an interdisciplinary curriculum that lies at the intersection of art, society, and technology. Students study the effects of digital media from multiple perspectives, giving them the tools to be well-rounded citizens in an increasingly complex society and allowing them to develop their own voice through guided research and hands-on production.
In this program students learn about current technology and acquire the knowledge and skills needed to understand forthcoming technologies, not least in relation to key social and historical contexts. The program’s strong liberal arts component provides students with critical and conceptual frameworks which, when combined with the acquisition of practical skills, help to prepare them for the workforce and/or graduate study.
Courses are drawn from the visual and performing arts, computer science, the social sciences, and other liberal arts disciplines. Students majoring in New Media are offered a structured, well-rounded foundation covering a range of methodologies and content areas, with analysis and production often present within the same course. Collaboration is particularly encouraged, as are experimental and creative approaches to media production and distribution. Each semester the New Media program and the Neuberger Museum of Art co-host a series of lectures and workshops by accomplished artists, technologists, and theorists in the field of new media.
Advanced Standing and the Senior Project
After applying for and receiving advanced standing, new media majors pursue a program of upper-level study designed by the student. This provides students with the opportunity to pursue individual interests while at the same time developing a focus in new media. As part of this program of study, all students are expected to complete an 8-credit senior project, which is supervised by a faculty member of the New Media Board of Study. Various types of senior projects are acceptable, and collaboration among students is encouraged.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all new media majors must complete the following requirements (64–71 credits):
Freshman and Sophomore Years (Foundation): 30–31 credits
Students must earn a grade of C+ or higher in each of these courses. Those who earn a grade lower than a C+ must petition the New Media Board of Study to retake the course. To pass NME 2100, students must attain at least a 2.67 (B-) GPA in the foundation courses. In any given semester, students should not enroll in more than three foundation courses and we recommend against taking more than two studio or lab courses.
PHO 1100/Introduction to Digital Photography: 4 credits
MSA 1050/Introduction to Media Studies: 3 credits
NME 1060/Introduction to Sound: 3 credits
NME 1160/Design Principles: 4 credits
NME 1450/Programming for Visual Artists: 4 credits or MAT 1520/Computer Science I
One 2000-level technoculture course (3–4 credits), chosen from the following or approved by the student’s faculty advisor; it should be taken after MSA 1050 has been successfully completed: – MSA 2235/Computers and Culture – NME 2250/Art and Technology
NME 2420/Video Art I: 4 credits
NME 2750/Introduction to the Web: 4 credits
NME 2100/New Media Advanced Standing: 1 credit
New media majors typically apply for advanced standing in their fourth or fifth semester, while concurrently completing the courses required in the first two years of study. A student may be in the process of fulfilling a maximum of two foundation courses concurrent with advanced standing. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the new media program, it is important that students be strongly focused and self-directed. Therefore, the transition to advanced standing is taken very seriously by the New Media faculty.
In order to have a clear picture of each student’s preparedness, the department requests that each student submit materials for review. This advanced-standing website must be submitted two weeks before the beginning of registration for the following semester. Students register for NME 2100/New Media Advanced Standing, and are assigned a faculty member who will be their Advanced Standing Advisor to help them navigate the process. A series of workshops are also provided by staff to help with any technical issues.
To apply for advanced standing, each student must build a website consisting of:
a portfolio of work, which shall be presented on the student’s webpage
a written discussion of the student’s development to date (this two- to four-page document shall include a discussion of courses completed or in progress, projects undertaken, and recent life experiences that have led to the current proposal)
a proposed academic program that the student intends to follow until graduation (this two- to four-page proposal shall include a list of all courses that the student plans to take in his or her remaining semesters, the general area of the intended senior project, and an indication of what projects and internships the student will develop to prepare for a successful senior year)
Please note: The New Media Board of Study reviews the website and determines whether the student receives advanced standing. Advanced standing is a prerequisite for many of the upper-level courses that constitute the major. It is possible to retake Advanced Standing a second time the following semester, but students must speak with their advisor and the New Media chair before reapplying. Students who are ultimately not approved for advanced standing will need to complete their BA in a different major.
After Passing Advance Standing
Refer to Applying for Advanced Standing for detailed information. After being accepted for advanced study, requirements are as outlined below. Students must earn a grade of C+ or higher in each of these courses, excluding the senior project.
one upper-level history/theory course: 3–4 credits
one anthropology/sociology course: 3–4 credits
four elective courses chosen for their relevance and applicability to the student’s course of study in new media: 12–16 credits
and the synthesis courses, taken in the junior and senior years (16 credits, plus an optional internship):
NME 3880/Junior Seminar in New Media: 4 credits
NME 3995/Internship in New Media (optional): variable credits
NME 4880/Senior Seminar I in New Media: 2 credits
NME 4890/Senior Seminar II in New Media: 2 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
ARH 3405/Design History and Theory: 1750–Today: 4 credits
ARH 3531/New Media and Contemporary Art: 4 credits
CIN 3200/Film, Media, and War Machines: 4 credits
DES 3240/Design Issues: 3 credits
DES 3300/History of Graphic Design Survey: 4 credits
NME 3040/Internet as Public Art: 4 credits
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I: 2 credits
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II: 2 credits
VIS 3000/Art in the Age of Electronic Media: 3 credits
The following list includes courses offered by the media studies program and by the School of Art+Design.
ANT 2320/Performing Arts in Cross-Cultural Perspective: 3 credits
ANT 3185/Global Media, Local Cultures: 4 credits
ANT 3345/Media and Performance in Africa: 4 credits
ANT 3410/Anthropology of Art and Aesthetics: 4 credits
MSA 3160/Queer Media Convergence: 4 credits
MSA 3400/Critical Perspectives on Media, Society, and the Arts: 4 credits
MSA 4750/Special Topics in Media, Society, and the Arts: 4 credits
VIS 3500/The Arts for Social Change: 3 credits
Courses in the following lists are subject to change, and new courses may be added. Students should consult with their faculty advisor when choosing electives.
New Media
NME 2470/Drawing, Moving, and Seeing with Code
NME 3010/Cross-Cultural Video Production
NME 3050/Information Aesthetics
NME 3150/Material Distribution: Billboards, Wheatpaste, and Pamphlets
NME 3170/Digital Design and Fabrication
NME 3210/Tactical Practical
NME 3215/New Directions in Virtual Space
NME 3220/Forms of the Moving Image
NME 3230/Real-Time Media Processing
NME 3265/Social Design
NME 3340/Photography Expanded
NME 3350/Digital Printmaking
NME 3430/Video Graphics
NME 3455/Dark Ecology Studio
NME 3545/Community-Centered Media
NME 3560/Introduction to Physical Computing: Getting Outside the Box
NME 3675/Copy, Paste
NME 3720/Interactive Installation: Hacking the Everyday
NME 3770/Experimental Web Practice
NME 4150/Special Projects in Tiny Computing
Mathematics/Computer Science (School of Natural & Social Sciences):
MAT 1420/Programming Games
MAT 3146/Scripting for the Web
MAT 3440/Creating User Interfaces
MAT 3530/Creating Databases for Web Applications
MAT 3540/Social Software
MAT 3650/Networking and Security
MAT 3670/Robotics
MAT 3755/Mobile Computing
MAT 3765/Mobile Media
School of the Arts:
Studio Composition (Conservatory of Music):
MCO 1310/Studio Composition I
MCO 1320/Studio Composition II
MCO 2310/MIDI Composition I
MCO 2320/MIDI Composition II
MCO 3330/Studio Production I
MCO 3340/Studio Production II
MCO 4350/Digital Audio I
MCO 4360/Digital Audio II
School of Art+Design:
DES 3090/Interactive Design
DES 3190/Motion Graphics for Designers
DES 4170/Advanced Web Design: Special Projects
PRT 3000/The Animated Print
SCP 3155/Performance Art
SCP 3310/Digital Dimensions
SCP 3420/Video Art II
SCP 3630/Sound/Interactive Media I
SCP 3640/Sound/Interactive Media II
An introductory survey of music, theatre, and dance in Western and non-Western cultures, including the relationships between music and religion, dance and weddings, theatre and curing. The course also explores the performing arts as aesthetic phenomena in their own right. Live performances by non-Western performers and optional field trips are planned.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: New Media
An examination of contemporary art outside of the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Looking at painting-based performances of the 1950s, feminist body art, guerrilla television, and current political interventions based in digital media, students identify the strategies artists used to create new forms, and assess their success in modifying our understanding of the world.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: New Media
An advanced seminar on theories of cinematic and computational media via “the war machine.” Focus is on the relationship between cinematic and military techniques and technologies—what Virilio dubbed “the deadly harmony” between eye and weapon. Emphasis is also placed on the sociopolitics of code, the ramifications of informatic capture and the formation of coded bodies, and the rise of new machines of war and resistance.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
A focused inquiry into the process of designing for, and the creation of, interactive platforms for the purposes of entertainment, persuasion, recreation, and/or human enrichment where the viewer is an active participant. This course is an intensive investigation into considerations surrounding interactive, or experience-oriented, design spaces, and samples supplemental readings from sociology, anthropology, and game theory. You will be required to work collaboratively to pursue concepts through a series of physical and digital investigations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (DES2460 And DES3510 ) And DES3200
Department: New Media
Builds on the principles and skills of time-based and interactive design introduced in DES 2460. Technique, theory, and practice are further explored through projects using time, on-screen spatiality, transition, kinetic typography, narrative, and sound. Projects address linear and nonlinear environments such as film and television titling, DVD menus, web splash pages, and graphics for mobile devices.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES2460 Or VDE2460
Department: New Media
A combined lecture/studio course that examines ethical and social issues in contemporary artistic production and design. The goal is to develop active research about such urgent issues as ecology, body politics and gender, race and urban justice, and human rights, with respect to new futures. Projects incorporate art installations, visualizations, websites, performances, and public campaigns by focusing on creative public engagement.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME2100 Or (DES2600 And DES2460 )
Department: New Media
Focuses on print communication, primarily graphic design, in the Western world from the late 19th century to the present. A brief summary of important historical precedents launches a chronological series of lectures on significant movements and individuals and the economic, political, and technological developments that have influenced modern and contemporary print communication.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
An introduction to problem solving, using computers. Emphasis is on programming, including the study of syntax, semantics, logical structures, graphics, and object-oriented programming. General topics of algorithm development, formulating problems, finding methods for computer solutions, differences among computer languages, and trends in the industry are also discussed. Experience is acquired through hands-on labs and several programming assignments.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
Building on the programming introduction in the prerequisite course, students learn about scripting for websites, including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and php. Topics include the use of cookies, localStorage, video/audio, geolocation, an application program interface such as the Google Maps API, responsive design, and accessibility. Comparisons are made between scripting and compiled languages and client versus server computing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1450 Or MAT1540
Department: New Media
Introduces concepts and skills used in analyzing and designing interfaces for computer applications. As students study techniques and “rules of thumb,” they discover that the design and implementation of each interface is a unique challenge, which requires creativity and consideration of technical, aesthetic, and psychological factors. Includes the use of XML, XSL, XHTML-MP, VoiceXML, and usability studies.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520
Department: New Media
Covers the key conceptual and practical aspects of networking and security, which are increasingly important in the era of the internet, Windows, and Unix. TCP/IP communications protocols are explored at multiple levels of the protocol stack. Performance and reliability issues are also studied, using campus intranet and internet connections as well as protocol analyzer and network management tools. Security topics include encryption, authentication, and the likely change from clear-text to Kereberos-type tools.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520
Department: New Media
An introduction to theories of the media, visual, and performing arts. Using semiotics as a point of departure, students explore the language and iconography of visual communication. The course focuses on works of art, advertising, television, and the web as social contexts of cultural production and analyses the role that ordinary people play in the production of media.
Credits: 3
Department: New Media
Examines the connections between computers and culture, with a critical look at how computers may be changing and shaping culture, and how culture affects people’s use and understanding of computers. The course focuses in particular on the ways in which gender, race, and class affect people’s experiences with and understanding of computers. Both work and leisure uses of computers are considered.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050
Department: New Media
Media convergence refers to large-scale changes in the ownership and production of media content, as well as the role that audiences and consumers have in its development. This course examines media convergence from the perspectives of queer theory and history, and asks how queer identities, sensibilities, styles, and practices both shape and are shaped by media convergence.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
A hands-on, introductory audio class in which students learn how to use sound in practical and creative ways, in three phases of production: acquisition, manipulation, and reproduction. Students also learn some of the history of artists and makers who use sound as their medium, as well of some of the technical and theoretical aspects of how sound is created and perceived.
Credits: 3
Department: New Media
A hands-on introduction to the language of design and design principles with emphasis on composition, color, and type. Software for vector image creation is taught alongside understanding the full design process, from visual research to beta testing. Print output is introduced, although the focus is on screen-based media.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
Using a visual environment that provides immediate feedback, students are taught the basic principles of programming and, by extension, math. Lectures focus on key aspects of programming and how working artists use code creatively in their practice. In this course, math is never the end but rather the means to problem-solve during the creative process.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
Students take this course in the semester that they apply for Advance Standing. Grading is on a pass/no credit basis. Advanced Standing is a portfolio review that asks students to present work from the broad range of foundation classes they have taken. After applying for and receiving Advanced Standing, New Media majors pursue a program of upper-level study in which they may pursue a broad range of individual interests.
Credits: 1
Department: New Media
Examines the interplay between new art forms and technologies from early modernism through today. Focusing on how the two fields have developed in relation to each other, the course addresses two questions: what is the relationship between technology, technique, and art, and how has it changed over time? This is both an art survey course and a study of related philosophical questions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050
Department: New Media
An introduction to video as a creative visual, auditory, and spatial medium. Students learn the fundamentals of video production with the goal of making original work in the genres of single-channel tape, performance, and installation. At the same time, students are introduced to key works in the history of time-based arts in a weekly thematic program of viewing, listening, reading, and critique.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME1010 Or NME1100 Or NME1060 Or VIS1330
Department: New Media
An intermediate lecture/studio course that explores techniques for creating dynamic, poetic, and lifelike animations in code. Students learn techniques to program movement and the simulation of natural systems and behaviors, and develop works that respond to various inputs. Projects are developed using open-source software environments like Processing and p5.js.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: VIS1450 Or MAT1520 Or NME1450 Or NME1520 Or MAT1420 Or NME1420
Department: New Media
An exploration of the ways in which various media technologies promote investment and disinvestment in history, community, and tradition. This course pursues the argument that technology does not derive from, but creates the fundamental structures of human experience, affecting people socially, politically, psychologically, and neurologically. Primary authors include Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, Stiegler, and Malabou.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050
Department: New Media
Students gain a solid understanding of website creation, using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. Scripting languages and libraries are also introduced to create more advanced interactions or animations. Along with technical skills, students learn web design fundamentals and how artists have used and even served as authors of the web since its inception.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME1160
Department: New Media
Students collaborate with students in other cultures, using the Internet to produce videos on subjects of mutual interest. Because the focus is on developing a cross-cultural dialogue, basic video production experience is expected. Before moving to video, the two groups collaboratively write fiction. During the semester, they meet in video conferences with their peers abroad to discuss their productions. Previous semesters have included collaborations with students at universities in Belarus, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, and Lithuania.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
A growing dialogue surrounding internet art echoes the rhetoric of community-oriented art practices and public art movements of the past. Topics include an introduction to the history of public art; current internet art practice and theory; how networks can serve physical situations or communities, rather than being a purely screen-based phenomenon; policies that are shaping the functionality of the internet; and new artistic possibilities that arise as ubiquitous computing integrates with public space.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
A hands-on examination of what it means to live in an information age. Students learn to make sense—and sometimes, new meaning—of data through creative visualizations. The course considers audience together with the politics of information and the persuasion of the visual.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME1160
Department: New Media
Examines how contemporary artists and activists are using print media to communicate ideas in public spaces. The course also more generally considers how printed matter has been used to expand popular consciousness since the invention of the printing press. Students produce their own print interventions for public spaces and incorporate digital media to sustain interaction.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Focuses on the relationship between digitally aided production processes and traditional techniques of drawing and object building. Emphasis is placed on the fabrication of objects and prints in multiples that interact with physical space and the body. Students are also encouraged to develop their own drawing tools and initiate ideas around making with new media technologies.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
The first rule of guerrilla warfare is to know the terrain. Today’s terrain is one of symbols, media spectacles, and technology that artists are uniquely equipped to navigate. In this course, students learn to combine sociological research, communications strategy, technological methods, and artistic tactics to plan effective social interventions. Students should bring their passion, thoughtfulness, compassion, and planning skills.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Focuses on establishing a broad understanding of the 3-D game engine Unity and a critical understanding of the discourse surrounding modern virtual environments. Students are encouraged to deviate from traditional 3-D games, bringing content and forms of storytelling from other areas of interest. Artists and texts that examine our cultural fascination with the virtual are presented in class. Students are introduced to Unity and to the programming language C#, but some prior programming experience is expected.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME1450 Or MAT1520
Department: New Media
Students explore the various ways that artists distribute and present video and the moving image. Examining issues of audience, the physical experience, and the social aspects of media distribution, this course focuses on the life of video after it is rendered. Topics include video installation, the moving image online, live video performance, and video remixes and re-edits.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Using Pure Data, an open-source, graphical programming environment, students experiment with real-time media processing while exploring conceptual concerns and implications through historical and theoretical readings. Students are encouraged to explore personal experiments integrating these conceptual ideas into projects that may include algorithmic or interactive audio performances, screen-based visuals, or interaction with physical devices.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Focusing on specialized topics in new media, students work closely with faculty to explore new areas of their practice and research. Students develop projects in particular area of specialization. The curriculum will vary in relation to the faculty member’s practice and research.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
What does it mean to be a photographer in the age of ubiquitous imaging technologies (e.g., cellphones, surveillance cameras, satellites, and drones), social media, and online image databases? Students explore questions related to the status of photography, consider interdisciplinary approaches using emerging technologies (including online platforms, laser cutters, and drones), and work collaboratively in a studio-based environment.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO1100 Or NME1010
Department: New Media
An introduction to fine art digital printing and contemporary digital photography. Students expand their two-dimensional image-making skills while developing their artistic vision through the creation of a cohesive body of print-based work. Topics concerning the importance of contemporary photography are discussed in class through lectures and presentations. Students are expected to combine contemporary ideas with the rigor of printing quality images.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
An advanced workshop for highly motivated students who have expressed interest and fluency in time-based video work. The class is devoted to the production of various independent video projects, culminating in a thesis project; in addition, students do multiple presentations focusing on situating their work within historical and contemporary contexts. A wide variety of time-based artworks are explored, including single-channel, multi-channel, and video installation work. Students are expected to have competency with digital video cameras, sound, and editing techniques.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP2420 Or VSC2420 ) Or NME2420 And NME2100
Department: New Media
An exploration of the ways that graphic techniques can be used by video artists, animators, and designers in their work. Through lectures and presentations, students are exposed to the work of artists who use a variety of approaches, from abstract animation to kinetic text and transformation of live-action video. Students learn about key framing, matting, compositing, working in 3-D spaces, and other computer-based video processes. A special emphasis is placed on issues in contemporary video art, and the ways in which video graphics are used to explore these ideas.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Students expand their video production skills while increasing their knowledge of the history and theory of video and performance art. In solo and collaborative assignments, students create projects that grow out of class discussions. Topics include relationships between live, remote, virtual, public, and private performance; action and document; sets and sculptural objects; autobiography and use of the body; and politics of the camera. Contemporary video performance is situated in the context of the history of photographic media as well as contemporary new-media tools and practices.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2420
Department: New Media
People are entangled in a dark ecology, in which humans, marshes, car parks, and foreign rubber plantations are all intimately connected. Students explore methods of investigation drawn from both scientific and artistic modes of inquiry, such as mapping, poetic and scientific sensing, visualization, and photography. How can public interventions shift how individuals perceive and represent their deep connections to environmental systems?
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME1450 Or MAT1520
Department: New Media
Student groups are paired with local organizations with which they work throughout the semester. After site visits, interviews, and research, students identify a specific problem or need that they can address through media art production. Students learn about the inner workings and critical impact of participating organizations while helping to envision and implement change through creative thinking and technical know-how.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Students break down the physical barrier of the personal computer and bring computing into the “real” world. The main tool used for this purpose is the Arduino, an open-source micro-controller popular with artists and makers. Students are introduced to theories of game design (both historical and modern) and apply them to their class projects; the course also explores the societal implications of building and programming and repurposing personal electronics, and examines artists and makers who have used physical computing for creative expression.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (NME1420 Or MAT1420 ) Or (NME1520 Or MAT1520 )
Department: New Media
The ease with which digital tools allow people to copy, paste, and recombine creative work challenges long-held ideas about originality and creativity. In this combined studio/lecture course, students examine the theory and history of appropriation, sampling, quotation, and reuse in the arts, while simultaneously creating their own multidisciplinary works that engage with contemporary ideas related to these issues.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
Considers how artists have traditionally managed interactive spaces and how new technologies expand and shift the meaning of interactivity in contemporary art. “Circuit bending,” an approach to electronics that repurposes older machines and toys, is also introduced. Students create their own interactive artworks; emphasis is on nontraditional uses of materials. Arduino microcontrollers and the Processing open-source platform are demonstrated in class and available to students.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
The internet is examined as a tool for artistic expression and action. Students consider what is unique about the internet; exploit its potential as a means for communication, distribution, simulation, and interaction; and experiment with web production. A wide range of internet art projects are studied to stimulate ideas and give students an understanding of what is happening in the “net art” world. Students are expected to challenge standard notions of how the web functions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2730 Or MAT3730
Department: New Media
A hands-on examination of how digital games can go beyond pure entertainment and be used as a means for educating people about important social and global issues. Students work on Web-based Flash games, social networking games, or mobile games that are conceptualized, designed, and developed to effect change.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
Students develop a definition of new media through a range of learning experiences. These include a survey of work in the field, with guest artists and class trips to galleries, media production houses, and events; students’ critical writing and interactive discussions about what they are experiencing; and teacher-structured and student-initiated collaborative projects in which students test different creative roles, using various media.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME2100
Department: New Media
Students create custom projects using inexpensive, bank card–sized computers for art installations and works for the public good. In the process, their knowledge of text-based interfaces, free culture, collaboration, circuit building, and the history of creative computing/hacking is deepened.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME1450 Or MAT1420 Or MAT1520
Department: New Media
Students meet weekly to discuss some of the seminal texts in new media and to make presentations on their senior project proposals. By the end of the semester, each student has a website describing his or her project and a working timeline.
Credits: 2
Department: New Media
Students meet weekly to develop their senior projects further, design the new media exhibition, and practice writing proposals to external organizations and preparing their résumés.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: NME4880
Department: New Media
An introduction to the basic concepts and techniques of digital photography. Exposure, composition, color, retouching, resolution, and preparation of image files for on-screen and print use are among the techniques covered. Assignments include both technical and aesthetic concerns.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
Students explore the effect of landscapes and surroundings in Pisciotta, Italy, and develop their personal vision by observing and leveraging those landscapes and translating their experiences into powerful images. Working with digital cameras (a simple one is fine), students create a personal photographic essay, depicting what they see through the lens of their surroundings.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
In this digital fabrication course, students explore the relationship between the three-dimensional world and digital technology. In this creative new-media environment, students are given a foundation for developing 3-D content and integrating it into their preferred field. Students generate digital objects, prepare them for real-world fabrication, and create virtual-reality simulations and photorealistic sculpture proposals. This course will utilize laser-cutters, CNC router and 3D printers.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: VIS1260 Or NME2100
Department: New Media
Sound is explored as material in the context of the visual arts, using DAT recorders, sampling, synthesis, processing, computers, sensor control, and MIDI systems. Projects may include making sonic instruments, sounding objects, and experimental video; ambient, interactive, performative, and multimedia installations; and surround-sound DVDs. Advanced technological means enable uncharted explorations in the time-based arts.
Credits: 3
Department: New Media
A continuation of SCP 3630, for advanced sound and multimedia projects. Sound is further explored in ambient, interactive, performative, time-based, and site-specific installations. Tools available include the Kurzwell K2600 Architectural Synthesis System and Macintosh computers with mixing, synthesis, and DVD surround-sound mastering technology. Interactive programs in the studio include MAX, Jitter, and Cyclops.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP3630 Or VSC3630 ) Or NME3630
Department: New Media
Explores the genre of alternate reality or pervasive gaming currently used as an alternative to traditional performance by contemporary theatrical and visual artists, dancers, and musicians. The blurring distinctions between game and narrative are examined, opening new possibilities for performance. Students design and stage their own live alternate-reality game as a means of storytelling or extend an existing narrative through transmedia.
Credits: 4
Department: New Media
An overview of electronic media and its relationship to the fine arts. This course covers the genre from its infancy to the present and focuses on the study of the art and artists critical to the genre’s development. Lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and visiting artists are augmented by assigned readings, critical writing, and examinations.
Professional writers increasingly work in multiple modes of expression. In the playwriting and screenwriting BA program at Purchase College, students learn to write for both the stage and the screen through studies that engage with these disciplines at the introductory through advanced level. After the foundation courses, writers can choose to continue to study both playwriting and screenwriting or to focus exclusively on one craft.
The curriculum helps students develop a sophisticated eye and gain a deeper understanding of the art and craft involved in making theatre and film. Being at Purchase means a professional approach—working alongside talented film and theatre majors, actors, theatre designers, musicians, visual artists, and dancers in a world-renowned artistic community few other schools can provide. The college’s proximity to New York City provides a distinct advantage: students are taught by industry professionals and have access to all the culture and excitement the city has to offer, and to theatre, film, and television production facilities for their studies and internships. The affordability of Purchase is vital to the economic freedom needed in pursuing a career as a dramatic writer.
The program includes required and elective courses in playwriting and screenwriting; theatre and film history; writing for television, new media, and documentaries; and directing for both stage and screen. Because playwriting and screenwriting are performance arts, students are encouraged to present their work to an audience as much as possible. In their final year, students work with a faculty mentor to develop a substantial senior project: a full-length play, feature-length screenplay, teleplay, or documentary script. Other courses provide the student with portfolio materials in the form of writing samples, both on the page and short works on the screen.
This BA program also provides a solid foundation in the liberal arts, with majors required to complete a minor in a non-theater/film related field of study. This still leaves plenty of room for students to explore other interests, including study abroad programs—all of which enriches their sensibilities as dramatic writers.
The program also offers a minor in playwriting and a minor in screenwriting, open to students in all disciplines.
Note for Transfer Students
Students interested in transferring from another school into this BA program and earning the degree in four semesters (entering as a junior) should be aware that they must have already taken:
introductory screenwriting
introductory playwriting
at least one semester of either theatre or cinema history (recommended)
Junior transfers must register for PSW 2000 and 2010 in their first semester.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all playwriting and screenwriting majors must meet the following requirements (54 credits):
Foundation courses: 23 credits
PSW 1000/Playwriting I: 4 credits*
PSW 1010/Screenwriting I: 4 credits*
CIN 1030/History of Film Art: 4 credits
CIN 1500/Introduction to Cinema Studies I: 4 credits (required through spring 2019)
PSW 2000/Screenwriting II: 4 credits
PSW 2010/Playwriting II: 4 credits
THP 2885/Theatre Histories I or THP 2890/Theatre Histories II: 3 credits
*Students must earn a minimum grade of C- in PSW 1000 and PSW 1010 in order to continue in the sequence to PSW 2000 and PSW 2010, respectively.
Note: CIN 1500/Introduction to Cinema Studies I satisfied the film history requirement (CIN 1030) through spring 2019.
Electives: 17 credits**
Students choose their electives in consultation with their faculty advisor. At least 10 of the 17 credits must be upper level. Courses in the list of examples are subject to change, and new courses may be added.
**A minimum grade of C- is required for any elective pre-requisites.
Synthesis courses: 14 credits
PSW 3880/Junior Seminar: 4 credits***
PSW 4880/Senior Colloquium in Playwriting and Screenwriting: 2 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
***A minimum grade of C- is required in the Junior Seminar as pre-requisite for the Senior Project.
CIN 1510/Introduction to Cinema Studies II
COM 3701/The Business of Writing
PSW 1250/Plays and Playgoing
PSW 3000/Screenwriting III
PSW 3120/The Writer and the Documentary
PSW 3130/Site-Specific Playwriting
PSW 3150/How to Say It: Pitch Sessions and Public Speaking for Writers
PSW 3155/The Art of Rewriting: Killing Our Darlings
PSW 3200/Playwriting III
PSW 3230/Writers’ Scene Workshop
PSW 3300/Writing for Television
PSW 3310/Book Writing: Story Structure in Musical Theatre
PSW 3400/The TV Writer’s Room
PSW 3500/Documentary Theatre: Performing Real Life
PSW 3600/Songwriting for the Musical
PSW 4150/Making New Plays
THP 2205/Shakespeare Then and Now
THP 3725/Adapting Literature for Performance
Second Liberal Arts Major or Minor, or Other Study Electives Requirement
Effective fall 2018, playwriting and screenwriting majors have the option of either completing a second liberal arts major or minor or other study electives to fulfill this requirement. A minor is strongly encouraged. The list of approved majors/minors is as follows: anthropology, art history, Asian studies, biology, chemistry, environmental studies, French, gender studies, global black studies, history, Italian, Jewish studies, Latin American studies, linguistics, literature, mathematics/computer science, philosophy, philosophy and art, political science, psychology, sociology, or Spanish.
This requirement is not fulfilled by certain second majors and minors. Students are still encouraged to pursue these studies and there is room in their schedules to do so. Excluded majors/minors are: arts management, film/video production, music, theatre and performance, creative writing, communications, and visual arts.
If a student wishes to pursue liberal arts study in a field which does not offer a minor, a five course concentration with two upper level electives (minimum of 18 credits including a minimum of six upper-level credits) can be substituted in consultation with their advisor.
Playwriting/Screenwriting Double Majors
Playwriting/Screenwriting double majors are required to take Junior Seminar in either playwriting or screenwriting. They are not required to do the Senior Project or Senior Colloquium if they choose a Senior Project in their other major. Double majors in the non-excluded areas of study will fulfill the required minor.
An introduction to the basic techniques of writing for the stage, beginning with the story. Multiple short writing assignments emphasize character, plot, diction, subtext, and meaning. They include writing from personal experience, adapting a short story and a classical play, and using a current news story as inspiration. Students discuss Aristotle’s elements as they pertain to the scene, apply basic elements of the craft, read several short plays, and attend performances on campus and in New York City.
Credits: 4
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Introduces the student to writing a dramatic story for the screen, placing an emphasis on discovery, good work habits, critical assessment, and rewriting as essential to the professional writer. Through numerous assignments, students learn the basics of dramatic story structure, revealing character, writing dialogue, genre, and use of story suspense. All techniques are applied in a final short screenplay.
Credits: 4
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
What makes a play alive, provocative, and vital? Using classics of dramatic literature as well as plays that are new to the stage, students read and examine the ideas and mechanics of the play. An examination of some key texts and theories, including Aristotle’s Poetics, Brecht’s Epic Theatre, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed lead to a fresh look at the old and the new. Students attend plays on campus and in New York City, and meet some of today’s leading theatre artists.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Using an existing short piece of fiction, students delineate the elements of the story, experiencing their importance and power; translate the short story into a screenplay for a narrative film; and complete two drafts of a 25-page screenplay. In the process, they learn the techniques of adaptation for the screen and a deeper level of dramatic story structure. Emphasis is on discovering the dramatic character when evaluating the merits of a particular adaptation, which extends to evaluating one’s own ideas for a screenplay; introducing genre and story types; and research as a dramatist’s fundamental tool.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Building on PSW 1000, students read and attend new plays, develop in-class writing exercises, and then write and revise a 30-page play.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1000 Or THP3590 Or DWR1000 Or DRA3590
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
An introduction to full-length narrative and the three-act structure. The art and craft of screenwriting are explored through analysis and developing, writing, and rewriting a longer screenplay (60 pages), with an emphasis on what Hollywood looks for in a screenplay. Techniques covered include voice-over, establishing shots, montages, and creating tension and payoff. The business of the screenwriter, how to pitch, and finding work/selling a screenplay are also covered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW2000 Or DWR2000
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
In recent years, opportunities in nonfiction work have grown significantly. In this course, students screen and analyze documentary films, and produce their own short nonfiction film on digital video. Field assignments include researching and conducting interviews; written assignments include narration exercises, documentary summaries, and scripts. Students also learn the basics of Final Cut Pro editing software.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010 And CIN1500
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Explores techniques for developing narrative and dramatic structures in specific spaces/sites. Students read, view, and discuss sample works and theoretical investigation as a means to contextualize our inquiry, while also doing a series of ‘building block’ exercises both in and out of the classroom. Small modular writing assignments build to a final full-length piece.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
An exploration of revision techniques and strategies in a workshop environment. Students revise existing material through examinations of character, dialogue, and structure; text analysis; and other tools. First drafts and production drafts of contemporary American plays are also studied and discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Students research, gather, and incorporate ideas from a variety of sources to write a new full-length play. Weekly readings of plays are paired with focused writing exercises. The course culminates in a public reading of excerpts from students’ completed plays. Students also explore the business of playwriting, touring a theatre in New York City and meeting with artistic staff.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW2010 Or THP3591 Or DWR2010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Explores the fine anatomy of writing the scene, with emphasis on writers looking at their work from the perspective of the director and on working with actors. Students write and direct a dramatic scene in digital video and learn to produce their video, using Final Cut Pro editing software and the basics of camera/lighting techniques.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW2000 Or DWR2000
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Screenings and discussion of various forms of the medium, including the sitcom, television movies, and documentary and experimental forms. Students write a script that is critiqued in class and rewritten, with concentration on the world of the story, tone, character, style, dramatic tension, pacing, and evolving narrative.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Examines the history and craft of storytelling in musical theatre. Students consider song topic and placement to structure a short original musical. The ability to read and write music is not required.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1000 And PSW1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Students experience the real-world model of collaboratively writing a television series in a “writer’s room.” With the instructor as “show runner,” the class creates a half-hour series and together writes a pilot episode. Each student then writes an episode for the series. Episodic story structure, weaving multiple story lines, the tradition television series, and newly emerging variations are covered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
The landscape of short-form, online, episodic storytelling is surveyed, and each student is required to conceive a short-form episodic series, create the show “bible,” and write and produce a pilot “webisode” for that series. Emphasis is on story structure and telling a story in a nontraditional form.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Students will gain an understanding of the craft of writing and combining lyrics and music. Focus is placed on the process of artistic collaboration as librettists and composers are paired to create original songs. Students will also survey musical writing teams and repertoire. Composers must have the ability to create scores and regularly perform their work.
Credits: 4
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Students develop ideas for their senior project—a play or screenplay. They research, develop, and present their scenarios to the class for response and critique.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW2000 And PSW2010 And (CIN1500 Or CIN1510 ) And (THP2885 Or THP2890 )
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Writers and actors learn tools for working together on new plays. Taught by a playwright and a director, the class studies different collaborative models, including devised theatre, and explores communication strategies for working through creative friction. The course culminates in a final showcase on campus.
Credits: 3
Department: Playwriting and Screenwriting
During the solitary pursuit of writing their first full-length play or screenplay, students come together regularly to share in-process work for feedback and critique. A completion schedule is created, and assignments are given to aid in the scriptwriting discovery process. Classes are also devoted to visiting professionals who relate their experiences in the business of being a playwright or screenwriter.
The minor in playwriting is designed for students in all disciplines who want to explore and develop skills in writing for the stage.
Many students who pursue this minor are majoring in disciplines like theatre and performance, arts management, and gender studies. The skills developed in playwriting complement a liberal arts education.
Students interested in the minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study. Upon admission to the minor, the student will be assigned a minor advisor from the playwriting faculty.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Playwriting
Five courses, to include:
PSW 1000/Playwriting I (4 credits)
THP 2885/Theatre Histories I or THP 2890/Theatre Histories II (3 credits)
PSW 2010/Playwriting II (4 credits)
Plus two of the following courses:
PSW 1250/Plays and Playgoing (4 credits)
PSW 3155/The Art of Rewriting: Killing our Darlings (4 credits)
PSW 3200/Playwriting III (4 credits)
THP 2205/Shakespeare Then and Now (3 credits)
THP 2885/Theatre Histories I or THP 2890/Theatre Histories II (3 credits)
THP 3495/Black American Drama (4 credits)
THP 3525/LGBTQ Drama (4 credits)
The minor in screenwriting is designed for students in all disciplines who want to explore and develop skills in writing for film and television.
Many students who pursue this minor are majoring in disciplines like cinema studies, media, society, and the arts, creative writing, journalism, or theatre and performance. The skills developed in screenwriting complement a liberal arts education.
Students interested in the minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study. Upon admission to the minor, the student will be assigned a minor advisor from the screenwriting faculty.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Screenwriting
Five courses, to include:
PSW 1010/Screenwriting I (4 credits)
CIN 1500/Introduction to Cinema Studies I (4 credits)
or
CIN 1030/History of Film Art (4 credits)
PSW 2000/Screenwriting II (4 credits)
Plus two of the following courses:
PSW 3000/Screenwriting III (4 credits)
PSW 3120/The Writer and the Documentary (4 credits)
PSW 3230/Writers’ Scene Workshop (4 credits)
PSW 3300/Writing for Television (4 credits)
PSW 3400/TV Writers’ Room (4 credits)
PSW 3500/Writing the Web Series (4 credits)
The MFA program in media arts trains students in the progressive, experimental, and participatory forms of creative, critical practice that comprise the cutting edge of contemporary media arts.
Collaboration and Social Engagement
Students collaborate with local communities and galleries to create socially engaged media art that addresses the community’s aspirations, concerns, and needs. Through these partnerships, students explore new modes and sites of media creation, exhibition, and reception. The program stresses the value of hands-on creation and collaboration, pairing students with artists and scholars active in contemporary media arts.
Multidisciplinary Curriculum
Our multidisciplinary curriculum encourages students to think beyond medium-specific approaches, providing them with ample elective choices within and beyond media arts. During their first year, students work in a collaborative environment, a directed studio in which students participate in web-based and installation-based media art. These collaborative works prepare students for their capstone project, a yearlong thesis individually supervised by a faculty member.
Immerse, Transform, and Imagine
This graduate program immerses students in dynamic media projects with neighboring communities. Focusing on a process-based model, students come to understand the transformational role that arts can play in communities. By motivating students to imagine futures through research-based art production, the program enables them to work across a variety of media and platforms, an essential skill that will allow graduates to position themselves within the ever-shifting media industry and landscape.
Requirements:
Students may elect to complete a two-year or a three-year program for the MFA in media arts.
Sixty credits can be completed in two years or 62 credits can be completed in three years. (29 credits in the common core; 23 credits of electives in media arts practice and media history and theory; an 8-credit thesis project as the culminating creative experience; and two elective credits in teaching assistantships for the three-year program).
A minimum 3.0 (B) cumulative GPA must be earned at Purchase College.
This first half of a two-semester survey spans the appearance of print media to the development of early cinema, and reflects the interdisciplinary and evolving nature of media studies. Topics include the major theories of media and technology, the historical context in which each medium has appeared, and the schools of thought that have shaped people’s understanding of media and guided the analysis of media texts.
Credits: 4
Department: Media Arts and Culture
This second half of a two-semester survey spans the development of classical cinema to the burgeoning of new media environments, and reflects the interdisciplinary and evolving nature of media studies. Topics include the major theories of media and technology, the historical context in which each medium has appeared, and the schools of thought that have shaped people’s understanding of media and guided the analysis of media texts.
Credits: 4
Department: Media Arts and Culture
Designed to introduce graduate students to the fundamental methods and issues that arise in teaching media arts and media studies. The class explores the most contemporary methods in media pedagogy and media practices with the goal of preparing students to design their own courses in media arts and media studies.
Credits: 3
Department: Media Arts and Culture
Traces the steps entailed in making media art that responds to real-world situations, paying close attention to the complex, evolving relationship between situation and media forms. Students explore how makers can combine ethnography, design methods, and creative communication tactics to generate situations of ethical aesthetic reflection and potential social change.
Credits: 4
Department: Media Arts and Culture
The first half of a two-semester sequence designed to foster the growth of media artists through a model of teacher-led, peer-based learning that spans several parallel activities: critique, discussion, collaboration, and engagement with media art practitioners and the world of media art.
Credits: 4
Department: Media Arts and Culture
The second half of a two-semester sequence designed to foster the growth of media artists through a model of teacher-led, peer-based learning that spans several parallel activities: critique, discussion, collaboration, and engagement with media art practitioners and the world of media art.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAC5050
Department: Media Arts and Culture
Technology as a means to extend human sensory perception—from older mediums such as early photography, film, and sound recording to more recent developments in digital media and representation—is covered in detail. Major concepts include issues of tactility, affect, and materialization, as well as the role of sense and perception as it relates to the commodification of everyday life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAC5010 And MAC5020
Department: Media Arts and Culture
Students examine Critical Pedagogy and its relationship to art. From Joseph Beuys to more recent examples, artists have been making schools to radically expand the definition of art and for other political purposes. We will discuss why and collaborate on several “school forms” of our own to take place on campus and off.
Credits: 3
Department: Media Arts and Culture
The first in a three-course sequence focused on the centrality of critique for the development of any creative practice. A critical model is developed that relies on both individual voices and collaborative process. Students hone and exercise their critical voice by learning to situate their practice historically and socially. All students participate in the thoughtful assessment of their classmates’ work and benefit from critiques by invited professionals and by organized visits to contemporary artists working in New York City.
Credits: 3
Department: Media Arts and Culture
The second in a three-course sequence focused on the centrality of critique for the development of any creative practice. A critical model is developed that relies on both individual voices and collaborative process. Students hone and exercise their critical voice by learning to situate their practice historically and socially. All students participate in the thoughtful assessment of their classmates’ work and benefit from critiques by invited professionals and by organized visits to contemporary artists working in New York City.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MAC5100
Department: Media Arts and Culture
The third in a three-course sequence focused on the centrality of critique for the development of any creative practice. A critical model is developed that relies on both individual voices and collaborative process. Students hone and exercise their critical voice by learning to situate their practice historically and socially. All students participate in the thoughtful assessment of their classmates’ work and benefit from critiques by invited professionals and by organized visits to contemporary artists working in New York City.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MAC5100 And MAC5105
Department: Media Arts and Culture
First part of a two-semester sequence. Students produce a work of media art and a scholarly contextualization of their work within the contemporary field. Students work under the direction of a faculty member to create a work of media art and to master the relevant literature, demonstrating a significant contribution to the field of media arts.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAC5010 And MAC5020
Department: Media Arts and Culture
Second part of a two-semester sequence. Students produce a work of media art and a scholarly contextualization of their work within the contemporary field. Students work under the direction of a faculty member to create a work of media art and to master the relevant literature, demonstrating a significant contribution to the field of media arts.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAC5990
Department: Media Arts and Culture
School of Humanities
With small classes, dynamic students, world-renowned guest artists and scholars, and one-on-one work with distinguished faculty, the School of Humanities provides an exceptional liberal arts education at a public institution. You will hone your writing, expand your thinking, encounter the world, and make your mark.
The art history BA centers engagement with art—as a material, critical, and social practice—in a curriculum designed to foster students’ curiosity and intellectual growth. The program is committed to the rigorous interrogation of received histories and their relation to entrenched systems of oppression, and to producing scholars equipped to contribute to building a more just world.
The study of art history introduces students to all periods of history and many of the world’s cultures. The program offers study of the various forms of art and architecture: painting, sculpture, graphics, decorative arts, photography, design, and performance. Scholarly approaches to these media emphasize social, cultural, and political history and explore a wide range of interdisciplinary and theoretical methods.
Study on Campus, in New York City, and Abroad
The program is designed to introduce not only subjects but approaches: visual and stylistic analysis, criticism, iconography, historiography, and methodology. Because art history requires the study of original works of art, many courses are supplemented by field trips to museums and art galleries in New York City, just 20 miles south of the Purchase campus. The on-campus Neuberger Museum of Art is also a major resource. Internships and the college’s study abroad programs provide many opportunities for undergraduates to get involved in the art world outside the classroom.
The Junior Year
During the junior year, students select a broad field of study that includes the architecture, sculpture, and painting of one of several periods or areas (e.g., Renaissance, African, or modern). Students are urged to take at least three courses outside art history related to their area of study (e.g., courses in 19th- and 20th-century literature, history, and/or philosophy, if the focus is on the modern period). The Junior Seminar in Art History examines selected approaches to the study of art history by analyzing various interpretations of the work of a single artist.
The Senior Project
The program culminates in a two-semester senior project, in which each student uses the methods of art history in an in-depth project that may take a variety of forms: a research thesis, an exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art, or a critical study.
After Graduation
Many alumni choose to pursue their interest in art history through employment at museums and galleries, often earning advanced degrees in art history and museum studies. Other alumni have chosen to work in such fields as art education, film production, publishing and as art handlers and transporters. Still others pursue careers outside of the arts, but find the critical thinking, visual literacy, and subject matter of this field meaningful and useful to their lives and work.
Updated 9-24-20
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all art history undergraduate majors must complete 14 courses and an 8-credit senior project, as follows:
ARH 1010/History of Art Survey I
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II
ARH 1021/History of Art Survey II Discussion
Six specialized art history courses, which must include:
ARH 3880/Junior Seminar in Art History
One course in the history of art before 1800
Two studio courses in the visual arts
Three courses in related disciplines and/or a foreign language
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Note: An art history course offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education may not be used to fulfill requirement 1, 2, 3, or 4 above, but may be used as a general elective.
Internships may also be taken at the Neuberger Museum of Art or at area museums and galleries. Internships can count toward the elective academic requirements for the major.
Art History majors with a particular interest in museums may want to consider the Museum Studies Minor as a supplement to the major.
Minor requirements:
The minor in art history is designed for undergraduate students in all disciplines at Purchase College who are interested in art history and visual culture.
Students interested in pursuing this minor should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. Upon admission to the minor, the student is assigned a minor advisor from the art history faculty.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Art History
Six courses in art history, as follows:
ARH 1010/History of Art Survey I
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II
ARH 1021/History of Art Survey II Discussion
Three specialized art history courses (2000 level or above)
Note: Art history courses offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education may not be used to fulfill these requirements.
The art and architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe, presented in terms of their visual and cultural significance.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A survey of the history of Western art, including the works of Masaccio, Van Eyck, Donatello, Bosch, Michelangelo, and Leonardo; followed by the rise of national styles in the 17th and 18th centuries in France and England. Nineteenth-century neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism, and postimpressionism, as well as modernism and developments in 20th-century art, are also covered. The discussion is required.
Credits: 3
COREQ: ARH1021
Department: Art History
A discussion of the history of Western art, including the works of Masaccio, Van Eyck, Donatello, Bosch, Michelangelo, and Leonardo; followed by the rise of national styles in the 17th and 18th centuries in France and England. Nineteenth-century neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism, and postimpressionism, as well as modernism and developments in 20th-century art, are also covered.
Credits: 1
COREQ: ARH1020
Department: Art History
In this seminar-style course, freshmen will explore the aesthetic, historical, and literary context of a given exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art. Through close observation, readings, and discussion, students will gain a deep knowledge of the artists in the exhibition, the aesthetic and social questions relevant to the artists’ work, and the curatorial logic guiding the exhibition.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The work of Courbet, Manet, and the circle of the Impressionists sets the stage for the revolutionary modern movements of the 20th century (e.g., Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism). The course concludes with those artists who came to prominence in America at the time of World War II.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Introduces the diversity of practices that have dominated the history of art since World War II. Movements include: Abstract Expressionism, postwar European painting, happenings, Fluxus, Pop art, minimalism, conceptual art, performance art, and postmodernism. While European and North American art are emphasized, Asian and Latin American art are also addressed, particularly in the context of increasing globalization.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores a range of topics, including the history of art museums, current theories and methodologies of display, and museum administration. In addition to class discussion, students meet with museum personnel from the Neuberger Museum of Art to learn the basics of museum operations, including curatorial work, exhibition design, registration, education and public programming, marketing, public relations, and finance.
Credits: 3
Department: Art History
An examination of painting, sculpture, and architecture during the European Middle Ages, from the end of the Roman Empire through the Gothic era (c. 300–1400). French and Italian art are emphasized, but works from every part of Christian Europe, from England and Spain to the Byzantine Empire, are included.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
What is American about American art, and how have questions of race and ethnic and cultural identity shaped our visual culture? Offering an interpretive overview of American history through the lens of American culture, this course traces the formation of American identity from the eve of the European arrival in North America to shortly before the beginning of World War I.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An examination of painting, sculpture, and architecture produced in Italy from the late 13th century to the late 15th century, including Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Piero della Francesca, and Botticelli.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An examination of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Italy during the 16th century. The course begins with an in-depth study of the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, Giorgione, and Titian, and then traces the evolution of the anticlassical style known as mannerism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Developments in Greek sculpture, vase painting, and architecture are traced from the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces (c. 1200 BCE) to the rise of the Roman Empire (1st and 2nd centuries BCE). Topics include the impact of Near Eastern civilizations on early Greek culture, the “classical” style’s florescence in 5th-century Athens, and the creation of the Hellenistic world by Alexander the Great.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A survey presenting key artistic works from the cultures of West Africa and the Congo region. Students learn about the artistic, social, and political aspects important to these works and the artists that make them. Primary themes include accumulative and multimedia aesthetics, sustainable materials, music and performance, gender, divination, royalty, spirituality, nomadism, collective production, and contemporary art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Begins by examining the relation between landscape and modernity in nineteenth-century painting and photography, ranging from Impressionism to travel and survey photography. We then track modern art’s changing relation to both the natural and built environment through land art, earth art, and the New Topographics movement of the 1960s and 1970s, concluding with contemporary art of the human-altered environment.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
This survey examines the arts and architecture of Africa in a global context from the 13th century to the present. In regional studies of the continent’s vast territory and diaspora, we analyze artworks to consider their roles in daily life, ritual, displays of power and prestige, artistic exploration and innovation, and more. Weekly visits to the Neuberger Museum are required.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the arts and architecture of Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries, engaging critically with how the field of modern and contemporary African art has developed. Students consider the influence of cross-cultural interactions on artistic practices, concepts of traditional, popular, and high art, colonialism and independence movements, primitivism, the rise of African modernisms, Afro-futurism, and more.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An introduction to women artists from the Renaissance era through the Enlightenment, including Anguissola, Gentileschi, Vigée-Lebrun, and Kauffmann. Topics include access to professions, constructions of sexuality and gender, and attitudes toward the body in representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Since the 1800s, the avant-gardes have tried to resist the delimited role of fine art in Western culture. In this course, students examine the strategies that avant-garde artists have used to reconnect their art practice with the more contentious areas of social and political life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: Art History
Students contextualize Beninese contemporary art and culture into the larger context of West African history. Readings in African history and post-colonial theory accompany hands-on workshops on how to make and write about art while visiting Benin. Students will write response papers, participate in class discussions, and make work using the methods presented in the course.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Half of this team-taught course is devoted to examining Johannes Vermeer’s subjects, painting techniques, and reception. The other half examines the invention and use of comparable subjects and literary techniques during the three eras in which Vermeer figured prominently on the global stage: the Dutch Golden Age, the American Gilded Age, and the US financial boom of the 1990s.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Takes a broad view of the aesthetic, historical, and conceptual development of modern and contemporary art and architecture of the Middle East. Topics include legacies of Orientalism; colonialism and decolonization; religion and secularization; relationships between art and nation-building; the rise of petrocultures; and questions of reception in the context of global contemporary art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores the history of twentieth-century architecture through the modern city, tracing the rise and occasional decline of the metropolis internationally. Students analyze how architects and urban planners proposed new visions of urban life and devised solutions for urgent social and political problems related to urbanization (e.g. public space, housing, gentrification, globalization).
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
How and why do certain artworks become embroiled in major public debates, political scandals, and legal disputes? Beginning with the 1863 Salon des Refusés and continuing to the present day through an itinerary that travels the globe, students will examine the role of controversy in defining art, society, and how we imagine the relationship between the two.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The paintings of Michelangelo Mersisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) had a revolutionary impact on the art world of his era, and the fascination with his extraordinary re-evaluation of pictorial effects continues to this day. This course examines Caravaggio’s art and career and considers responses to his work by other artists, including film directors, up to the present.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
This seminar focuses on the inception of the “readymade” and the abandonment of traditional forms of painting in the work of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the later development of readymade practices in the context of New York and Paris Dada. The history of the readymade as an artistic strategy is traced.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1010 Or ARH1020 Or ARH2050 Or ARH2060
Department: Art History
Based on objects in the Neuberger Museum of Art. Students undertake independent research projects on works in the museum’s collection, investigating issues of documentation and interpretation. Limited to art history majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Art History
Examines the relationship between the traditional crafts and the upheavals of modernity. Beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th century and continuing to the present day, students explore how craft is framed as protest against industrialization, as utopian model of labor and exchange, and as aesthetic transformation.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Surveys American painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture until the opening of the Armory Show in 1913. The course explores the distinctiveness of the American art tradition.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994 Or HIS1000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994
Department: Art History
A study of African American painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, drawings, photography, film, and vernacular and popular art. The course begins with the Afro-Atlantic era and covers images made by Southern artists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as artists associated with the “New Negro” movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, and postmodernism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A study of artists and exhibitions from and about Africa, spanning a wide variety of traditional and new media. Important exhibitions like The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 (2001) and Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora (2004) are analyzed. Themes include framing “Africa,” African identities, memory and place, and popular culture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on women artists and their place within the art-historical narrative of the 20th century. Students examine both the diverse practices of women artists and the reception of their work by critics, dealers, and collectors.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An introduction to a wide range of photographic practices, from the medium’s conception in the 19th century to the ubiquitous online photo-sharing of today. Lectures have a special focus on the major artistic developments of photography. Topics include the significance of vernacular practices and their historical contexts in different parts of the world.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Treats the history of photography in a global framework. Topics include the transformation of photography as it spreads from Europe to Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East; the decentering of European modernism in postmodernism; the role of photography in colonialism and decolonization; and its role in fine art as well as vernacular portraiture, journalism, documentary, and other fields.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the photographic medium from its earliest forms through the 1920s and 1930s. Topics include technical innovations, manipulations and interventions, function and reception, the relationship to the fine arts, and debates about photography’s claims of realism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A study of the German painter, printmaker, and draftsman Albrecht Dürer. The artist’s interests in science, politics, religious conflicts, sexuality, and the non-Western world are emphasized.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994 Or HIS1000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994
Department: Art History
Examines the history of painting and sculpture in Northern Europe from the 14th century to c. 1570. Flemish, Dutch, French, German, and Czech works are considered, with emphasis on such artists as the Limbourg Brothers, Van Eyck, Bosch, Dürer, and Bruegel.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994 Or HIS1000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994
Department: Art History
From ancient to neoclassical, Campania’s monuments are overwhelming with the riches of the past. Students delve into the histories of these great works and the ways they have shaped the modern world through the development of revivalist styles, academic disciplines, and tourism as a leisure activity. Includes visits to such historic sites as Pompeii, Paestum, Amalfi, and Naples.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Founded in Italy in 1909, Futurism declared a love of speed, aggression, and technology, and rejected the clichés of nature, love, and antiquity. This course addresses the ways in which Futurists attacked the conventions of art, includes a more general discussion of Futurist art in Italy in relation to its past, and investigates the influence of Futurism in France, Britain, and Russia.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Investigates the themes, diverse genres, and major figures in 17th-century Dutch painting. Current problems of interpretation are examined, including the idea that there may have been a specifically northern form of visual thinking.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Despite a growing interest in the work of the Russian avant-garde, there is still relatively little known about the artists of the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union. This course addresses the broad scope and multidisciplinary practice of Russian modernism, from the shocking primitivism of The Rite of Spring to the cold pragmatism of constructivism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores the scope and complexity of pre-Columbian art and civilizations, which flourished in Mesoamerica and the Andes. While these societies were responsible for outstanding achievements in mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture, their most enduring contribution is manifested in their art and architecture. Includes required visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An examination of the visual arts in Venice and its hinterland from the early Middle Ages to the end of the Venetian Republic in 1797. In addition to in-depth treatment of such artists as Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, and Tiepolo, the social context of the arts and the unique urban development of Venice are studied in detail.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A study of the representation of Asians, Africans, and Americans (and their native lands) in European and American art from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Some consideration is also given to the impact of non-Western arts on the European tradition.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Design is both a noun and a verb. This course deals with the idea of design as a cultural phenomenon and a creative practice. Contemporary design and its making are situated within a broad methodological framework, drawing from existing and emerging theories in anthropology, art history, film studies, criticism, the history of technology, and architecture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on contemporary Latin American artists working in and out of Latin America: Gabriel Orozco, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Adriana Varejao, Teresa Margolles, Carlos Garaicoa, Betsabeé Romero, Javier Tellez, Nadín Ospina, Tania Bruguera, and Nicolás de Jesus. Students analyze the way these artists address such questions as urban violence, social inequality, pollution, emigration, and national identity.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the history of design as it parallels the history of technology and industrialization. Covering a variety of design disciplines, including architecture and urban planning, graphic design, fashion, and industrial design, this course focuses less on aesthetics than on the cultural programs that have shaped buildings, objects, and communication systems for more than two centuries.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The simultaneous development of various painters associated with Impressionism (e.g., Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Cassatt) is presented. This radical new art movement is traced from the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 to the last exhibition of 1886 and the appearance of the post-Impressionists. Students explore the shared relationships of the Impressionist artists.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines a selection of poetry, short stories, novels, and films from different historical periods that foreground the visual arts through various means, including the character of the artist, the practices of art, the nature of creativity, and the critical reception of art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
European art from the French Revolution to 1900, with movements in France, Germany, and England receiving particular attention. Major artists studied include David, Gericault, Delacroix, Ingres, Frederich, Constable, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Daumier, Manet, Degas, Monet, and Gauguin.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: Art History
An examination of visual artists who have used performance as an integral component of their practice, with emphasis on post-1950 object-oriented work (rather than theatre or dance). Both primary texts and critical interpretations are studied.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH2050 Or ARH2060
Department: Art History
An examination of contemporary art outside of the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Looking at painting-based performances of the 1950s, feminist body art, guerrilla television, and current political interventions based in digital media, students identify the strategies artists used to create new forms, and assess their success in modifying our understanding of the world.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: Art History
Examines photography as a medium used by European colonizers and its subsequent use by Africans for self-definition and liberation. Topics include early studio photography, photographs in cultural outlets like the Nigerian edition of Drum magazine, photography during the apartheid era, and contemporary work. The political and stylistic aspects of portrait, documentary, ethnographic, pop, and abstract images are considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
From photography’s 19th-century origins to contemporary practices, this survey course explores how and why photography became central to arguments about the modernity of African visual art. Moving from one regional focus to the next, students examine photography’s role in expeditionary and ethnographic projects, identity formation, political activism, spirituality, documenting the landscape, and representing the fantastical and the everyday.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A variety of intersections between extreme mental conditions and the production of works of art during the modern period are investigated. Topics include connections between creativity and mental instability, artists with a history of mental disorder, and theories about stylistic or formal affinities between madness and art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on the work of French artists from the early modern era to the French Revolution, with special attention to the Gallic obsession with realism, alongside the more abstract aspects of representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Conceptions of what sculpture can be were radically transformed over the course of the 20th century. This course presents a survey of 20th-century sculpture, with emphasis on innovative materials and techniques, the changing relationship between viewer and object, and new modes of exhibition. The work of Duchamp, Bourgeois, Calder, Judd, Hesse, and Smithson, among others, is discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Emerging from a longstanding literary tradition, examples of utopian architecture give insight into the ideals and fears of the cultures that produced them. This course explores both utopian and dystopian architectural visions, beginning with the Enlightenment works of Ledoux and Boullée and ending with the paper projects of 1960s groups like Archigram and Superstudio.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
If the postwar period famously represented the ascendency of American art, what art forms emerged simultaneously in traditional European centers? This course examines seemingly antithetical practices in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere: Art Informel, nouveau réalisme (new realism), Arte Povera, neoexpressionist painting, body art, conceptualism, Young British Art, etc. How has the changing European political landscape affected art and its institutions?
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An examination of critical and theoretical writing by artists about art. The course considers texts from various eras, but focuses primarily on 20th-century and contemporary material. Artists’ writings are analyzed in the context of art criticism as a whole, and students also have the opportunity try their hand at criticism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Islam burst forth from its cradle in Arabia and onto the world stage during the 7th century CE. The first caliphates were characterized by important military, diplomatic, and cultural encounters with the Christian Byzantine and Carolingian Empires. This course explores the art, literature, and architecture of these societies, with a focus on artistic adaptations, assimilations, and differences.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The Islamic conquests of Spain and Sicily brought Muslim culture to European shores for the first time. These conquests resulted in a dynamic artistic exchange among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish medieval traditions in the region. Critical issues for consideration include the impact of trade and diplomacy on this exchange and the lasting influence of Islamic art on the West.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A broad look at modern and contemporary Mexican art, using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. Special emphasis is on the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and its aftermath throughout the 20th century. Students analyze links between the visual arts (including mural painting, prints, and photography) and the literature, the popular scene and the mainstream, the street art and the gallery art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Provides art history majors with an opportunity to examine the nature of the discipline by analyzing and comparing the writings of several art historians. The seminar concentrates on the work of a single artist in light of various art historical approaches. This writing-intensive course requires a variety of short essays and concludes with a research paper and class presentation. Limited to art history majors.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Students focus on developing competence in both critical style and content. Focusing on visual art, the course explores different kinds of critical voices, from belle-lettristic to theoretical. Readings and discussions analyze examples by leading critics. Writing assignments aim for students to develop an engaging argument, and the importance of revision, clear thinking, and descriptive ability is stressed.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores ideas of the “normal” and “non-normal” in art and design today. Through readings, guest speakers, and projects, the class investigates both traditional and unusual depictions of bodies, race, and gender, along with the art and design practices developed in order to represent and understand them.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the resurgence, or persistence, in recent art of the sublime: an experience of overwhelming grandeur. Why have contemporary artists (Matthew Barney, Edward Burtynsky, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, Bill Viola, and others) turned to an 18th-century aesthetic theory in order to address the pressing issues of our time: climate change, the expansion of technology, and economic globalization?
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Participants in this seminar propose, research, plan, and coordinate an exhibition series and related public programming to be undertaken the following semester (as part of the course, Exhibition II). These exhibitions will take place in the Neuberger Museum, other sites around campus, or in a combination of Museum-based and other locations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH4035 Or ARH4037
Department: Art History
Participants in this seminar coordinate an exhibition series and related public programming based on the plans and preparations of the previous semester (conducted as part of the course, Exhibition I). These exhibitions take place in the Neuberger Museum, other sites around campus, or in a combination of Museum-based and other locations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ARH4025
Department: Art History
In this seminar, students and the instructor co-curate an exhibition for the Neuberger Museum of Art. The class works on all aspects of the exhibition with the instructor and museum staff. Students learn about the various functions of departments, including curatorial, education, exhibition design, development, and public relations, putting exhibition theory into practice. Exhibition topics vary.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An investigation of the historical development and function of museums. Students examine the growth of collections and exhibitions, along with the various roles that museums have played in relation to art history and society around the world. Central to this course and its final project is the question: “What should a museum be in the 21st century?”
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH2140 Or ARH4030 Or ARH4715
Department: Art History
A rigorous examination of the historical, theoretical, and concrete concerns of curatorial practice. Course-work culminates in a complete exhibition proposal.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH2050 Or ARH2060
Department: Art History
Considers the validity of obscene imagery—eroticism, violence, scatology, racism, and hate speech—in recent artistic practice. Students investigate the struggle to define the terms “art” and “obscenity” and the efforts to censor such art. What are the artistic, critical, and political effects of engaging with obscenity? What are the motivations and effects of attempting to censor it?
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH2060
Department: Art History
Addresses the tension between art and document, or making and recording, in twentieth-century visual culture. The first half investigates the aesthetics and politics of documentary photography and film, including conflicts between realism and modernism. The second half examines the use of documents and documentation by postmodern art and subsequent transformations in the style, form, and truth-content of documentary practices.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Since the 1990s, the art market has become integral to an understanding of contemporary art practices. This course introduces the economic foundation of the art market and the practices of participants. The focus is on the history of the primary market, where new works of art produced “on spec” are introduced to the public in a retail setting.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The relationship between artistic practice and the social realm is addressed, with emphasis on the development of the avant-garde in the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of artists in contemporary political discourse, and the theoretical discourse that constitutes the larger debate on these issues.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: Art History
The 1970s are often thought about in frivolous terms, as the decade of disco and bell-bottoms. In art, this period is often overshadowed by the radical avant-gardes of the 1960s and new developments in art during the 1980s. This seminar reconsiders the art and culture of the ’70s in the context of social and political currents of the period.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH2050 Or ARH2060
Department: Art History
Drawing on both contemporary artists’ and critics’ writings and recent historical accounts, students consider minimalist art of the 1960s as a well-defined movement comprising a specific group of artists, versus “minimalism” as a diffuse tendency appearing in sculpture, painting, film, music, and dance. The relationship of minimalism to subsequent practices—postminimalism, process and land art, and conceptualism—is also explored.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
African-American artistic trends since 1968 are examined by using the binary of East Coast-West Coast as appropriated from hip-hop culture, particularly in Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York. Both the limits of hip-hop aesthetics in the visual arts and the limits of thinking about “black aesthetics” as a stable or quantifiable style are tested.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores the ways in which ability and disability are conceived, represented, and negotiated in museum culture. Weekly discussions, visiting lecturers and screenings will examine key theoretical concepts, practical case studies, as well as the use of educational and internet-based media as assistive technologies. Specific topics will include: museums and the establishment of norms; the category of “assistive technology”; inclusive architecture and design; staring and other practices of looking; disability and performance art; media advocacy and activism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Painting has long been accompanied by theories describing its abilities to attract, deceive, and even harm. This course looks at key theories and debates in the history of the medium (e.g., Rubenistes vs. Poussinistes, painting’s role among pluralistic practices) to better understand how both making and seeing a painting are colored by a history of ideas.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1020 Or ARH2050
Department: Art History
Why design? Why consume? What is desire? Are you what you make? Are you what you consume? How does design communicate? Design is a complex activity that touches on fields as diverse as psychoanalysis and anthropology. This course provides a theoretical understanding of design practice, production, and use (consumption). Topics include graphic and digital design, furniture, architecture, and industrial design.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on objects and movements influenced by industrialization and mechanization in the U.S. between 1900 and 1940. Topics include the rise of the skyscraper in American architecture and its effect on painters and printmakers, the advent of the automobile and the assembly line’s replacement of the factory worker, and Dada’s expression of the havoc reeked during World War I by new machine-age technology.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The work of Robert Rauschenberg is examined in the context of postwar neo-avant-garde activities in the U.S. and in relation to the work of contemporaries like Jasper Johns and John Cage. Students also review recent theoretical debates about the meaning and significance of the artist’s work. Some background in the study of modern or contemporary art is useful.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A practical course in art criticism, which meets regularly in New York. Contemporary works of art form the basis for lectures, discussions, and written essays.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: Art History
Since the late 1800s, pre-Columbian art and history have inspired Latin American artists. This course investigates that phenomenon through an in-depth study of the work of individual artists, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as more contemporary figures. Students are also introduced to pre-Columbian art and architecture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Although Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s best-known and most beloved artists, his work is often reduced to simplistic notions of madness and genius. This course expands students’ understanding of the artist by exploring his connection to the contemporary contexts of mechanical reproduction, national identity, and urban culture.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1020 Or ARH2050 Or ARH3000-4994
Department: Art History
This seminar focuses on uses of history—as both subject and method—in art around the turn of the 21st century. Within a globally comparative frame, students investigate contemporary theories and practices that take stock of the past in order to reimagine the future at a moment when the world seems simultaneously more connected and more fractured than ever before.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1020 Or ARH2050 Or ARH2060
Department: Art History
Explores reciprocal influences of Western and non-Western art in the modern period. Topics include diverse artistic movements like “Orientalism,” “Japonisme,” and “Primitivism.” The class also examines the impact of non-Western art on specific artists, including Delacroix, Manet, Whistler, Picasso, and Pollock.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
This seminar delves into the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of museum and exhibition practices in the U.S., from encyclopedic museums to storefront galleries. In addition to classroom discussion, students visit arts institutions in the area to consider collection and exhibition-related issues and to learn more about the operational function and structure of museums.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
African art and visual culture are considered in the context of African film. African youth, who make up most of the continent’s population, have had a marked effect on many sociopolitical phenomena. The films screened address African youth culture and such issues as the new independence (1960s), post-apartheid South Africa, youth rebels, religious fundamentalism, HIV, hip-hop and digital culture, and global emigration.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The visual record of the production and consumption of food and drink are examined in this seminar. Topics include food in the still life, the representation of gluttony, and the prominent position of sacred feasts and food miracles in religious art. The primary focus is on Western art, but examples from other traditions are considered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994
Department: Art History
In this advanced lecture, the first wave of Gothic novels from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century is examined in relation to visual representations of issues that dominate Gothic discourse. Topics include horror, imprisonment, madness, gender, ghosts and vampires. Authors and artists studied include Austen, the Brontë sisters, Radcliffe, Collins, Blake, Fuseli, and Turner.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Do photographic images have privileged access to truth? This course explores the complicated relationship between truth and visual (particularly filmic) images. It begins with Plato on the “fakery” that is painting, turns to 17th-century “faithfulness” and “sincerity” in still-life painting and scientific drawing, and looks in depth at 20th-century writings about the nature of photography and realism in representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
What, if any, moral and political obligations does art have? Should public policy promote some kinds of art and discourage others? This course addresses these and related questions via works from across the arts and philosophical texts.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
In this survey of the historical significance of printmaking, the focus is on understanding the history of print media and its influence on culture in Europe, Asia, and the New World. Students explore both the history of printmaking and its intertwined relationship to the history of art. Of prime concern are the unique and distinct characteristics of each printmaking process.
The ability to express ideas clearly and effectively in writing is essential to success as a student and citizen.
Students learn and practice these skills throughout their academic career at Purchase College, beginning with College Writing (WRI 1110) in their first year. College Writing teaches students to:
produce strong written work at the college level
read and think critically
take a position and develop an argument of their own
research a topic and write a well-organized paper that develops their claims in dialogue with the sources
revise and improve their papers
present their ideas orally
College Writing is taught in small sections in a seminar/discussion format that requires students to achieve proficiency in speaking and listening as well as writing and reading.
Entering students may only be exempted from College Writing by achieving an AP score of 4 or higher. For additional information, refer to the College Writing AP policy for freshmen.
English as an Additional Language
Courses in English as an additional language (EAL) are also offered under the auspices of the college writing program.
Students receive supplemental instruction in critical thinking and writing, writing mechanics, organization, and style. They also learn techniques for effective workshopping and provide regular feedback on each other’s work.
Credits: 1
Department: Expository and College Writing
The ability to express ideas clearly and effectively in writing is essential to success as a student and citizen. Students learn and practice these skills throughout their academic career at Purchase College, beginning with College Writing. This is an intensive course that teaches students to:
produce strong written work at the college level
read and think critically
take a position and develop an argument of their own
research a topic and write a well-organized paper that develops their claims in dialogue with the sources
revise and improve their papers
present their ideas orally
Credits: 4
Department: Expository and College Writing
What makes a person an insider or an outsider? Beginning with personal experience and writing, students explore the ways in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class affect individual, communal, national, and transnational identity and belonging in American culture. In connecting multiple levels of experience, students engage in critical reading, research, analysis, writing, and revision, building on their strong skills in preparation for upper-level work.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: Or WRI1110
Department: Expository and College Writing
Though often seen as simply a test of students’ knowledge and ideas, essays go far beyond what is generally required in courses. Students in this course read and experiment with a wide variety of critical, journalistic, academic, personal, and experimental essay forms. In the process, they further develop their skills as critical thinkers and writers.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: WRI1110 Or WRI2110
Department: Expository and College Writing
In the personal essay, writers adopt distinct points of view, moving beyond the emotional to analytical and reasoned positions. Topics can include personal reflections, thoughts on daily life, art analysis, and political arguments. Students read and analyze contemporary essays and “workshop” each other’s writing. Requirements include attending instructor-supervised events (films, performances, guest speakers) outside of class for some writing assignments.
Credits: 4
Department: Expository and College Writing
English as an Additional Language
Students develop basic language skills through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. They learn components of academic writing, including paragraphs and thesis statements, and gain critical reading and analytical skills through work with basic texts. Students share ideas and experiences both verbally and in writing, and improve grammar and vocabulary through writing activities, academic exercises, and workshops.
Credits: 4
Department: Undeclared
Students gain advanced language skills through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Working with more advanced texts, they further develop critical reading and analytical skills. They gain experience with the essay form, and learn to write definition, process analysis, descriptive, and opinion pieces. Students share ideas and experiences both verbally and in writing, and continue to strengthen grammar and vocabulary.
Credits: 4
Department: Undeclared
Students develop advanced language skills through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Working with advanced texts, they further develop critical reading and analytical skills. They gain experience with academic writing, including cause and effect, comparative, narrative, and opinion pieces, and learn basic research skills. Students practice analyzing information and expressing ideas verbally and in writing, and continue to strengthen grammar and vocabulary.
The Lilly Lieb Port creative writing program is a highly selective and structured BA program that shares features of the college’s arts programs.
The purpose of this program is to offer motivated, talented, and committed students a dynamic context and community in which to explore all aspects of creative writing.
As an integral part of the program, readings are held each semester by students, faculty, alumni who have published their writing, and professional writers. Editors and other members of the publishing world are also invited to speak and share their expertise with students.
Italics Mine (italicsmine.com), a student-run literary journal under the stewardship of the creative writing program, showcases the talent and diversity of Purchase College students by publishing original art, fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in print and online.
Study Abroad Opportunities
Creative writing majors are encouraged to apply to the college’s summer program in France, where they will participate in an intensive writing workshop, drawing on explorations of the surroundings for material.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, creative writing majors must complete a minimum of nine courses and an 8-credit senior project (45–47 credits total) as follows. The foundation courses and the two genre courses must be completed with a grade of B or higher:
CWR 1000/Poetic Techniques: 4 credits*
CWR 1100/Narrative Techniques: 4 credits*
Two courses in the student’s chosen genre (poetry or fiction): 8 credits*
CWR 2400/Poetry Writing I and CWR 3400/Poetry Writing II
or
CWR 2500/Fiction Writing I and CWR 3500/Fiction Writing II
*Must be completed with a grade of B or higher.
Two upper-level creative writing electives from the list below: 8 credits
CWR 3200/Art of the Novella
CWR 3450/ Poets at Work: First Books
CWR 3110/Writing Home
CWR 3125/ Alternate Worlds
CWR 3215 and CWR 3220/ Editing and Production Workshop (year-long sequential course in Editing and Production).
CWR 4000/Special Topics in Creative Writing: 3 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Note: A semester of study abroad is strongly recommended.
Examples of Literature Courses
Literature courses that fulfill the requirement for the major are those in which a broad array of writers are studied. Courses in the following list are subject to change, and new courses may be added. Students should consult with their faculty advisor when choosing literature courses.
FRE 3230/The Island as Laboratory
LIT 2100/Freedom Dreams: Introduction to African American Literature
LIT 2235/Animals and the Environment
LIT 2305/Contemporary Global Literature
LIT 2570/Survey of U.S. Literature II
LIT 2775/From Beowulf to Lucifer
LIT 2776/Survey of British Literature II: From Patronage to Print Culture
LIT 3007/Visions of Dystopia
LIT 3082/19th Century British Literature and Empire
LIT 3095/Literature of Race and Human Rights
LIT 3160/Literature of the High Middle Ages
LIT 3226/Literatue of Decolonization in South Asia
LIT 3228/Decolonizing Sex and Gender
LIT 3315/19th Century Novel in the U.S.
LIT 3340/Romanticism II
LIT 3369/Victorian Poetry
LIT 3380/Harlem Renaissance
LIT 3415/Global Metafictions
LIT 3420/Modern Poetry
LIT 3427/20th Century World Literature
LIT 3532/Body, Race, Performance
LIT 3620/U.S. Poetry
LIT 3627/American Beserk: Religion, Drugs, and Terrorism in Recent Fiction
LIT 3665/American Women Writers
LIT 3685/Modern Novel of Latin America
LIT 3755/Poetry and the Avant Garde
LIT 3823/Anxiety and Monstrosity in Early British Literature
LIT 3950/Literature of War
LIT 4690/Contemporary U.S. Poetry
SPA 3700/The Latin American Short Story*
THP 3140/Medieval and Renaissance English Drama
*Taught in Spanish
Examples of Arts-Related Courses
Courses in the following list are subject to change, and new courses may be added. Students should consult with their faculty advisor when choosing arts-related courses.
ACT 3004/Creative Expression
THP 3050/ Voice and Speech Essentials
TDT 3008/Costume Design Seen Through Film
THP 3140/Transmedia and Performance
School of Art+Design: VIS 1060/ Foundation Drawing VIS 1330/ Lens and Time VIS 1080/ Visual Language SCP 2110/ Thinking in Three Dimensions SCP 3530/ Animation
SCP 3006/Introduction to Video Art*
SCP 3155/Performance Art
SCP 3650/Immersive Sound Architectures
VIS 3000/Art in the Age of Electronic Media
*Please note: this course only carries 2 of the required 3 credits
Sequence of Study
All creative writing majors follow a sequence of courses, whether their chosen genre is poetry or fiction:
To encourage an awareness of and sensitivity to the various aspects of the craft of creative writing, students are required to take the introductory courses, CWR 1000 and 1100, in their first year of study.
In the second year, poetry students move on to CWR 2400/Poetry Writing I, then to CWR 3400/Poetry Writing II, while fiction writing students take CWR 2500/Fiction Writing I, followed by CWR 3500/Fiction Writing II.
After completing this course sequence, students have the opportunity to study for one semester with a writer-in-residence. In addition, advanced tutorials are available on a regular basis, emphasizing continuous, close work on revision and editing skills. In the most advanced classes, students begin to explore the fiction and poetry market. A component of advanced study may also include experience in editorial and copyediting techniques as preparation for work in the publishing industries.
Students take CWR 4000/Special Topics in Creative Writing in the fall of their senior year, in tandem with the first semester of their senior project.
Updates to the 2020-21 Catalog
Effective Fall 2020:
CWR 3200 no longer satisfies the fiction genre course requirement
Arts-Related Courses list expanded beyond upper-level courses
Introduces the essentials of poetry writing, including poetic form and forms (traditional and unconventional), line structures and rhythms, figures of speech, and other elements of rhetoric, voice, and subject matter. Regular writing exercises are the heart of the course, emphasizing problems to solve and techniques to master. Reading and study of important poetic models accompanies the poetry writing. Students produce a portfolio of original poems by the end of the semester.
Credits: 4
Department: Creative Writing
This introductory course in creative writing allows students to explore various genres. Poetry, the short story, and memoir are among the forms discussed. Students should be prepared to write, revise, and share portions of their work with other members of the class, and to read a selection of works by contemporary authors.
Credits: 3
Department: Creative Writing
An introduction to the fundamental aspects of fiction writing, including dialogue, plot, point of view, character development, detail, and voice. Starting from a series of writing exercises and analyses of published stories, students explore the techniques involved in creating effective fiction, using these as a springboard to complete a short story.
Credits: 4
Department: Creative Writing
In this introduction to creative nonfiction, students explore a variety of forms within the genre, including personal narrative, memoir, reportage, and the lyric essay. Students also write and workshop their own original essays.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR1000 And CWR1100
Department: Creative Writing
Students begin to study and practice poetic strategies, producing a poem per week in response to assigned exercises. Students also develop skills in critiquing by commenting on each others’ work and by reading and discussing the work of established poets. Permission of Instructor required.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR1000 Or CWR1050
Department: Creative Writing
While continuing to explore narrative strategies, students write and submit several short stories during the semester. Students also learn the fundamentals of critiquing as they discuss their work and that of published writers. Permission of Instructor required.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR1050 Or (CWR1000 And CWR1100 )
Department: Creative Writing
Using the French location and selected readings related to the region, students explore the contexts and their responses through writing. Students meet at various locations, from castles and ruins to a local café, and receive writing assignments that draw on place and setting. Each week, students select one of their on-the-spot works to revise and develop into a short piece of fiction for submission. Emphasis is on capturing the nuances of one’s surroundings and experiences of these surroundings, and on how to use setting as a main “character“ in writing. Summer (offered in France)
Credits: 4
Department: Creative Writing
Often, to leave home is to truly see it. This course explores how writers craft “home” in their fiction. Whether crossing literal or figurative borders, the impulse for home is at the heart of character desire. Students will read the work of diverse writers as they write home in their own fiction.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR1100 And CWR1000 And CWR2500 And CWR3500
Department: Creative Writing
This writing workshop draws on a variety of texts, media, and film as students explore fictional portrayals of other worlds. In their writing assignments, students focus on elements that contribute to effective narratives—setting, character, situation, etcetera—in order to create alternate realities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR2500
Department: Creative Writing
What makes the novella work? What power does the form offer that the short story and longer novel do not? Is there a subject matter best suited to such brevity? Students examine these questions through close reading of works by new and established writers (e.g., James, Conrad, Moore), and begin to structure and write their own novella.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR2500
Department: Creative Writing
Students are guided through the classical questions of form and style, the building materials of the personal essay, through reading and writing assignments. Students examine the elements that convince the reader of the truth of their tales and explore how to confront their own experiences creatively. Readings are various, but with a focus on the 20th-century essay in English.
Credits: 4
Department: Creative Writing
Focusing on the art of editing, students learn best editing practices through a practical and historical context of the literary journal landscape in the U.S. Students apply their skills to editing content to be published in the creative writing program’s literary magazine, Italics Mine.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR1000 Or CWR1010 Or CWR1100
Department: Creative Writing
Through hands-on collaboration, students apply their editing skills to the production of the creative writing program¹s literary journal, Italics Mine. From shaping manuscripts to layout and design, marketing, and public relations, students work as editors on the publication of the journal.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR3215
Department: Creative Writing
This course assumes that students have a good command of basic poetic craft. Writing assignments put increased emphasis on students’ own work, though there are still exercises to guide the workshop, as well as study and discussion of poetry by established writers.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR2400
Department: Creative Writing
How does a poet’s attitude or stance towards her or his subject create tone or voice in a poem? In this workshop, students read and analyze a range of poetry to understand the linguistic and syntactic underpinnings of tone, including its relationship to line break and simile. Poets include Louise Gluck, Marie Howe, Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, Jane Kenyon, Brenda Hillman, Eamon Grennan, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, and T.S. Eliot.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR2400
Department: Creative Writing
Students interact with contemporary poets who have recently published their first poetry book or chapbook. Most classes are structured as a brief reading by and discussion with visiting authors. Topics include each author’s influences, how one assembles a collection, how manuscripts evolve over time, and the editorial/publishing process. Students read each poet’s collection and compose critical and creative responses.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: CWR1000
Department: Creative Writing
This course assumes a working knowledge of the craft. Students write and discuss short stories or chapters from a novel in progress, and continue to refine their critiquing skills through discussion of their own work as well as published stories. Revision of submitted work is an important component of this course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR2500
Department: Creative Writing
A series of mini-workshops, guest speakers, and activities focused on current trends in the field and on broader topics germane to students in their senior year.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: CWR3400 Or CWR3500 Or CWR3200 Or CWR3200
Department: Creative Writing
Taught by a well-published writer-in-residence. Students work intensively on revising and editing their own work and each other’s fiction, as well as on critiquing published stories and novels. The course also familiarizes students with the professional writer’s market and the submission process, in order to encourage each student to prepare at least one story for possible publication.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR3200 Or CWR3500
Department: Creative Writing
Advanced students with practiced skills in poetry writing and criticism work to produce poems of publishable stature. Students should be able to assume full responsibility for their creative process in this course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CWR3400
Department: Creative Writing
This course explores stories that employ alternative forms of narrative design (i.e. non-linear, episodic, parallel, multiple point-of-view) to establish form—the pattern of a story’s assembly, its arrangement and structure. Writers often think of plot as defining structure in a story. However, craft elements like point of view, tone, time, place etc. when employed structurally, can achieve meaning and design.
The goal of the history major at Purchase College is to provide students with the intellectual foundation of a liberal arts education that is suitable for a wide variety of professions, including law, education, government, business, journalism, and public relations.
The history curriculum seeks to foster the development of a historical perspective on the forces and processes that have shaped and continue to shape our communities, our country, and the world at large.
In keeping with the cultural resources of our area and the special profile of Purchase, the history program has generally, though not exclusively, emphasized the social, intellectual, and cultural dimensions of the historical discipline.
Students may define their area of interest within the major in terms of nine broadly conceived areas.
When appropriate, students may also pursue topics of special interest through tutorials and directed independent studies, which may be arranged with individual instructors.
Coursework in the history program includes intensive writing and an emphasis on primary source material, which can range from government documents to diaries, novels, and films.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all history majors must complete seven history courses, plus a junior seminar and an 8-credit senior project (37–40 credits total):
The broad survey courses at the 2000 level serve as the foundation for more specialized work at the 3000 level.
All history majors are required to take the Junior History Seminar in the spring semester of their junior year. This course is open exclusively to history majors.
All history majors will be assigned a senior project advisor by the end of their junior year, and are required to register with this advisor for 4 credits of senior project (SPJ 4990/Senior Project I) in the fall of their senior year, and 4 more credits (SPJ 4991/Senior Project II) in the spring of their senior year.
Areas of Interest
History majors normally take four or five elective courses that are clustered within an area of special interest to the student. At least three of these courses must be at the upper (3000–4000) level.
History majors must also take at least two or three elective history courses outside their area of interest. At least one of these must be at the upper (3000–4000) level.
The student’s area of interest within the major should be developed in consultation with a faculty advisor at the beginning of the junior year, and must be approved by the board of study. Normally, a student will select from among the following nine areas:
American history
Ancient and medieval history
Asian studies
Early modern history
European history
Jewish history
Latin American history
Modern history
Women’s history
Summary of Academic Requirements
A total of seven history courses, plus the junior seminar and the 8-credit senior project:
HIS —/Seven history courses as follows (25–28 credits):
a. Four or five history courses in an area of interest (including three at the 3000–4000 level)
b. Two or three history courses outside the area of interest (including one at the 3000–4000 level)
HIS 3880/Junior History Seminar (spring semester, junior year): 4 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Minor requirements:
The minor in history is designed for students who wish to supplement coursework in another major with an array of history courses.
It is particularly suited for students who have an interest in one period or a specific area (for example, early modern or modern history; European, American, or Asian history).
Students interested in the minor should consult with the coordinator of the History Board of Study and complete an Application for a Program of Minor Study. They will then be assigned an appropriate advisor to help plan their minor program.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in History
At least five courses, three of which must be at the 3000 level or above.
Introduces various aspects of Chinese culture (e.g., values, customs, manners, and festivals) and discusses everyday life in contemporary Chinese society.
Credits: 3
Department: History
An intensive focus on the intersection between cinema and history. Students examine the debates around cinema’s status as historical document, surveying different approaches to the relationship between cinematic formal traditions and social history. The course emphasizes the analysis of primary sources, such as reviews, posters, magazine and newspaper articles, personal correspondence, trade publications, and blogs.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: History
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Students discuss and analyze films in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: History
Historical trauma has characterized the 20th century. Traumatic events return in unexpected forms, haunting communities and shaping both collective memory and mourning practices. Taking a comparative approach across national cinemas, this course analyzes the historical context, style, and narratives of films that circle around the question of trauma. The course covers German, Israeli, Chilean, Japanese, Russian, and American cinemas.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The ancient world to the beginning of the modern world at 1500 AD: an amalgamation of Celtic, Jewish, Greek, Roman, and German historical traditions.
Credits: 4
Department: History
A study of texts and events that have shaped Western society and culture since 1500.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Combines a history of the discovery and excavation of famous archaeological sites worldwide with an introduction to archaeological methodology. Students explore the role that material culture plays in understanding social, political, and economic systems and examine the role of archaeologist as interpreter of the past.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Spotlights moments when history became the focus of wider social debate, including the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a trial involving Holocaust denier David Irving and an academic historian, and the debates that took place between historians concerning the invasion of Iraq. This course illustrates that, by reflecting on fundamental questions about history—how evidence is used, who has agency in history, how people make moral judgments—citizens are better equipped to confront contemporary political and social issues.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the history of the United States from European colonization and initial contact with Native Americans through the Civil War. Subjects include the diversity of settlement experiences; European-Native American relations; the development of slavery; the causes and consequences of the American Revolution; social, political, and cultural changes in the 18th and 19th centuries; the sectional crisis; and the significance of the Civil War.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Examines the history of the United States from Reconstruction through the end of the 20th century. Subjects include changes in race and gender relations; industrialization, urbanization, and suburbanization; the emergence of new social and political movements; the impact of war on American institutions; and America’s rise to world power.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Students explore objects, behaviors, and ideas to learn about the daily lives and worldviews of three foundational early American cultures: Native American, African American, and European. This course draws heavily on visual and aural materials as well as artifacts to illustrate the ideas and physical realities that shaped early American art and architecture, music, food, landscapes, domestic interiors, family relationships, and pastimes.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Dive into a more than 400-year study of “America’s First Great River.” Discover why, where, and how the Hudson River region has had—and continues to have—a vital role in shaping American history and society. The region’s history is examined through a selection of such themes as culture, exploration, art, literature, economics, industry, transportation, international relations, and the environment.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An introductory survey of the history of Latin America from colonial times to the present. Topics include geography, indigenous peoples, colonization and nation formation, society, politics, economy and culture of contemporary Latin America, and its place in today’s world.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Topics in history to be determined each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Explores major social, cultural, economic, and political developments in Latin America from the period following the Wars of Independence to the present. The historical roots of such problems as racism, persistent poverty, and political repression are examined, focusing on “subaltern” groups (e.g., peasants, workers, women, and people of color).
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, including those of Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. Students examine cultural, social, and political movements using texts as well as archaeology as sources.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines how early Jewish interactions with various cultures affected the development of Judaism. Interactions with Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Christian, and Muslim cultures are explored. Topics include conflicts with external powers, exile, and diaspora.
Credits: 4
Department: History
A survey of the history of Europe in the Middle Ages (1000–1400). Topics include the expansion of the frontiers of European civilization, the changing forms of intellectual and religious life, and the growth of towns and trade.
Credits: 3
Department: History
An introductory survey of the history of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization of the Americas from 1450 to 1810, i.e., from the late preconquest period to the Latin American struggle for independence. Lectures, readings, and discussions provide an overview of the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of colonization.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the origins of modern Europe from the Renaissance in Italy through the Protestant Reformation and the age of religious wars, using both primary source readings and secondary historical scholarship.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Focuses on the history of Latinos in urban centers across the U.S. and Latin America. Students explore how Latinos established and maintained distinctive social and cultural identities in the Americas. The historical definition of “Latinidad” is also discussed through the study of colonization, immigration, diaspora, globalization, and the history of the racialization of Latin American descendants.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the political and social transformation of Europe between the religious wars of the 16th century and the French Revolution. Topics include the growth of commercial capitalism and the scientific revolution.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Examines the history of Asia and its peoples’ interactions with each other and with other nations in the world, focusing on major issues in modern and contemporary times. Asian views and perspectives are introduced and discussed.
Credits: 3
Department: History
The invention of sound recording in the late 1800s caused profound aesthetic transformations in music. This course surveys the many styles that have swept through American music—from parlor songs, ragtime, blues, and brass band through R&B, top 40, heavy metal, rap, and hip-hop—and discusses the roles of rural and urban musical centers. Using the last 125 years of technological innovation in recording, students analyze the more significant cultural changes that continue to reverberate throughout American society.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores migration and immigration from 1830 to the present. Major subjects include Native American removal and genocide, the intersection of migration and slavery, immigration exclusion, and race and the making of illegal immigration. Students examine long patterns of U.S. legislative policies alongside on-the-ground experiences and reactions to migration and immigration. The course concludes with an analysis of immigration in the post-9/11 era.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Covers European institutions, traditions, economies, geopolitical boundaries, and the essential social and intellectual framework of the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. Critical changes and events covered include the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, Napoleon, the revolutions of 1848, romanticism, nationalism, and communism. Readings consist of extensive primary source materials in addition to secondary works.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Focuses on the prehistory of the Americas from the first peoples through 1492, beginning with the Ice Age cultures of the New World and moving forward chronologically. South, Central, and North American cultures are examined, including the Olmec, Woodlands, and Mississippi Valley cultures, pueblo culture, and the Maya, Aztec, and Inca.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the encounters and interactions of the major populations who lived on the landmasses rimming the Atlantic Ocean (native peoples, Africans, and Europeans) from 1450 to 1888. Topics include migration, religion, slaves and enslavement, lived lives and material culture, foodways and folkways, the age of revolutions, and the fight for abolition.
Credits: 4
Department: History
How are we to understand the century that has just ended? This course examines the political, social, and ideological forces that have shaped Europe since World War I. Special attention is paid to the impact of war and revolution, economic change, the Nazi dictatorship, the Cold War and its demise, and the changing role of Europe in world affairs.
Credits: 3
Department: History
In this examination of the turbulent decade of the 1960s, students explore key social, political, economic, and cultural issues of the era. Specific topics include various struggles for civil rights and social equality; the escalation of the U.S. presence in Vietnam; the sexual revolution; the vision and limitations of the Great Society; and the rise of the New Right.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Covers the experience of American women from colonial times to the 20th century, from political, social, religious, cultural, and economic points of view.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Covers the history of Brazil from independence to the present. During this period, Brazil has transformed from a colonial, agrarian, slave society to a predominantly urban, industrialized nation and an aspiring world power. Students explore slavery, racism, urban life, immigration and industrialization, changing gender roles, political repression and military rule, carnaval and popular culture.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An introduction to modern Japanese history, from the end of the Tokugawa period in the mid-19th century to the present. Japanese imperialism, Japan’s spectacular economic growth after World War II, and U.S.-Japanese relations are discussed.
Credits: 3
Department: History
A survey of social, economic, and political history from the ratification of the Constitution through the “crisis” of the 1890s. Topics include republicanism and competing visions of “America”; economic development and class conflict; slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; continental expansion and the settlement of the West; and urbanization and the origins of consumer culture.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Explores African civilizations from the ninth millennium BCE to the 16th century CE. The diverse regions of ancient Africa are studied using archaeology, written and oral history, linguistics, art, and science, following cultural development in simple societies, states, and empires. Ancient Africa is presented in global context in terms of past civilizations but also in modern scholarship, identity, and popular media.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Covers the history and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Topics include Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period, Etruscan civilization, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, Roman interactions with neighbors, the birth of Christianity, and the early years of the Byzantine Empire. This course also addresses how to read primary sources, the historiography of antiquity, and how to use archaeological sources.
Credits: 4
Department: History
How was the Holocaust possible in the 20th century? This course responds to the question by examining specific issues: German anti-Semitism; Hitler’s rise to power; the genocide process; responses to Nazism and the news of the Holocaust in Jewish and international communities; resistance and collaboration; and theological and moral questions.
Credits: 4
Department: History
A survey of Chinese arts and culture that introduces approaches to and connoisseurship of painting, calligraphy, sculpture, gardens, and architecture in dynamic relation to dynastic changes, literati-scholar tradition, cosmological and aesthetic concepts, and influences of Taoism and Buddhism during the period 221 BC to 1950. Knowledge of Chinese language is not required or expected.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Investigates the fascinating and complex social, economic, cultural, and political history of South Asia, focusing primarily on the Mughal Empire, British colonial rule in India, and the contemporary nation-states of India and Pakistan. Course materials include introductory history texts, speeches, primary source documents, photographs, musical clips, recipes, short stories, and films.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Examines the histories of China, Japan, and Korea from the disintegration of the traditional order through the transition to modern nation states. Asian views and perspectives are introduced and discussed.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Considers the profound influence Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have exerted on the social, cultural, and political history of the East and the West. This course examines the historical developments, tenets, and scriptures of the three religions.
Credits: 3
Department: History
Cinematic representations of Latinos and Latinas are explored as crucial elements in the configuration of “America” as a national community, taking into account key historical moments in the relationship between the United States and Latin America.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Public history—history museums, historic houses and landscapes, objects, documentary films—reaches and educates millions of Americans. Students explore how these experiences evolve through time and take part in activities related to handling and interpreting the past. Hands-on learning projects and several off-campus lectures at local historic sites are a critical dimension of this course.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s. Topics include Prohibition; the New Morality; fundamentalism; the KKK and immigration restriction; African American migration and culture; causes and social effects of the Great Depression; FDR and the New Deal; popular culture; radical challenges; the coming of World War II.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines European social, political, and cultural developments since the 1950s through history, sociology, literature, and film. Themes include the Cold War, the evolution of the Common Market, youth, women and feminism, consumerism, immigration and labor migration, national identity, attitudes towards America, and Germany and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the founding and development of the British colonies in North America and the causes of the American Revolution. The course considers the political, social, religious, and institutional history of colonial America through 1783.
Credits: 4
Department: History
In recent years, a growing number of cultural historians have taken inspiration from psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explored whether emotions have a history and, in turn, make history. Studying diaries, memoirs, and personal letters alongside normative and public texts such as advice literature, scientific works, and court cases, students assess how shifting ideas and experiences of emotions have affected individuals¹ self-understandings and provoked wider social change.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Focuses on the relationship between cities, urban life, and form, and the construction of social and political rights in the Americas. The emphasis is on how cities and citizenship are mutually constituted historically, looking at ideas and policies that regulate the city, and how urbanites produce and consume urban space and claim their rights as citizens and urban residents.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Is the United States now, or has it ever been, an empire? Students explore this question and others as they examine diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural aspects of U.S. foreign relations since the Spanish American War in 1898. The lecture/discussion format draws upon fiction, films, and other images, as well as traditional historical writing.
Credits: 4
Department: History
A narrative survey of U.S. history from the colonial period to the present through an exploration of its musical history. The course investigates America’s fundamental principles of politics, its primary social issues, and its wealth of aesthetic musical initiatives. Students examine the unity, diversity, originality, and adaptability of significant political, social, and musical institutions.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An overview of the development and tradition of Chinese cinema through representative screenings of important films from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Students gain a comprehensive understanding of the historical and political context(s) that informed the creation and reception of these films and learn critical scholarly terminology and historical issues related to the analysis of Chinese film.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the main historical events in the Mediterranean area from late antiquity through the Renaissance. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born here, and the diverse peoples and cultures around its shores competed for intellectual and political dominance. These interactions resulted in the legacy of beliefs and institutions at the core of Western culture, including some issues still unresolved today.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An exploration of the relationships between orthodox religions and heretical sects in the medieval West and how heterodoxy evolved into the witch-craze of the early modern period. Questions of gender, spirituality, repression, and interpretation are examined in light of their effects on society and established religion. Focuses are on Islamic, Jewish, and Christian relations in medieval Europe; the development and perception of certain heretical sects; the discernment of saints and spirits; Protestant and Catholic Reformations; and the persecution of witches.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines how war changed gender relations in 20th-century Europe. For instance, how did mobilization reinforce or undermine masculine and feminine norms? How did total wars that blurred the line between fighting front and home front challenge notions of chivalry and turn noncombatants into warriors of sorts? Did new job opportunities outweigh the trauma and grief suffered by women during wartime?
Credits: 4
Department: History
A team-taught course in British society and cultural development from World War I to the present, examined from the different perspectives of literature and history. Topics include war and social change, construction of class and gender, evolution of the state, intellectuals and politics, popular culture since 1945, feminism, and immigration and race. Readings in history and the works of such authors as Virginia Woolf are complemented by the viewing of films.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the history of American Jewry from its beginnings to the present, touching on such topics as integration into American society, formation of Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, evolving religious traditions, cultural clashes, cultural issues involving various waves of immigration, the evolving role of women, Jews and entertainment, and economic and political issues.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An exploration of gender issues in the ancient world. Beginning with the ancient Near East and the biblical world in particular, students discuss portrayals of women, as well as their actual roles in society. Using textual and archaeological evidence, the course branches out to the related cultures of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An exploration of the peoples, religions, cultures, places, and monuments of the land of Israel. Home to three major world religions, the land has been embraced, fought over, and conquered repeatedly throughout history. Why? Students explore the reasons for Israel’s prominence and discover how its position and importance in the worldview is constantly being reinvented.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The historicity of the Hebrew Bible is explored, from the protohistory of the Israelites as related through the Pentateuch and early prophetic works, through the period of the Monarchies, to the 6th-century B.C. exile, the birth of early Judaism, and the books of prophets and writings. Issues relating to historiography and biblical criticism are essential elements in this course.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Major trends in the intellectual history of Europe from the latter part of the 17th century through the end of the 18th century, including changing perceptions of the relationship of the individual (male and female) to society, in the context of social change.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An introduction to the history and culture of New York City. New York’s colonial origins, its critical role in the American Revolution, and its 19th-century ethnic and social conflicts are studied. Secondly, the evolution of the city’s dynamic growth in the 20th century and the impact of 9/11 are examined. Lastly, the image of New York City as portrayed in literature and film is explored.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Decades after its end, the legacy of the Vietnam war—America’s second longest war and a defining episode in its history—is still felt and hotly debated. Using documents, memoirs, fiction, poetry, song, and film, this course explores the war’s origins, development, ultimate conclusion, and aftermath, while paying special attention to those who experienced it both “in country” and at home.
Credits: 4
Department: History
A comparative view of revolutions and revolutionaries in 18th-century America, France, Britain, and Holland. Both documents and secondary literature show the origins and development of democratic revolutions.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explore the vast experiences of women in medieval Western Europe from the end of the Roman Empire (500) to the beginning of the Early Modern Era (1500). Students will analyze both societal expectations and the daily realities of what it meant to be a woman in rural villages, larger towns, in religious and secular spheres, in the home and outside it, as marginalized members of society and as major political actors. Sources of study will include recent historiography on women’s history in medieval Europe, modern feminist theory, and primary source materials such as legal and religious writings, literature, and proscriptive manuals on running a household.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the role of Chinese literature in relation to politics. Readings include masterpieces of modern Chinese literature in translation and a couple of typical “propaganda pieces.” The class also sees, discusses, and compares several Chinese films.
Credits: 4
Department: History
A general historical survey of the relations between the United States and East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam) from the mid-19th century to the present. The course examines the roots of the diplomatic, political, and cultural interactions and conflicts across the Pacific Ocean.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The historical relationship of Judaism and Christianity and the encounter of the Jewish and Christian communities from ancient to contemporary times are examined. Topics include the split between the two religions in late antiquity, medieval disputations, and the challenges of the modern period. Students also examine the varying ways in which texts can be interpreted.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the relationship between politics and archaeology. Topics include who owns antiquities; fakes, forgeries, and the manipulating of history; presentations of archaeology to the public; buying, selling, and auctioning of antiquities; and archaeology in wartime. The geographic range of topics includes Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Syria, and other countries in region, as well as Greece and Rome.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Students explore the underlying historical narratives of films from 1930 to 1960 that address topics from early America. These narratives are compared to the ways Hollywood recast historical lessons to suit modern circumstances and to promote “American values” challenged by economic depression and the rise of fascism and communism. Special emphasis is on the works of Ford and Capra.
Credits: 4
Department: History
History of U.S.–Latin American relations from the mid-19th century to the present day. It explores how Latin America and the Caribbean became the object of US intervention into the region’s realities and how Latin American societies involved into nationalist, anti-imperialist, class, racial, and gender struggles that shaped policy outcomes in ways unanticipated by the US.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An exploration of the legacies of imperialism through the dual perspectives of history and literature. Readings include literary and historical texts, films, and essays that illuminate the key terms: global, empire, and modern.
Credits: 4
Department: History
European cultural and intellectual history are examined by focusing on three “storm centers of modern culture”: Paris in the 1860s and 1870s, fin de siècle Vienna, and Berlin in the 1920s. Topics include representations of bourgeois society in art and literature; psychoanalysis; and the auditory and visual revolution in mass culture produced by film, radio, photography, and recorded sound.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Analyzes political, social, and cultural developments in 19th-century England through a wide variety of historical, literary, and other contemporary writings.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Introduces students to cultural and political history in Latin America from the end of World War I to the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. Focusing on the role of intellectuals, students explore debates on nationalism, immigration, culture, modernization, and development in the context of the consolidation of new Latin American states, the Alliance for Progress, the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions, and the student and guerrilla movements.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An exploration of Native American life before 1492, using books, documentaries, and films. Topics include the rise and fall of native cultures in the Americas, commerce, politics, economics, agriculture, and urbanization. The focus is on institutions, values, and interrelationships among people across the Americas, and the accomplishments and influences of individual civilizations on the history of the Americas.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Twentieth-century social, political, and cultural life in France and French (ex-) colonies in the Caribbean and Africa are examined through history, literature, and film. Topics include Paris as an intellectual center, France under German occupation, modernization and consumerism, family life and gender roles, decolonization, and multiculturalism and changing definitions of what it means to be French.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the origins, course, and legacy of World War II in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. Topics include the expansion of German and Japanese power; war economies; occupation, resistance, and collaboration; genocide and atomic warfare; the shaping of a postwar order; and the construction and significance of personal and collective memories of wartime. Sources include film and fiction as well as historical readings.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the political culture of Germany after World War I. Topics include culture and ideology during the Weimar Republic, the lives of Hitler and other leading Nazis, racial policies, the structure of the Nazi regime, and the creation of a “New Order” in Europe. The course explores changing historical interpretations of the Third Reich and recent scholarly controversies, including debate about the relationship between memory and history.
Credits: 4
Department: History
This course will explore German politics, society, and culture from the 18th century to the present. Through history and literature, the course examines themes like the creation of a unified state, the two world wars unleashed from German soil, the rise and fall of Nazism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the division into two states during the Cold War, and the role of reunified Germany in today’s Europe.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the political and cultural history of modern Italy, charting Italy’s emergence as a modern nation and its subsequent reinvention as a fascist society. The rise and fall of Christian democracy, the building of the European Union and the impact of Americanization feature in the second half of the course. Another prominent theme is Italian migrations across Europe and the Americas.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines some of the political, social, and economic transformations in the United States between 1877 and 1945. Topics include immigration, the expanding international role of the U.S., reform movements, urbanization, and technological change. Analysis of a range of primary sources, from paintings to film, is emphasized.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The meaning of freedom and citizenship is a central theme in this examination of the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the lives of African Americans since the end of the Civil War. Topics include Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights and black power movements.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The social, political, economic, and cultural development of Ireland from 1610 to the present is examined. Topics include the effects of conquest and land confiscation, survival techniques, the creation of Anglo-Irish society, the rise of nationalism, the legacy of the Great Famine, the Celtic cultural revival, the cost of Irish independence, and the emergence of the “Celtic Tiger.”
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines transformations of Chinese society and culture since the early 19th century. Themes include the impact of the West; the rise of Chinese nationalism; modernization, reforms, and revolution; and rapid economic growth in the 1990s.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The Civil War was arguably the most controversial and traumatic event in American history. This course considers how and why the war developed, its long-term results, and why it is such an important part of America’s cultural heritage. Through an examination of novels, films, diaries, and letters written by Civil War participants, students analyze the impact of this war and our continuing fascination with it.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The influence of warfare is arguably the least understood aspect of human history; too often, war is considered like a sporting event—teams, winners, and losers. Students critically examine the effects of warfare on U.S. history in the 20th century. Topics include how militarization and “modern” warfare influence American society and shape its history.
Credits: 4
Department: History
While many African-descended peoples throughout the world identify with a particular nationality—being Brazilian or Cuban, for example—many have also forged connections with each other across national boundaries and have recognized commonalities that transcend national contexts. To comprehend their shared experiences, students explore the history of the linkages created by Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-North Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries, using fiction, memoir, and recent historical scholarship.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines crucial factors that shaped the U.S. from the ratification of the Constitution to the Compromise of 1850, a period that witnessed the spread of democracy, the development of capitalism, and the expansion and consolidation of slavery in the South. Special emphasis is placed on race and class, technological developments, and the period’s influential movements and personalities.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the development of popular culture and the major cultural industries in the U.S. from the early 19th century to the present. Students are also introduced to theoretical approaches to popular culture and learn how to apply these tools to selected texts from various periods and media.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Introduces the largest unit of political organization, the empire, and its early appearances in various regions of the world. The focus is on Akkadia in Mesopotamia, Egypt’s New Kingdom, the Qin Dynasty in China, and the Inca Empire in South America (also known as the Inka Empire). The course reviews theories of sociopolitical organization and development drawn from anthropological archaeology, economics, ecology, and political science.
Credits: 4
Department: History
This study of African history addresses the continent’s geography and how it has affected Africa’s place in history, the rise and fall of civilizations, Islamic/Arab influences, European colonization, independence movements, and current challenges. In particular, students examine the slave trade and its effects on African societies, colonial domination, and the rise of nationalist movements.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines conflicts and controversies over the issue of American identity from the early 19th century to the present, emphasizing the links between Americanism and “whiteness.” Students explore how immigrants and people of color contested their exclusion from the symbolic national community, and how these groups have been incorporated into a larger national community during the last century.
Credits: 4
Department: History
The history of the American West is surveyed from its beginnings to the present. The focus is interdisciplinary: art, the popular novel, film, and historical documents are examined as a way of understanding the role of the West in the American mind. Writing is an integral part of the course.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the responses of European intellectuals to the Russian Revolution, Great Depression, spread of fascism, two world wars, and genocide. Themes include: the ideological conflict between communism, fascism, and democracy; race and empire; attempts to rethink socialist and capitalist economics; and reappraisals of human nature and modern progress in the light of the savageries unleashed in these decades.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An examination of American society, culture, and politics from World War II to the present. Topics include the Cold War, Vietnam, and the rise of a global order dominated by America; economic development and its social and cultural consequences; movements of the 1960s and their legacy in American politics; and the triumph of conservatism and emergence of a “postliberal” era.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Examines the new historiography on gender and sexuality in Latin America. It is organized around the themes of changing gender roles and shifting constructions of masculinity, femininity, and honor, with particular attention to issues of sexuality, sexual preferences, constraints, and transgressions.
Credits: 4
Department: History
An examination of the interplay of class, race, gender, and status in the Atlantic world from 1500 to 1860. Students are introduced to the ideas, beliefs, and formal philosophies that defined who were “haves” and “have nots” and explore the ways in which these notions were questioned and eventually challenged.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Combines classroom learning with practical experience. Lectures, discussions, and reading in urban, regional, and local history alternate with library and on-site archival education. Students spend half the semester on campus and half the semester at the Westchester County Archives.
Credits: 4
Department: History
This reading-intensive seminar traces the history of feminist movements in the U.S. and Europe from the 18th century to the present and also examines postcolonial global feminisms. Students are expected to master the basic historical narrative of Western feminist movements and to wrestle with the questions of race, class, and region that postcolonial feminist movements have raised.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: HIS1000-1994 Or HIS2000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994 Or GND1000-1994 Or GND2000-2994 Or GND3000-3994 Or GND4000-4994
Department: History
Explores the place of women in Western society, from ancient Greece to the 17th century. The roles covered range from the prescribed (wife and mother) to the actual (intellectual and worker). Lectures are supplemented by discussion of primary sources.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores the place of women in European society, from the Enlightenment through the 20th century. Topics include the emergence of a women’s movement, the effects of industrialization on women, and the impact of both democratic and totalitarian regimes on women. Lectures are supplemented by discussion of primary sources.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Explores traditional Chinese civilization, including the shaping of the strong imperial tradition; Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism; arts and literature; and China’s relations with other Asian countries before the modern age.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Develops students’ interviewing and interpretive skills in the field of oral history. Students learn the theory and methodology and work on a final research project that seeks to bring forward the voices of those frequently excluded from more typical historical sources. Students also learn to produce archival quality interviews, and the final project includes some form of public presentation.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Students read selections from the works of major historians and examine new techniques and methodologies. Designed to help juniors prepare proposals for their senior projects. Required for junior history majors and intended exclusively for them.
Credits: 4
Department: History
Meeting at the Academy of Drama in Prague, students study and perform plays by Václav Havel, the dissident playwright imprisoned during the Communist era who became president of the Czech Republic. Students explore political and cultural contexts of theatrical performance, enhanced by meetings with theatre professionals and visits to sites relevant to the intersection of artistic creation and political revolution.
Jewish Studies courses explore the Bible, the history and archaeology of ancient Israel, the ancient Middle East, Jewish history, Israel studies, Holocaust history, philosophy, literature and Hebrew language.
Course materials extend from antiquity to the contemporary. The approach is interdisciplinary and involves the faculties of History, Literature, and Language and Culture, in the School of Humanities. Students in any discipline may minor in Jewish studies, or students may major in History and choose Jewish history as their area of interest.
This program was originally made possible, in part, by a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Minor requirements:
The minor in Jewish studies is designed to provide students with a general introduction to the history and culture of the Jewish people through a combination of courses in Jewish history, literature, and philosophy, and in the Hebrew language.
Students interested in the minor should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. The student is assigned a minor advisor after consultation with the faculty coordinator of the Jewish studies program.
For students interested in majoring in History with a concentration in Jewish history, please go to the History Board of Study
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Jewish Studies
Five courses, selected from Jewish history, Jewish literature in translation, or Hebrew language, in consultation with the faculty coordinator of the Jewish Studies program.
For beginning students and those with rudimentary training in Hebrew. The course stresses reading, writing, and speaking by involving students in situations that concretely express the concepts of the language.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
A continuation of HEB 1010. Students increase their fluency and confidence in comprehension through discussions of simple stories and increased grammar drill. Situations are presented and discussed in Hebrew.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: HEB1010
Department: Jewish Studies
Readings of adapted short stories and essays stimulate class discussion in Hebrew and provide the context for increased vocabulary and written drills. Attention is given to grammar and style.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: HEB1020
Department: Jewish Studies
A conversational Hebrew course that allows students to acquire fluency in spoken Hebrew. Reading, writing, grammar, syntax, and conversation in modern Hebrew are emphasized.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Explores the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, including those of Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. Students examine cultural, social, and political movements using texts as well as archaeology as sources.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Examines how early Jewish interactions with various cultures affected the development of Judaism. Interactions with Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Christian, and Muslim cultures are explored. Topics include conflicts with external powers, exile, and diaspora.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
How was the Holocaust possible in the 20th century? This course responds to the question by examining specific issues: German anti-Semitism; Hitler’s rise to power; the genocide process; responses to Nazism and the news of the Holocaust in Jewish and international communities; resistance and collaboration; and theological and moral questions.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Considers the profound influence Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have exerted on the social, cultural, and political history of the East and the West. This course examines the historical developments, tenets, and scriptures of the three religions.
Credits: 3
Department: Jewish Studies
Explores the history of American Jewry from its beginnings to the present, touching on such topics as integration into American society, formation of Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, evolving religious traditions, cultural clashes, cultural issues involving various waves of immigration, the evolving role of women, Jews and entertainment, and economic and political issues.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
An exploration of gender issues in the ancient world. Beginning with the ancient Near East and the biblical world in particular, students discuss portrayals of women, as well as their actual roles in society. Using textual and archaeological evidence, the course branches out to the related cultures of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
An exploration of the peoples, religions, cultures, places, and monuments of the land of Israel. Home to three major world religions, the land has been embraced, fought over, and conquered repeatedly throughout history. Why? Students explore the reasons for Israel’s prominence and discover how its position and importance in the worldview is constantly being reinvented.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
The historicity of the Hebrew Bible is explored, from the protohistory of the Israelites as related through the Pentateuch and early prophetic works, through the period of the Monarchies, to the 6th-century B.C. exile, the birth of early Judaism, and the books of prophets and writings. Issues relating to historiography and biblical criticism are essential elements in this course.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
The historical relationship of Judaism and Christianity and the encounter of the Jewish and Christian communities from ancient to contemporary times are examined. Topics include the split between the two religions in late antiquity, medieval disputations, and the challenges of the modern period. Students also examine the varying ways in which texts can be interpreted.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Explores the relationship between politics and archaeology. Topics include who owns antiquities; fakes, forgeries, and the manipulating of history; presentations of archaeology to the public; buying, selling, and auctioning of antiquities; and archaeology in wartime. The geographic range of topics includes Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Syria, and other countries in region, as well as Greece and Rome.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Critics agree that the world of the concentration camps and ghettoes is impossible to duplicate on stage. Despite serious aesthetic and practical constraints, playwrights in Europe, Israel, and America have, for the last five decades, created a diverse group of plays dealing with this unprecedented 20th-century event. Works examined in class include documentary dramas, realistic reenactments, absurdist plays, a comedy, and a standup routine.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Beginning as a response to the immigrant experience, writing by American Jews emerged as a central literary presence and the inspiration for important films. This course traces the evolution from early writers such as Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska, through major figures such as Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and I.B. Singer, to their contemporaries and heirs, including Stanley Elkin, Joseph Heller, Cynthia Ozick, and Grace Paley.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Explores a variety of literary and cinematic works that depict the conflicting points of view and the varied interests of contemporary Israeli and Arab writers and filmmakers. Students learn the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and then explore a variety of issues relating to it by reading the work of Amos Oz, David Grossman, Mahmood Darwish, and others. Films include Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, 2005) and Lemon Tree (Eran Riklis, 2008).
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Focuses on a variety of writings (memoirs, letters, fiction, poetry), theatre, and films depicting the Yiddish world of the Lower East Side, home to more than two million Eastern European Jewish immigrants between 1880 and 1920. Readings include selections from the work of a variety of authors, from Yiddish newspapers, films, and other cultural materials.
Credits: 4
Department: Jewish Studies
Examines philosophers’ efforts to rethink fundamental ethical, legal, and political issues in the wake of total war and totalitarian domination in Europe between 1914 and 1945. Focusing on Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, questions about resistance, complicity, guilt, and punishment become central. Additional texts are selected from Jaspers, Beauvoir, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Adorno, and Butler.
The journalism major at Purchase College is designed to provide students with the intellectual bases and skills to gather, assess, and disseminate information and ideas.
This equips students for careers in journalism and a wide variety of other fields, including law, government, business, and public relations. The program fits naturally in the School of Humanities, as journalism at its best exemplifies the open and honest inquiry that marks the liberal arts and sciences.
Students are offered a central set of skills courses in journalism, electives in specialized areas in a variety of media, and courses that explore the broader context of journalistic practice. Students also take advantage of the broad offerings of Purchase College, and are encouraged to have internships. The studies culminate in a senior project, an extended work that allows students to showcase the full range of their talents.
Facilities
Purchase students produce journalism in a variety of computer labs using equipment consistent with industry standards. Journalism majors work in a dedicated suite in the Humanities Building that offers an integrated newsroom, broadcast studio, and control room with up-to-the-minute technology.
Our proximity to New York City, the media capital of the world, has enabled students to land internships with such varied media outlets as NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, MSG, Marie Claire, and the Daily News. In essence, we strive to offer our students whatever they need to produce and promote excellent work. Chief among these things is a core set of journalistic practices and principles that remain steady even as the technology changes.
These two introductory courses are the only journalism courses open to freshmen.
JOU 1500/Introduction to Media: 3 credits
JOU 2150/History of Journalism: 3 credits
II. Central Courses: 22 credits
JOU 2515/Journalism I: 4 credits*
JOU 2915/Journalism II: 4 credits*
JOU 3080/Freedom and the Media: 4 credits
JOU 3880/Junior Seminar in Journalism: 2 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
*Students must earn a minimum grade of C+ in JOU 2515 and 2915, which must be taken initially and in sequence.
III. Journalism Electives: 10–12 credits
Three journalism electives, chosen from the list below. For students who begin the major from fall 2020 onward, at least one of the three electives must be a practical course in visual journalism (denoted by an asterisk).
Please note: New courses may be added to this list. Students should check with their faculty advisor to determine if a new course is an appropriate elective.
COM 3375/Podcasting and Audio Storytelling
JOU 1120/Journalism and Film
JOU 3040/Race, Gender, and the Media
JOU 3100/Photojournalism*
JOU 3120/First-Person Reporting
JOU 3130/News Documentary (added Spring 2017)
JOU 3160/Broadcast News I*
JOU 3170/Broadcast News II
JOU 3200/Feature Writing
JOU 3220/The Art of Sportswriting
JOU 3230/The Beat of Music Journalism
JOU 3350/Community Reporting
JOU 3374/The Literature of Journalism
JOU 3500/Multimedia Tools*
JOU 3600/News Editing
JOU 3780/Criticism/Reviewing Workshop
JOU 4010/Covering the Arts
JOU 4020/International Issues Reporting
JOU 4150/Investigative Reporting
JOU 4320/Broadcast Writing
LIT 3635/Reviewing the Contemporary Novel
PHI 3085/Objectivity
IV. Other Studies
Five electives in one area of study within the liberal arts and sciences, chosen in consultation with the faculty advisor. (Many students will find it appropriate to earn a minor.) The per-course credits vary, but the credit total is typically 18 to 20. A minimum of 9 credits must be upper-level.
Updates to the 2019-20 College Catalog
Added the practical course in visual journalism elective requirement for students who begin the major from fall 2020 onward.
Minor requirements:
The minor in journalism is designed for undergraduate students in all disciplines at Purchase College who are interested in the field of journalism.
Graduate of the Naval School of Photography, Defense Information School of Photojournalism, and the U.S. Navy-sponsored military photojournalism program, Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.
MS, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Courses
Students will learn different styles of podcasting, best practices for developing and pitching a show, how to use professional audio recorders, basic audio editing techniques with Adobe Audition and how to build an audience and distribute a podcast once it’s complete.
Credits: 3
Department: Journalism
An exploration of journalism through famous films. Students screen a variety of films that investigate different aspects of journalistic practice—from classic shoe-leather reporting to high-stakes investigations aimed at uncovering political malfeasance and corruption. The course also covers everyday challenges of the craft, from developing sources to navigating ethical dilemmas and the ever-increasing demand to meet deadlines and make headlines.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Today’s media are placed in historical, cultural, and economic context. Students explore the concept of media literacy, and then delve into specific media platforms, including newspapers, magazines, the Internet, radio, TV, and movies. The class also examines the spin-off industries of advertising and public relations.
Credits: 3
Department: Journalism
Covers the history of journalism with an emphasis on American journalism after 1900. Students examine the objectives of journalism, styles of writing and coverage, and the shape and impact of the industry in various periods. Recent developments are studied with an eye toward how they fit into historical contexts.
Credits: 3
Department: Journalism
In this introductory course, students learn the fundamentals of reporting and writing news stories, focusing on the skills that form the basis for newspaper, magazines, broadcast, and Web-based journalism. Students also learn AP (Associated Press) style and proofreading and examine broader issues, such as ethics, the impact of the media, and libel.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Students build on skills developed in JOU 2515 and delve into more specific areas of coverage called “beats.” Students who complete JOU 2515 and 2915 may be eligible for semester-long internships at local publications.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515
Department: Journalism
Students explore the region to produce journalistic reports that include writing and photography. Assignments include stories on challenges facing a French family, implications of a French political issue, a social issue, and a travel piece. The goal is for students to write as a foreign correspondent, conveying the community’s views, struggles, sights, and sensations to an audience back home. (offered in France, Summer)
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Students are introduced to documentary techniques as they explore the region through their digital cameras. Topics include environmental portraiture, landscape, and feature photography, among others. France’s rich contributions to documentary photography and the “decisive moment” are discussed. Students shoot and produce a photo story on the community, culture, and environment of the region. Open to beginning and advanced photography students. (offered in France, Summer)
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Examines the relationship between the media and social constructions of race, gender, and class, both in the U.S. and within a global context. Topics include biases and assumptions in print and visual media; representations of masculinity and femininity; and the media’s role in creating and reinforcing ideas, symbols, and ideologies within cultures. Text analysis includes newspapers, magazine articles, cartoons, television, movies, and advertising.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Examines the historical, philosophical, and legal bases for freedom of speech and of the press in the U.S. and the practical application of these principles to print, broadcast, and online media today. Topics include the First Amendment, libel, privacy, government regulation, news gathering, and journalism ethics. Not recommended for freshmen or sophomores.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Students build on skills acquired in previous journalism classes as they explore in depth the various interviewing techniques for print, broadcast, and online media. Students critique each other’s work and critically dissect published articles and broadcast interviews. They report and write their own in-depth profiles with an eye toward publication in professional or student publications or broadcast outlets.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
A basic course in the use of photography for journalistic purposes. Topics include how to shoot news events, feature photo shoots, cropping, and the use of computer technology.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Students build on the skills acquired in JOU 2515 and 2915 as they discuss, critique, write, revise, and edit first-person reporting. This is a writing-intensive course; students work on developing a point of view and voice and craft material that resonates with the reader. They are also expected to be active peer-editors of their classmates’ work.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Documentaries are supposed to provide a factual record, but do they? In this course, students analyze, critique, and deconstruct documentary films, and discuss the evolution of the genre. Historical context, aesthetics, and ethics are examined. Students look at the emerging fault lines in the documentary format, where it has become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between news and entertainment.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Students learn about business and economic news through reporting, writing, and reading, and establish an understanding of the four core elements of business journalism: the economy; the financial world; the consumer; and government regulation/policy. Students familiarize themselves with the language of corporations and the financial markets, and learn how to write clearly for any audience.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Building on the foundations of JOU 2515 and 2915, this hands-on course enables students to make the transition from reporting for print and online publications to reporting for radio and television news broadcasts. Students gain experience shooting, writing, and editing television news stories and are introduced to the basics of live television studio production. Recommended prior course: JOU 3500.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Students further their development as broadcast journalists through class exercises, field assignments, and in-studio productions, serving as reporters, anchors, producers, and directors for a campus television news and feature program. Strengthening broadcast writing skills and polishing on-air delivery are emphasized.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU3160 Or JOU3150
Department: Journalism
An advanced course focusing on longer and more complex reporting and writing techniques for newspapers, magazines, and other types of publications.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515 And JOU2915
Department: Journalism
In this overview of national sports journalism, the craft is explored through extensive reading of eminent sports writers and the history of the art, as well as intensive writing. Special emphasis is placed on thorough reporting, the craft of interviewing, writing on deadline, and producing prose written in a distinctive voice.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Explores the craft of journalistic writing about various musical genres, including rock, hip-hop, punk, heavy metal, classical, R&B, and jazz. Readings include notable works of music journalism in print and on the web. Students write articles on the genres of particular interest to them. This course is suitable for both specialized (journalism and music) and general audiences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Students report on communities surrounding the college, with an emphasis on Port Chester, in collaboration with Casa Purchase. Includes résumé-building opportunities to get work published in local news outlets on such topics as immigration, social justice, public safety, sports, housing, education, politics, business, volunteerism, lifestyles, and college issues.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Students look at the evolution of long-form journalism of postwar America, roughly defined as 1946–1980. Works include Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, John Hersey’s Hiroshima, and the magazine writing of Lillian Ross, Alex Haley, Joan Didion, and Gay Talese. The class also explores more recent authors, such as Isabel Wilkerson and Rachel Aviv, and the influences of the digital age.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
An introduction to issues and developments in multimedia journalism. Students critique and create stories for publication online, learning how to assemble story packages that combine media elements, including text, video, audio, and images. Includes some exploration of the use of social media and other techniques to promote stories. May be taken concurrently with JOU 2515 or 2915. Completion of JOU 3500 is strongly recommended before taking JOU 3160.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515
Department: Journalism
Covers the art of editing, from breaking news to features in special styles. Students work intensively on improving writing, expanding knowledge of word crafting, and producing tight prose. The relationship between reporters, editors, and decisions about news judgment is examined. An essential course for writing-based careers.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515
Department: Journalism
An introduction to styles of criticism and a practical course in writing short, critical essays (reviews) on the performing and visual arts. On-campus plays and films are assigned; students write about theatre, film, music, dance, painting, and other art forms.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515
Department: Journalism
The goal of this seminar is to equip students with the skills needed to complete a successful senior project, and guide them in choosing a topic and format to research and report in depth. Students look at career options in journalism, do a résumé and job-hunting workshop, and discuss internships. Required for journalism majors.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Using the college’s wide array of cultural activities as material, students learn to bring immediacy and depth to their reporting on entertainment and the arts. The course begins with a study of the form and function of various disciplines as a basis for this reporting.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515 And JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Examines the methods of international affairs journalism, how international issues and organizations are covered, and the innovative ways in which local reporters can reach out to bring the world closer to their readers. Students produce stories that illuminate connections between nearby neighborhoods and faraway lands. Limited to students who have declared a major or minor in journalism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
Building on skills from Multimedia Tools, students approach video in a photojournalistic style. They learn to identify interesting characters with remarkable stories. In nonnarrative video storytelling—where students capture vérité scenes and create cinematic sequences—the focus is on having people tell their stories in their own words. This personal approach allows the viewer to relate and to emotionally engage.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU3500 Or JOU3160
Department: Journalism
Student reporters learn to develop the investigative state of mind needed to change public opinion and influence policy making. Working individually and in teams, students use documents, databases, official records, and human sources to probe social justice issues, expose official hypocrisy, and ferret out corruption, waste, and inefficiency in government and other institutions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2915
Department: Journalism
An introduction to the contemporary novel and the art and practice of book reviewing. Students read exemplary novels (e.g., Cloud Atlas and Netherland); they read exemplary book critics (e.g., Zadie Smith and James Wood); and they write their own exemplary reviews of contemporary fiction. Writing assignments range from blog posts to newspaper-style reviews and magazine-style essays.
Credits: 4
Department: Journalism
Though often seen as simply a test of students’ knowledge and ideas, essays go far beyond what is generally required in courses. Students in this course read and experiment with a wide variety of critical, journalistic, academic, personal, and experimental essay forms. In the process, they further develop their skills as critical thinkers and writers.
Knowledge of foreign languages and an awareness of other cultures are of critical importance in today’s world, in which international communication is instantaneous and events taking place at great geographical distances have immediate global repercussions.
The language and culture program offers students the opportunity to acquire fluency in at least one language and to gain familiarity with the society (or societies) in which that language is used. Keeping in step with the increasingly complex interactions among countries, the program also allows students to explore a diversity of cultures through the wide choice of courses that fulfill requirements for the major.
Modern languages are taught through an approach that immediately involves students in oral interactions in the target language, while developing their linguistic and cultural awareness. Beginning French and Spanish courses also include interactive language labs. As students acquire fluency, they are introduced to varied aspects of the language’s cultural context. These include courses in civilization, translation, literature, and history.
Foreign Language Placement
All students are required to complete a foreign language placement exam before enrolling in any language course. Faculty members monitor their class lists to ensure that students have taken the exam and are enrolled in the appropriate level.
Study Abroad Opportunities
Students are strongly encouraged to participate in the college’s study abroad programs. These interdisciplinary programs include courses that fulfill requirements for the major in language and culture and/or core curriculum requirements.
demonstrate proficiency in one foreign language by completing, with a grade of B or higher, a 3000 or 4000 level course conducted in the major language.
complete the Translation Workshop in the selected language with a grade of B or higher. For those concentrating in French, LAC 3430/An Introduction to Linguistics can be substituted for this requirement in semesters the Translation Workshop is not being offered.
complete a minimum of eight courses related to the study of foreign culture; courses in the two previous categories are included. Four of these eight courses must be related to the specific cultural area of the major language. The eight courses may include relevant courses offered by other departments such as Literature, History, Political Science, Art History, Anthropology, etc with the approval of their major advisor.
Students may replace three of the eight courses described above with courses in a second language. To exercise this option, students must complete at least two semesters of the second language at the advanced level or above. Beginning languages may not be counted toward the completion of this option.
complete a two-semester, 8-credit senior project: SPJ 4990/Senior Project I (4 credits), followed by SPJ 4991/Senior Project II (4 credits). The project must have as its focus some manifestation of the major language or culture that the student has selected. It may take a variety of forms, concentrating on aspects of the major language, on a cultural theme, or on a particular period or event. It will generally involve research, though it may incorporate the student’s personal experience (e.g., work or study abroad). All majors must submit a short proposal of their senior topic for approval by the Language and Culture Board of Study by Oct. 15 (or March 15) of their senior year.
A comprehensive introduction to American Sign Language (ASL), beginning with a focus on the linguistic aspects of ASL, including syntax, facial expression, vocabulary, and the manual alphabet. Students progress to conversational signing and finger spelling and develop an ability to communicate on a beginning level.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
In this continuation of American Sign Language I, emphasis is placed on conversational signing, syntax, and facial expression. Students are introduced to classifiers and directional verbs, and develop an ability to communicate on an intermediate level.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ASL1000
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had little or no previous exposure to the language. Introduces the basics of pronunciation and of the structural and writing systems of standard modern Chinese (Mandarin Chinese).
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of CHI 1010. Increased time is devoted to reading and writing. Development of oral skills remains the primary object of the course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHI1010
Department: Language and Culture
Introduces various aspects of Chinese culture (e.g., values, customs, manners, and festivals) and discusses everyday life in contemporary Chinese society.
Credits: 3
Department: Language and Culture
Designed for students who have completed CHI 1010 and 1020 or the equivalent. Consolidates the foundation that students have acquired through previous coursework and introduces more complex grammatical structures and background cultural information.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHI1020
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of CHI 2010. Consolidates the foundation that students have acquired through previous coursework and introduces more complex grammatical structures and background cultural information.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHI2010
Department: Language and Culture
Designed for students who have completed CHI 2010 and 2020 or studied the language for at least two years. Consolidates the knowledge and skills acquired through previous coursework and enhances reading, writing, and oral-expressive skills.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHI2020
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of CHI 3010, designed for students who have completed five semesters of college-level Chinese or the equivalent. Consolidates the knowledge and skills acquired through previous coursework and enhances reading, writing, and oral proficiency.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHI3010
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had little or no previous exposure to the language. Presents the essential structures of spoken and written French by involving the student in situations that concretely represent the concepts of the language.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of FRE 1010. Increased time is devoted to reading and writing. The development of oral skills remains the primary objective of the course.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students who are already familiar with the fundamentals of spoken and written French. Through a variety of written and oral assignments and exercises, students acquire a wider range of vocabulary, review basic structures, and become more comfortable interacting in spoken French. Students are encouraged to take risks and enjoy the adventure of language acquisition in an open and relaxed atmosphere.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of FRE 2010. Concentrated work to help students acquire more nuanced vocabulary, with an introduction to slang. Students gain greater ease in reading through a variety of texts of increasing difficulty. The readings also serve as a basis for discussion, composition, and grammar review.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students who are already familiar with the fundamentals of French; placement in FRE 2070 or 3070 is determined by a brief exam. Designed to help students quickly acquire the ability to negotiate their immediate surroundings using the French language. Elements of grammar and syntax are introduced, reviewed, and complemented by readings from newspapers and other sources relevant to everyday life. Taught in French, with emphasis on the spoken language. (Offered in France, Summer)
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Offers a stress-free learning atmosphere to help students of French move toward fluency. Starting with a brief refresher on the basics through interactive situations in the classroom, students go on to invent situations, then perform, write about, and discuss them, increasing their command of the language and their comfort level in using it.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
In this continuation of FRE 3015, readings, writing, and conversational exercises are used to improve fluency in the French language. A variety of media are used to stimulate discussions. To increase their comfort level and command of French, students invent dramatic situations in the classroom that they perform, analyze, discuss, and debate.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A study of major developments in French Caribbean literature of the 19th through 21st centuries. This course focuses on questions of language, race, gender, geography, and class, with emphasis on local, regional, and global frames of reference.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students who are already familiar with the fundamentals of French; placement in FRE 2070 or 3070 is determined by a brief exam. Uses material like television, magazines, newspapers, and literature to help students increase their knowledge of the language while introducing the various aspects of French life. Students also review and refine their knowledge of grammatical structures and work toward becoming familiar with idiomatic language and slang. Taught in French, with emphasis on the spoken language. (Offered in France, Summer)
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Islands, because of their size and supposed isolation, have been the site of environmental and military experiments. Similarly, writers have used the island to build a textual laboratory in order to test their philosophical and narrative experiments. In this course, students will look at novels (including graphic novels) to examine this scientific, military and narrative instrumentalization of the island.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
An examination of the short fiction form, including novellas and stories, from tales of adventure to modern psychological fiction. The course begins with the realists, then moves through the surrealists, existentialists, and “nouveau roman” authors. Texts include works by Balzac, Nerval, Flaubert, Desnos, Camus, Sarraute, Colette, and Duras.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: FRE3015
Department: Language and Culture
How does the cinema adapt a text, and what are the questions underlying these semiological, ideological, or technical choices? Students read the literature (i.e., Cyrano de Bergerac, Madame Bovary) and view the films. Although this course is taught in English, the films are in French, and students who can read the literature in French are encouraged to do so.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Students are introduced to the theory of translation, as it has developed over time and has dealt with questions from linguists, poets, anthropologists, and gender theorists. Taken in conjunction with FRE 3735.
Credits: 2
COREQ: FRE3735
Department: Language and Culture
Students produce, refine, evaluate, and reflect on translations from French to English and English to French. Particular emphasis on the translation of fiction and poetry. Taken in conjunction with FRE 3730.
Credits: 2
COREQ: FRE3730
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had little or no previous exposure to the language, and for students who are majoring in language and culture. Presents the essential structures of spoken and written German by involving the student in interactive situations.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of GER 1010. Increased time is devoted to reading and writing. Development of oral skills remains the primary objective of the course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: GER1010
Department: Language and Culture
For beginning students and those with rudimentary training in Hebrew. The course stresses reading, writing, and speaking by involving students in situations that concretely express the concepts of the language.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of HEB 1010. Students increase their fluency and confidence in comprehension through discussions of simple stories and increased grammar drill. Situations are presented and discussed in Hebrew.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: HEB1010
Department: Language and Culture
Readings of adapted short stories and essays stimulate class discussion in Hebrew and provide the context for increased vocabulary and written drills. Attention is given to grammar and style.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: HEB1020
Department: Language and Culture
A conversational Hebrew course that allows students to acquire fluency in spoken Hebrew. Reading, writing, grammar, syntax, and conversation in modern Hebrew are emphasized.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Explores major social, cultural, economic, and political developments in Latin America from the period following the Wars of Independence to the present. The historical roots of such problems as racism, persistent poverty, and political repression are examined, focusing on “subaltern” groups (e.g., peasants, workers, women, and people of color).
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Explores the political and cultural history of modern Italy, charting Italy’s emergence as a modern nation and its subsequent reinvention as a fascist society. The rise and fall of Christian democracy, the building of the European Union and the impact of Americanization feature in the second half of the course. Another prominent theme is Italian migrations across Europe and the Americas.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
While many African-descended peoples throughout the world identify with a particular nationality—being Brazilian or Cuban, for example—many have also forged connections with each other across national boundaries and have recognized commonalities that transcend national contexts. To comprehend their shared experiences, students explore the history of the linkages created by Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-North Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries, using fiction, memoir, and recent historical scholarship.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had little or no previous exposure to the language. Presents the essential structures of spoken and written Italian by involving the student in situations that concretely represent the concepts of the language.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of ITA 1010. Increased time is devoted to reading and writing. The development of oral skills remains the primary objective of the course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ITA1010
Department: Language and Culture
For students already familiar with the fundamentals of spoken and written Italian. After a review of grammar through various reading assignments, students are given a context for discussion to increase vocabulary and speaking ease. Weekly compositions aid grammar review.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ITA1020
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of ITA 2010. Weekly compositions serve as an aid for grammar review.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ITA2010
Department: Language and Culture
For students already familiar with the fundamentals of spoken and written Italian. Particular attention is given to conversation, encouraging the student to communicate in Italian. Various authentic materials (newspapers, videos, audio cassettes) are used to facilitate this process. (Offered in Italy, Summer)
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had at least four semesters of college Italian or the equivalent. Through selected readings on a variety of topics, students explore the more complex aspects of the Italian language. Discussions and written work based on the readings help students attain a higher level of fluency. (Offered in Italy, Summer)
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
An introduction to the study of syntax and its relationship to interpretation and meaning (semantics). Data from English and other languages are used to illustrate the basic principles and parameters that govern language facility. The course progresses from an introduction of the basic notions of syntactic theory to more complex phenomena observed in the world’s languages.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
The literatures of former French colonies are deeply concerned with questions of space: territory, displacement, indigeneity and migration. This course analyzes recurrent spatial tropes (the island, the plantation, the border, etc.) in the French-language literatures of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and Africa to see how received notions of space, including literature as textual space, are reinvented.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
We will look at French-language texts from the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Africa. Emphasis will be on transnational conflicts and solidarities. Texts will be read and taught in English, but French majors and minors are encouraged to read the texts in the original French.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A survey of various teaching methods in second language instruction. Students become familiar with the theories of language learning that underlie these methodologies. Open to all students interested in second language teaching methods.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
An introduction to the study of linguistics, with a focus on Spanish. Students examine the theoretical aspects of numerous subfields of linguistics—phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax—and begin to apply this knowledge to the fields of dialectology and sociolinguistics. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
An introduction to basic linguistic concepts, providing a background for understanding how language works and is used in everyday life. Topics include core areas of linguistics (e.g., phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics) and more applied areas of language study (e.g., sociolinguistics and second language acquisition).
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Designed to develop students’ skills for the formulation, proposal, research, and execution of individual research projects
Credits: 2
Department: Language and Culture
Centers on a close reading of Don Quixote, with attention to other works of Cervantes and to his importance to European narrative as a whole.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had little or no previous exposure to the language. Presents the essential structures of spoken and written Portuguese by involving the student in situations that concretely represent the concepts of the language.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of POR1010. Increased time is devoted to reading and writing. Development of oral skills remains the primary objective of the course.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: POR1010
Department: Language and Culture
Introduction to the sociology of memory, focusing on the United States and Latin America. Topics include memory and the nation, memory and race, memory, gender, and sexuality, the politics of memory, memory tourism, memorials, museums, and memory in art and popular culture.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or PSY1530 Or ANT1500 Or HIS1200 Or HIS1600
Department: Language and Culture
For students who have had little or no previous exposure to the language. Presents the essential structures of spoken and written Spanish by involving the student in situations that concretely represent the concepts of the language.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
A continuation of SPA 1010. Increased time is devoted to reading and writing. Development of oral skills remains the primary objective of the course.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For students already familiar with the fundamentals of spoken and written Spanish. Through various reading assignments, students are given a context for discussion to increase vocabulary and speaking ease. Weekly compositions serve as an aid for grammar review.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Concentrated work to help students acquire more specialized vocabulary, with an introduction to slang. Students gain greater ease in reading through a variety of texts of increasing difficulty. These texts also serve as a basis for discussion, composition, and grammar review.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
For native speakers of Spanish who have had little or no formal training in the language. The focus is on expanding each student’s ability to read and write fluently, in preparation for the challenges of upper-level Spanish courses.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Summer (offered in Spain)For students who need to review and extend the fundamentals of spoken and written Spanish. Particular attention is given to developing fluency in conversation, increasing understanding, encouraging students to communicate in Spanish, writing clear Spanish, and reading original materials like advertisements and magazines. Various authentic materials (audio cassettes, newspapers) are used to facilitate this process.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Introduces students to the more complex aspects of the language, while promoting oral and written fluency through a variety of materials. Excerpts from novels, plays, poetry, periodicals, and films are used to promote classroom discussions with active student participation. Frequent oral presentations and weekly compositions required.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Summer (offered in Spain)For students who have had at least four semesters of college Spanish or the equivalent. Through selected readings on a variety of topics, students explore the more complex aspects of the Spanish language. Discussions and written work based on the readings help students attain a high level of fluency.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Spain and Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Films are discussed and analyzed in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
In this creative writing course, students write in Spanish in a variety of genres (dramatic dialogues, short fiction, and poetry). Style, dialogue, characterization, structure, and mood are explored through writing exercises and the analysis of different Latin American writers. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Conducted entirely in Spanish, this course focuses on reading, researching, and analyzing a variety of texts and consists primarily of literary, philosophical, and social discussions in the target language. It is designed to facilitate, improve, and develop reading and analytical skills as well as students’ confidence in their ability to speak Spanish in public. In addition to the extensive class discussions, students read two novel-length books and write two short essays in Spanish. Taught in Spanish
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
The history of Hispanic poetry is examined through readings of its major poets from the Middle Ages through the modern period. Taught in Spanish
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Students study essays, films, and short fiction in Spanish to advance their knowledge of Hispanic cultures and to develop advanced skills in conversation, reading, and composition.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Students explore the various languages and cultures that exist in Spanish-speaking countries. In general terms, the course is structured in two blocks: (1) Iberian Peninsula, pre- and post-Indo-European invasion; and (2) Latin America, pre- and post-Spanish invasion.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
An introduction to the structural analysis of Spanish, focusing on grammar, morphology, and syntax. Students examine the set of structural rules governing the composition of words (derivational and inflectional morphology) and phrases (constituents, word order, sentence structure).
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
An introduction to the thought, art, and history of Spain from the Middle Ages to the Baroque through close readings of major literary texts. Readings include the medieval epic (Poem of the Cid), the traditional ballad (Romancero), the early novel (La Celestina, Lazarillo de Tormes), Cervantes, and the classic theatre. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Major literary and social movements of 19th- and 20th-century Spain: Romanticism, the realist novel, the generations of 1898 and 1927, and the Civil War are central. Authors include Bécquer, Galdos, Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, and Lorca. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Major novels of 20th-century Latin America and their literary and social contexts. Authors include Guiraldes, Carpentier, Cortàzar, and García Márquez. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SPA3015
Department: Language and Culture
Who had the idea to name part of the world “Latin America”? What makes it “Latin”? Who has an interest in this definition? Who is included and who isn’t? This course asks these questions and others through readings of texts by Bolívar, Martí, Mariátegui, and others.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Selected examples drawn from the significant number of Latin American writers who have made some of their most interesting contributions in this short form. Selected works from 19th- and 20th-century writers are read closely. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
In this examination of the modern theatre of Spain and Latin America, students read and analyze plays from Spanish-speaking countries in their aesthetic and cultural contexts. When possible, students perform scenes from some of the plays.
Credits: 4
Department: Language and Culture
Students are introduced to the theory of translation, as it has developed over time and has dealt with questions from linguists, poets, anthropologists, and gender theorists. Taken in conjunction with SPA 3735.
Credits: 2
COREQ: SPA3735
Department: Language and Culture
Students produce, refine, evaluate, and reflect on translations from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. Particular emphasis on the translation of fiction and poetry. Taken in conjunction with SPA 3730.
Credits: 2
COREQ: SPA3730
Department: Language and Culture
Begins with a brief presentation of some theoretical aspects of translation, after which students become directly involved in translating both from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English. Literary texts representing a wide variety of styles are selected. Particular attention is given to idiomatic aspects of each language.
The minor in Chinese is designed to provide students with basic knowledge of written and spoken modern Chinese, and to introduce them to the culture, politics, and literature of Asian countries.
Students interested in the minor should submit a complete Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. The student is assigned a minor advisor in Chinese after consultation with the appropriate faculty.
The minor in French is designed to provide the student with basic fluency in spoken and written French and to provide a general introduction to the culture and literature of France and the Francophone nations.
Students interested in the minor should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. The student is assigned a minor advisor in French after consultation with the coordinator of the Language and Culture Board of Study.
Minor requirements:
Academic Requirements for the Minor in French
Five courses in French (20 credits), as follows:
Two courses must be chosen from advanced-level French courses.
One course must be in cultural studies:
ARH 2050: Introduction to Modern Art, 4 credits
ARH 3510: 19th Centrury Art, 4 credits
ARH 3630: French Art from LaTour to David, 4 credits
HIS 3380: Paris, Vienna, Berlin, 4 credits
HIS 2330: Atlantic World, 4 credits
CIN 3420: Contemporary European Cinema, 4 credits
CIN 3550: Francophone Cinema, 4 credits
CIN 3835: André Bazin, Realism, and Cinema, 4 credits
CIN 3855: French Cinema, 4 credits
CIN 3857: Contemporary French Cinema, 4 credits
CIN 4210: Theory and Praxis: Welles and Resnais, 4 credits
LIT 3680: Surrealism and its Legacy, 4 credits
PHI 2060: Existentialism, 4 credits
PHI 3470: Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, 4 credits
The remaining two courses must be chosen from various courses in French and in translation.
Students majoring in any discipline may pursue a minor in Italian, which is designed to provide the student with basic fluency in spoken and written Italian and a general introduction to Italian culture.
Students who complete the minor in Italian should achieve proficiency in the language equivalent to ITA 2020/Intermediate Italian II. All students interested in Italian are strongly encouraged to participate in the college’s summer study abroad program in Italy.
Students interested in the minor should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. The student is assigned a minor advisor in Italian after consultation with the coordinator of the Language and Culture Board of Study.
Minor requirements:
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Italian
Five courses, as follows:
ITA 1010/Beginning Italian I
ITA 1020/Beginning Italian II
ITA 2010/Intermediate Italian I
ITA 2020/Intermediate Italian II
One elective course related to Italian studies, chosen in consultation with the minor advisor
The minor in Spanish is designed to provide the student with basic fluency in spoken and written Spanish and a general introduction to the culture and literature of Spain and Latin America.
Students who complete the minor in Spanish should achieve proficiency in the language equivalent to SPA 3015/Advanced Spanish. All students interested in Spanish are strongly encouraged to participate in the college’s summer study abroad program in Spain.
Students interested in the minor should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. The student is assigned a minor advisor in Spanish after consultation with the coordinator of the Language and Culture Board of Study.
The minor in linguistics is designed for students who are fascinated by language.
Linguistics investigates language as a self-contained system (sounds, words, sentences), as a component of culture and society, and as a cognitive and neurological operation of individuals. It also intersects with a range of academic disciplines whose subject matter, in one way or another, involves language. Therefore, this minor is particularly valuable for students whose primary field of study is language, sociology, anthropology, music, psychology, philosophy, or literature.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Linguistics
Five courses (19–20 credits), as follows:
LAC 3430/An Introduction to Linguistics
And four electives, chosen from the following: Anthropology:
ANT 2175/Language, Culture, and Society Language and Culture:
FRE 3730/Translation Theory and FRE 3735/French Translation
LAC 3000/Syntax and Semantics
LAC 3360/Methods of Language Teaching (formerly LAC 3350) LAC 3400/Introduction to Spanish Linguistics (added Spring 2018) SPA 3450/The Structure of Spanish: Grammar, Morphology, and Syntax
SPA 3730/Translation Theory and SPA 3735/Spanish Translation Philosophy:
PHI 2120/Methods of Reasoning Psychology:
PSY 3320/Language and Thought
PSY 3490/Development of Language (added Spring 2018)
Note: FRE 3730 and 3735 count as one elective and must be taken together. Likewise, SPA 3730 and 3735 count as one elective and must be taken together.
The major in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies at Purchase College is designed as a multidisciplinary immersion experience that prepares students for life in a globalized world.
Along with an introductory course on Latin American history, students are required to take courses in at least two different disciplines, drawing from courses on or related to Latin America in the social sciences, the humanities, or the arts. All students are required to have or to attain language proficiency, defined as the equivalent of five semesters in Spanish, French, or Portuguese.
Experiential learning is a central and distinctive feature of this major: all students fulfill this requirement by completing a service-learning project or an internship in a local Latin American/Latino community, school, or nonprofit, or through a study abroad program. Students synthesize this experiential learning with the knowledge gained from their coursework in an in-depth, two-semester senior project.
Graduates of this program will be able to demonstrate knowledge of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx history, geography, cultural traditions and innovations, political structures, and social issues and will possess an in-depth awareness of Latin America’s diversity as well as its role in global processes.
What can you do with a degree in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies?
Opportunities exist in a wide variety of fields, nationally and internationally. In a world that is increasingly transnational and cross-racial, individuals with a solid knowledge of Spanish, French, and/or Portuguese and an understanding of Latin American and Latino history and major contemporary issues, including immigration, are needed for this century’s jobs and careers.
In addition, with Latin American immigrant communities increasing in number throughout the U.S., there is a broad range of career and volunteer options available. Internationally, options include positions in government and in nongovernmental for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Students are also encouraged to double-major in another program to increase their opportunities after graduation.
Program Name Change
Effective February 2020, the Latin American Studies program was renamed Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies majors must complete the following requirements (37–43 credits):
Foreign language proficiency
This major requires proficiency in Spanish, French, or Portuguese, equivalent to five semesters of the language. Students can fulfill this proficiency in any of the following ways:
through an exemption based on an assessment of proficiency in Spanish, French, or Portuguese by a member of the faculty
through successful completion of a course conducted in Spanish or French at or above the advanced language level
through successful completion of the minor in Spanish or French
HIS 1600/Introduction to Latin American Studies: 3 credits
Six approved electives in Latin American and Latino studies (18–24 credits)
Students must take six approved electives that are directly related to Latin America or Latino studies, as outlined below. Up to four credits of an advanced-level language course may be used toward this requirement. Approved courses offered in the target language in which the main focus is on literary, cultural, or historical subject matter are not subject to the four-credit restriction.
Two electives chosen from courses in anthropology, environmental studies, political science, and/or sociology
Two electives chosen from courses in language and culture, history, and/or literature
Two electives chosen from courses in art history and/or cinema studies
Students should consult with their faculty advisor to determine if a course from another discipline is an appropriate elective.
One of the following methods courses: 4 credits
SOC 3405/Research Methods
ANT 3560/Fieldwork: Qualitative Methods
HIS 3880/Junior History Seminar
Or a designated upper-level course in the humanities or the arts that provides senior project preparation, to be chosen in consultation with the faculty advisor
Experiential learning—one of the following: 4 credits
LST 3050/Experiential Learning in Latin American Studies
LST 3995/Internship in Latin American Studies
Or an approved study-abroad program
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Art History (School of Humanities):
ARH 3335/Latin American Art in the Age of Globalization
ARH 3815/Mexican Art From the Revolution to the NAFTA Era
ARH 4590/Pre-Columbian Aesthetics in Modern Latin American Art
Cinema Studies (School of Film and Media Studies):
CIN 3000/Cinema and Revolution
CIN 3080/Mexican Cinema
CIN 3245/Latin American Cinema
Economics (School of Natural and Social Sciences):
ECO 2223/Economies of Latin America
Environmental Studies (School of Natural and Social Sciences):
ENV 3420/Tropical Ecosystems
French (School of Humanities):
FRE 3067/French Caribbean Literature
FRE 3230/The Island as Laboratory
LAC 3340/Postcolonial French-Language Literature
History (School of Humanities):
HIS 2005/Modern Latin America
HIS 2170/Colonial Latin America
HIS 2215/Latinos and Cities in the Americas
HIS 2540/Society and Culture in Modern Brazil
HIS 3005/Representations of Latinos and Latinas in American Film, 1930–2000
HIS 3085/Cities and Citizenship in the Americas (added Fall 2018)
HIS 3395/Nation and Revolution in Latin America
HIS 3555/African Diasporas in the Americas
HIS 3625/Slaves and Enslavement in the Americas
HIS 3685/Sex and Gender in Latin America
HIS 3855/Oral History Workshop
Literature (School of Humanities):
LIT 3685/Modern Novel of Latin America
Music (Conservatory of Music):
MTH 2230/World Music and Jazz Traditions
Political Science (School of Natural and Social Sciences):
POL 3130/Immigration: Policies, Problems, and Politics
POL 3300/Development and Politics of Latin America
POL 3307/Politics and Memoir
POL 3340/U.S./Latin American Relations
POL 3361/Cuba, Latin America, and the U.S.
POL 3570/Human Rights
Sociology (School of Natural and Social Sciences):
SOC 1030/Cultural Activism in Latin America
SOC 3056/Global Social Movements
SOC 3661/Border Wars and Transnational Human Rights
SOC 3725/Globalization, Culture, Social Change: Latin America
Spanish (School of Humanities):
SPA 3211/Spanish and Latin American Cinema
SPA 3365/Languages and Cultures of Spanish-Speaking Countries*
SPA 3370/Lettered Cities: The Literatures of Latin American Cities
SPA 3630/The Modern Latin American Novel*
SPA 3687/The Idea of Latin America
SPA 3700/The Latin American Short Story*
*Taught in Spanish
Theatre and Performance (Conservatory of Theatre Arts):
THP 3650/Contemporary U.S. Latino Theatre
Updates to the 2019–20 College Catalog:
Effective February 2020, the Latin American Studies program was renamed Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies.
Minor requirements:
The minor in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies is designed to provide students with a basic interdisciplinary grounding in the culture, history, and politics of Latin America.
Students interesting in pursuing this minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study. Because new courses may be added to the curriculum from time to time, students should also consult with the coordinator of the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies program.
Recommended: Basic Spanish
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies
Five courses, as follows:
HIS 1600/Introduction to Latin American Studies
Plus four electives in Latin American studies
Elective Courses
Examples of elective courses available for the minor in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies are listed under the academic requirements for the major.
Alex Gordon Curator of Art of the Americas, Neuberger Museum of Art
MA, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
BA, MA, PhD, University of Montreal
Courses
Focuses on contemporary Latin American artists working in and out of Latin America: Gabriel Orozco, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Adriana Varejao, Teresa Margolles, Carlos Garaicoa, Betsabeé Romero, Javier Tellez, Nadín Ospina, Tania Bruguera, and Nicolás de Jesus. Students analyze the way these artists address such questions as urban violence, social inequality, pollution, emigration, and national identity.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
A broad look at modern and contemporary Mexican art, using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. Special emphasis is on the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and its aftermath throughout the 20th century. Students analyze links between the visual arts (including mural painting, prints, and photography) and the literature, the popular scene and the mainstream, the street art and the gallery art.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Since the late 1800s, pre-Columbian art and history have inspired Latin American artists. This course investigates that phenomenon through an in-depth study of the work of individual artists, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as more contemporary figures. Students are also introduced to pre-Columbian art and architecture.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Third cinema was a movement proposed by Latin American directors in the 1960s and further developed by African directors in the 1970s. It addresses important questions about independent national cinemas, colonialism, race, and identity. This course examines the movement and its global influence, with emphasis on the cinemas of Latin America, Africa, black Britain, and American minorities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Latin American Studies
A survey of the history of Mexican cinema from the early 1930s to the present. Students examine popular genres like la comedia ranchera (Mexican cowboy musical), el género cabaretil (dancehall film), and el cine de luchadores (wrestling film) as well as the work of the most prominent Mexican filmmakers (e.g., Arturo Ripstein, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Nicolás Echeverría, María Novaro, Guillermo del Toro).
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Students discuss and analyze films in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510
Department: Latin American Studies
An overview of economic conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on competing strategies for national and regional development. Topics include the consequences of the region’s deepening immersion in the global economy; its investment, trade, and labor-market ties to the U.S. economy; and the roots of its principal socioeconomic conflicts.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
A study of major developments in French Caribbean literature of the 19th through 21st centuries. This course focuses on questions of language, race, gender, geography, and class, with emphasis on local, regional, and global frames of reference.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
An introductory survey of the history of Latin America from colonial times to the present. Topics include geography, indigenous peoples, colonization and nation formation, society, politics, economy and culture of contemporary Latin America, and its place in today’s world.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Explores major social, cultural, economic, and political developments in Latin America from the period following the Wars of Independence to the present. The historical roots of such problems as racism, persistent poverty, and political repression are examined, focusing on “subaltern” groups (e.g., peasants, workers, women, and people of color).
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
An introductory survey of the history of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization of the Americas from 1450 to 1810, i.e., from the late preconquest period to the Latin American struggle for independence. Lectures, readings, and discussions provide an overview of the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of colonization.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Focuses on the history of Latinos in urban centers across the U.S. and Latin America. Students explore how Latinos established and maintained distinctive social and cultural identities in the Americas. The historical definition of “Latinidad” is also discussed through the study of colonization, immigration, diaspora, globalization, and the history of the racialization of Latin American descendants.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Covers the history of Brazil from independence to the present. During this period, Brazil has transformed from a colonial, agrarian, slave society to a predominantly urban, industrialized nation and an aspiring world power. Students explore slavery, racism, urban life, immigration and industrialization, changing gender roles, political repression and military rule, carnaval and popular culture.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Cinematic representations of Latinos and Latinas are explored as crucial elements in the configuration of “America” as a national community, taking into account key historical moments in the relationship between the United States and Latin America.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Focuses on the relationship between cities, urban life, and form, and the construction of social and political rights in the Americas. The emphasis is on how cities and citizenship are mutually constituted historically, looking at ideas and policies that regulate the city, and how urbanites produce and consume urban space and claim their rights as citizens and urban residents.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
History of U.S.–Latin American relations from the mid-19th century to the present day. It explores how Latin America and the Caribbean became the object of US intervention into the region’s realities and how Latin American societies involved into nationalist, anti-imperialist, class, racial, and gender struggles that shaped policy outcomes in ways unanticipated by the US.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Introduces students to cultural and political history in Latin America from the end of World War I to the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. Focusing on the role of intellectuals, students explore debates on nationalism, immigration, culture, modernization, and development in the context of the consolidation of new Latin American states, the Alliance for Progress, the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions, and the student and guerrilla movements.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
While many African-descended peoples throughout the world identify with a particular nationality—being Brazilian or Cuban, for example—many have also forged connections with each other across national boundaries and have recognized commonalities that transcend national contexts. To comprehend their shared experiences, students explore the history of the linkages created by Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-North Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries, using fiction, memoir, and recent historical scholarship.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Examines the new historiography on gender and sexuality in Latin America. It is organized around the themes of changing gender roles and shifting constructions of masculinity, femininity, and honor, with particular attention to issues of sexuality, sexual preferences, constraints, and transgressions.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Develops students’ interviewing and interpretive skills in the field of oral history. Students learn the theory and methodology and work on a final research project that seeks to bring forward the voices of those frequently excluded from more typical historical sources. Students also learn to produce archival quality interviews, and the final project includes some form of public presentation.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Read multi-genre literature and social histories and identify and analyze the distinctions and similarities that have shaped the experiences and the cultural imagination among different Latinx communities. Topics include identity formation and negotiation in terms of language, race, gender, sexuality, and class; discuss diaspora and emigration. Authors include Gloria Anzaldúa and Piri Thomas. Taught in English.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Major works of the most celebrated Latin American novelists, such as Cortàzar, García Márquez, Carpentier, and Guiraldes, emphasizing the cultural and social contexts from which these novels spring. Although this is a literature course taught in English, students with competent Spanish language skills are encouraged to read the works in the original and write their papers in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Students select from an array of experiential options in Latin American studies in consultation with their Latin American studies advisor. Options include service learning, independent study, study abroad, and Project Focus.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
A study of memoirs by male and female authors, politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens describing childhood, communities, social changes, and revolutions. Works are drawn from South Africa, South America, Asia, Cuba, and the U.S. The rubric is the non-West’s interaction with the West, a north-south divide.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
The course revolves around the international political and economic dynamics that have existed historically between the U.S. and Cuba. Although the course emphasizes the post-1959 era (the Castro years), readings introduce students to the imperial relationship that evolved in the early 20th century. Topics include foreign policy, war, human rights, the U.S. embargo, and the politics of Fidel Castro.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Although human rights have become a significant theme in international relations, ethnic slaughter and political repression continue to afflict the world. This course examines relevant theoretical issues and practical problems, including: How are human rights viewed from different cultural, political, and religious perspectives? In a multicultural world, can common ground be found to address human rights? What is the relationship between sovereignty and the pursuit of human rights?
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
What does Latin American hip-hop have to do with social change? How do murga dances in Argentina and Uruguay or “theatre of the oppressed” performances in Brazil challenge “social authoritarianism”? Why are Greenpeace campaigns so successful in raising awareness about the Amazon? Why are carnivals in Oruro, Bolivia, or in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, still so lively and engaging? This course explores the relationship between activism and “culture” in different Latin American countries.
Credits: 3
Department: Latin American Studies
How do groups mobilize to act for social change and against injustice? This course focuses on contemporary movements that emerge within and outside the United States, e.g., in Latin America. Case studies focus on human rights, feminism, environmentalism, landless rural workers, indigenous peoples, and global justice movements, with a particular focus on how these movements emerge, (re)create their identities, and frame injustice. The class analyzes how 21st-century movements are both global and local.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Latin American Studies
An examination of the various causes and consequences of international migration on migrants, their sending communities, and their destination countries. Topics include immigration debates, the social structures and economic and social conditions that facilitate labor migration, undocumented migration, refugee migration and forced migration. New York is an amazing place to explore migration, providing firsthand knowledge about migrant communities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500 Or ANT1500 Or CAN1500
Department: Latin American Studies
A global sociological examination of the contemporary debates and studies concerning the social organization of cultures that transcends national boundaries. This course examines the highly debated concept of globalization by studying transnational social organizations and the distinctive dynamics of global political economy and culture. Topics include colonialism and postcolonialism, social movements and social change, social inequality, labor, human rights, democracy, global capitalism, urbanization, and cultural identity.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Latin American Studies
An advanced seminar in critical race studies specifically designed for juniors and seniors interested in reading theory, history, and research. Focuses on key works that have defined the field and shaped understandings of race in the 21st century, including those of Du Bois, Wacquant, Fanon, hooks, Crenshaw, Davis, Hall, and Said.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Latin American Studies
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Spain and Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Films are discussed and analyzed in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Students explore the various languages and cultures that exist in Spanish-speaking countries. In general terms, the course is structured in two blocks: (1) Iberian Peninsula, pre- and post-Indo-European invasion; and (2) Latin America, pre- and post-Spanish invasion.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Major novels of 20th-century Latin America and their literary and social contexts. Authors include Guiraldes, Carpentier, Cortàzar, and García Márquez. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SPA3015
Department: Latin American Studies
Who had the idea to name part of the world “Latin America”? What makes it “Latin”? Who has an interest in this definition? Who is included and who isn’t? This course asks these questions and others through readings of texts by Bolívar, Martí, Mariátegui, and others.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Selected examples drawn from the significant number of Latin American writers who have made some of their most interesting contributions in this short form. Selected works from 19th- and 20th-century writers are read closely. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Latin American Studies
Engaging with a wide variety of plays and performances, students explore U.S. Latino theatre as a site of personal, cultural, and political intervention. Readings reflect the aesthetics, narratives, historical contexts, and systems of theatrical production pertinent to Latino culture in the U.S.
Students who wish to pursue an individualized, interdisciplinary program of study that cannot be accommodated within another major at Purchase College may apply for admission to the Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts (BALA) program.
Each student works closely with two or more faculty sponsors from different disciplines to design a course of study that meets both the specialized interests of the student and the academic standards of the college.
This degree program appeals especially to students interested in constructing highly individualized and innovative major areas of study. Some examples include bioethics, Mediterranean studies, philosophy of science, and choreography of literature. Students may also work with the faculty in established programs currently offering minors, which could provide core coursework that serves as a basis for a major.
Students design a proposed curriculum for the major in collaboration with two or more faculty sponsors. This proposal is reviewed by the BALA committee, which may include faculty representatives from the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of the Arts. Although individualized in nature, all proposals must:
include relevant theoretical and methodological courses in the proposed area(s) of study
incorporate the teaching specialties of the Purchase College faculty
demonstrate why established majors or programs of study at Purchase College cannot accommodate the student’s needs
A senior project is required of all BALA students. Approval of the proposal may be contingent upon inclusion of additional courses recommended by the BALA committee.
Representative Courses
Courses span the entire curriculum at Purchase College, according to the student’s specific area of interdisciplinary study.
Students majoring in literature at Purchase College learn to read texts closely and critically and to understand literature in relation to the social and historical conditions in which it is written and read.
Program Highlights
The principal focus of the major is British and American literature; the program places these national literatures in an international frame. Thus, students may count toward the major courses in French, Spanish, and other literatures, in translation or in the original language.
In addition to courses in traditional literatures, students may take courses in contemporary literature, theatre, popular culture, and film.
Feminist inquiry, the critical study of race, and other theoretical or interdisciplinary approaches are central to the literature curriculum.
In learning to read, write, and think about literature and the world it reflects, inhabits, and creates, students gain valuable preparation for advanced academic study and for the professional world.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, literature majors must complete a minimum of 10 literature courses, plus an 8-credit senior project, as outlined below.
LIT 2450/Colloquium I: Studies in Literature*
*Generally taken in the second year; transfer students who want to major in literature must complete this course during their first semester at Purchase.
Three courses in the literature sequence (courses that emphasize issues of history and period): One each from sequence I (before 1750), II (1750–1900), and III (1900–present)
One course in Shakespeare
At least three elective literature courses (see notes below)
LIT 4450/Colloquium II: Advanced Studies in Literature*
*Generally taken in the second semester of the junior year
At least five must be at the 3000 or 4000 level (LIT 4450 counts toward this requirement; LIT 4885 does not).
At least four must be taken at Purchase College.
Students may not use the required Shakespeare course to satisfy the Sequence I requirement. For example, THP 2205 may be taken to fulfill the Sequence I requirement or the Shakespeare course requirement, but not both.
Certain courses in language and culture and in theatre and performance (THP prefix) may fulfill the requirements. These courses are cross-referenced in the list of literature courses.
Students may count toward the major up to 8 credits of writing courses at the 3000 or 4000 level. Writing courses at the 2000 level may not be counted toward the major requirements.
All courses taken to satisfy major requirements, excluding the senior project, must be completed with a grade of C or higher.
Course Sequences for the Major and Minor
For the minor in literature: Comparative literature courses in the sequences are indicated with an asterisk.
HIS 2120/Princes, Priests, and Peasants*
LIT 2080/The Ancient Epic*
LIT 3127/Early Modern English Poetry
LIT 3140/Medieval English Literature*
LIT 3142/Chivalry and Romance
LIT 3150/Chaucer
LIT 3155/Renaissance in England
LIT 3160/Literature of the High Middle Ages*
LIT 3220/The Renaissance in Europe*
LIT 3250/Milton
LIT 3822/Dread, Sadness, and Grief in Early English Literature
LIT 3825/British Poetry I: Beginnings to 1650
LIT 4050/The Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Literature*
LIT 4180/Dante and Medieval Culture*
PHI 3205/Shakespeare and Philosophy
SPA 3705/Cervantes (in English)
THP 2205/Shakespeare Then and Now*
THP 2885/Theatre Histories I*
THP 3140/Medieval and Renaissance English Drama*
LIT 2375/Classics of European Fiction*
LIT 2560/Survey of U.S. Literature I
LIT 2570/Survey of U.S. Literature II
LIT 3003/Dostoevsky and Tolstoy*
LIT 3017/Eighteenth-Century British Women Writers
LIT 3082/19th-Century British Literature and Empire
LIT 3121/Comparative 19th-Century Novel*
LIT 3271/The Age of Reason
LIT 3315/The 19th-Century Novel in the U.S.
LIT 3320/The 19th-Century British Novel
LIT 3330/Romanticism I
LIT 3340/Romanticism II
LIT 3355/Romanticism and Empire
LIT 3369/Victorian Poetry
LIT 3540/Emerson
LIT 3581/Realism and Naturalism in U.S. Literature
LIT 3630/Melville
LIT 3673/Austen
LIT 4675/George Eliot and Henry James
LIT 4685/Whitman and Dickinson
HIS 3180/British Culture and Society in the 20th Century
HIS 3424/Modern and Postcolonial France*
FRE 3710/Classics of French Literature on Film
JST 3709/Theatrical Representations of the Holocaust*
LAC 3340/Postcolonial French-Language Literature
LIT 1190/Modernism: The 20th Century*
LIT 2195/Italian American Literature and Popular Culture
LIT 2388/Literature of the African Diaspora*
LIT 2675/Literature and the City*
LIT 2825/Modernism and the Metropolis*
LIT 2872/The Golden Land: American Jewish Literature and Film
LIT 3007/Visions of Dystopia
LIT 3008/Literature of Disruption
LIT 3012/The Lives of James Baldwin
LIT 3043/Toni Morrison
LIT 3093/Immigration and Ethnicity in U.S. Literature
LIT 3195/The Vietnam War in U.S. Literature and Film
LIT 3215/South Asian Literature*
LIT 3226/Literature of Decolonization in South Asia*
LIT 3265/Kafka*
LIT 3266/Kafka to Roth*
LIT 3310/Modern Poetry in the U.S. and Latin America*
LIT 3380/Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
LIT 3415/Global Metafictions*
LIT 3420/Modern Poetry*
LIT 3427/20th-Century World Literature*
LIT 3432/The Roaring Twenties
LIT 3490/James Joyce
LIT 3532/Body, Race, Performance*
LIT 3555/Modern British Literature
LIT 3575/Virginia Woolf
LIT 3605/Jazz and the Literary Imagination
LIT 3633/The Beat Generation
LIT 3635/Reviewing the Contemporary Novel
LIT 3680/Surrealism and Its Legacy*
LIT 3685/Modern Novel of Latin America (in English)*
LIT 3695/Contemporary U.S. Literature
LIT 3721/Contemporary Jewish American Fiction
LIT 3725/Literature of the Holocaust*
LIT 3745/Identity and Self-Fashioning
LIT 3839/The Modern Novel*
LIT 3845/Zora Neale Hurston
LIT 3915/Magical Realism*
LIT 4190/Williams and Faulkner
LIT 4240/Science Fiction
LIT 4690/Contemporary U.S. Poetry
SPA 3370/Lettered Cities: The Literatures of Latin American Cities
THP 2600/American Drama: From O’Neill to Albee
THP 3495/Black American Drama
THP 3690/American Theatre in Our Time
THP 3750/European Drama in Our Time*
Please note that these courses do not fulfill the sequence requirement.
ARH 3040/Vermeer in the World
FRE 3067/French Caribbean Literature
LAC 3250/Space as Construction
LIT 1065/Only Connect: Difference and Otherness in Literature
LIT 1140/The West and Others
LIT 1150/Border Crossings
LIT 2387/Literature of the South Asian Diaspora
LIT 2388/Literature of the African Diaspora
LIT 2590/Mythologies
LIT 3008/Literature of Disruption
LIT 3025/Women and Film
LIT 3047/Literature and Film of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
LIT 3157/Novel Pairings
LIT 3267/Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kafka: The Short Stories
LIT 3396/Fiction of Eastern Europe
LIT 3415/Global Metafictions
LIT 3427/20th Century World Literature
LIT 3676/Short Narrative
LIT 3915/Magical Realism
LIT 3940/Literature of War
PHI 2835/Happiness: Philosophy, Film, Literature
POL 3307/Politics and Memoir
SPA 3687/The Idea of Latin America
THP 3250/Theories of Drama and Performance
THP 3427/European Drama in Our Time
Minor requirements:
The minor in literature is designed to provide students with an opportunity to study literature in a comparative context.
Half of this team-taught course is devoted to examining Johannes Vermeer’s subjects, painting techniques, and reception. The other half examines the invention and use of comparable subjects and literary techniques during the three eras in which Vermeer figured prominently on the global stage: the Dutch Golden Age, the American Gilded Age, and the US financial boom of the 1990s.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Racial imagery in the U.S., from the minstrel era to the present, is examined. Students interrogate the mythologies of this imagery as depicted in U.S. literature and film; rethink key analytical categories in cinema and literary studies in light of U.S. race history (genre and spectatorship); and study the racial uses of and meanings behind certain technical innovations in U.S. literature and filmmaking.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of major developments in French Caribbean literature of the 19th through 21st centuries. This course focuses on questions of language, race, gender, geography, and class, with emphasis on local, regional, and global frames of reference.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Islands, because of their size and supposed isolation, have been the site of environmental and military experiments. Similarly, writers have used the island to build a textual laboratory in order to test their philosophical and narrative experiments. In this course, students will look at novels (including graphic novels) to examine this scientific, military and narrative instrumentalization of the island.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Students look at the evolution of long-form journalism of postwar America, roughly defined as 1946–1980. Works include Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, John Hersey’s Hiroshima, and the magazine writing of Lillian Ross, Alex Haley, Joan Didion, and Gay Talese. The class also explores more recent authors, such as Isabel Wilkerson and Rachel Aviv, and the influences of the digital age.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Critics agree that the world of the concentration camps and ghettoes is impossible to duplicate on stage. Despite serious aesthetic and practical constraints, playwrights in Europe, Israel, and America have, for the last five decades, created a diverse group of plays dealing with this unprecedented 20th-century event. Works examined in class include documentary dramas, realistic reenactments, absurdist plays, a comedy, and a standup routine.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The literatures of former French colonies are deeply concerned with questions of space: territory, displacement, indigeneity and migration. This course analyzes recurrent spatial tropes (the island, the plantation, the border, etc.) in the French-language literatures of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and Africa to see how received notions of space, including literature as textual space, are reinvented.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
We will look at French-language texts from the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Africa. Emphasis will be on transnational conflicts and solidarities. Texts will be read and taught in English, but French majors and minors are encouraged to read the texts in the original French.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Witness literature come alive! Students read work by well-known authors visiting Purchase in the Durst lecture series and read plays staged by the Theatre Program. Students meet independently with authors and attend their public lectures. Directors visit the class and students receive free tickets to all plays. Classwork analyzes material before and after students meet authors and attend plays.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of the eastern Mediterranean during New Testament times—the conflict of Jewish and Roman cultures that mark the beginning of the Common Era. While the primary focus is on literary texts, visual arts as well as historical documents and accounts are also included.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
What is it we are talking about when we address “Nature”? The closer we look, the more difficult the question becomes. The class looks closely at “Nature,” primarily through various literary texts, as well as through images and videos, considering topics and issues of “natural history,” environmental politics, etc.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
What is beauty? How does one recognize it? How do—or how should—people respond to it? What is its relation to justice? This interdisciplinary humanities course examines such fundamental questions with the help of philosophers, theologians, neuroscientists, poets, and artists of all kinds.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Students trace the development of non-Western identity as it is formulated within the West by examining marginalized characters who are shaped by their powerlessness. Topics include educating the native, victimage, Orientalism, backwardness, and gender. Authors include William Shakespeare, Thomas Babbington Macaulay, Aphra Behn, Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, William Beckford, Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, Katherine Mayo, and Rukeya Sakhawat Hossein.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores some of the history, institutions, economy, society, and culture of Britain as a dominant European cultural power and also as an imperial power influencing its colonial possessions. Race and gender are examined, as are the shifting hierarchies between and within cultures. Included are Aphra Behn, E.M. Foster, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Rudyard Kipling, John Stewart Mill, William Shakespeare, and Mary Shelley.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Social borders are examined through literature that explores immigration, assimilation, and the experience of those who exist “between” cultures. A major focus is on the “hybridizing” of cultures and the way that literature expresses the blending of cultures through language and narrative structure.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A selection of literary and philosophical texts from the Western cultural tradition during the past 2,000 years, with special emphasis on the lenses through which later ages select, read, and construct the past from the present. Texts include works by St. Augustine, Shakespeare, Freud, Marx, Joyce, Brecht, and a selection of contemporary works of film and stage. Where available, texts from the Western tradition being staged on campus are used.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The beginning of the 20th century witnessed an extraordinary ferment and experimental attitude in the arts. This course examines the rise of abstraction and experimentalism in literature, painting, music, and dance in Europe and America from 1899 to the 1950s. The course also considers the artistic breakthroughs of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Graham, Cézanne, Picasso, Mallarmé, Eliot, Pound, and de Kooning, among others.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An introduction to the principles and practice of close reading and literary criticism. Readings include a variety of literary modes, including fiction, poetry, and drama.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The rise of the novel and its continued relevance today. In addition to close readings of novels from a variety of time periods and countries, students read about the conditions that gave rise to the novel as a genre and various theoretical interpretations of the form and its functions.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of a wide array of poems from classical antiquity to the 21st century. In this course, students consider the multiple ways that poetry works to create meaning and emotion and investigate techniques of close analysis. Particularly recommended for students interested in the study of literature, creative writing, and language.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Read multi-genre literature and social histories and identify and analyze the distinctions and similarities that have shaped the experiences and the cultural imagination among different Latinx communities. Topics include identity formation and negotiation in terms of language, race, gender, sexuality, and class; discuss diaspora and emigration. Authors include Gloria Anzaldúa and Piri Thomas. Taught in English.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Literature inhabits, reflects, creates, and ironically examines the “history” that is its context. This course observes the central narrative of American history, American institutions and anti-institutions, and the American international situation through the peculiar lens of American poetry, fiction, cinema, and other literary arts.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A reading of texts embodying the oldest myths of Western culture: the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, and Metamorphosis. Works are considered both in their historical context and from the perspective of recent thought.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines black literary and performance culture from the 18th century to the present. Students explore the self-making and resistance of black authors and activists through literary culture. Discussions focus on the intersections of identity formation (race, gender, sexuality, class) to enhance an understanding of the broader tradition of American letters and black culture. Readings include James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Credits: 3
Department: Literature
Readings explore postcolonial and other contemporary global literary representations of animals and the environment, specifically their engagement with narratives of colonization and development, human-centeredness, and the posthuman. Students will consider how these representations invite readers to re-think hierarchical and human-centered visions of our world.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines how literature is shaped by intersections of the local and the global in examples drawn from five regions: North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Short stories by important U.S. writers of fiction, from the beginnings of the literary tradition in the earlier 19th century (Poe, Hawthorne, Melville) to current authors. As the sequence of stories unfolds, the development of American issues unfolds as well.
Credits: 3
Department: Literature
Short works of French, Russian, and German fiction, beginning with 18th-century quarrels between classicism and romanticism and ending with multicultural influences on the creation of 20th-century “classics.”
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Students read about South Asians dislocated from their homeland, focusing on issues of cultural displacement, alienation, assimilation, and construction as they follow narratives of South Asians who attempt to preserve the traces of their ethnic, cultural, and religious identities. Authors include Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee, V.S. Naipaul, and Amitav Ghosh, among others.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Readings include literature by 21st century writers of African descent living around the globe, with special focus on the Black Atlantic region. Students consider the texts’ engagement with issues of modernity, postmodernity, identity, belonging, and citizenship. Authors include Zadie Smith, Edwidge Danticat, Teju Cole, and Taiye Selasi.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An introduction to literary study for current and prospective literature majors. Readings are divided among three areas: primary texts, secondary texts that offer contexts for the primary texts, and works that define the study of literature. Each course section addresses its own topic.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Readings illustrate the range of issues, styles, and contexts in the Bible, including Genesis and Exodus, Deuteronomic Histories, prophets major and minor, Job and Ecclesiastes, the Gospels, and Apocalypse. This is not a course in religion, but in a literary and cultural tradition deeply concerned with human action in relation to divinity.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Spans the literature of the European invasion of North America, from the 16th century through the first decades of a national publishing industry of “American” letters following the Revolutionary War. Students consider the connections between writing and colonialism, nation building, and the resistance of these powerful narratives in, for example, the few written words of the indigenous populations and the enslaved.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of literature written in the U.S. between the 1830s and the beginning of the 20th century. Careful attention is paid to the context of western expansion, slavery and its legacy, industrialization, immigration, and other historical developments. While much of the course is devoted to the “American Renaissance,” students also consider several contemporaneous literary traditions and their interrelationships.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Myths are the narrative form of a culture’s essential knowledge—of itself, its origins, its contexts. This course substantially engages Greek and Roman mythology as well as myths from many time periods and cultures (biblical, South Asian, Native American, contemporary, and more). Theoretical approaches are also considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An exploration of how British writers have responded to the social, historical, and intellectual ferment of the 20th century. Authors studied may include as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, W.H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, V.S. Naipaul, and Muriel Spark.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Engage with literary texts and cinematic productions such as Sozaboy, Beasts of No Nation, A Long Way Gone, War Witch, and Kony 2012 which portray children forced to the front lines of war. What meaning is carried through these literary and cinematic texts? How do genre, point of view, language, medium, etc. impact our reading of these narratives?
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A survey of British literature from Beowulf to Paradise Lost, with a particular focus on the history of literary form and the birth of a vernacular tradition in English.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A survey of British literature from Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” to Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, with a particular focus on the development of a national literature in the dual contexts of empire and transnational modernism.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explore texts that use literary tropes/techniques to create fact-based narratives. Study the formal aspects of this literature as well as its thematic content, paying close attention to its use in works by women and people of color. Topics include speculation, testimony, and archival work among others. Authors include Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Taught in English.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The relationship between the developments of urban modernity and aesthetic modernism is charted through the first half of the 20th century in three major metropolitan centers: Paris, London, and New York. The focus is on British and American modernist poetry and novels.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of the cultural, literary, and natural history of birds. Students read poems and essays, study ornithology texts and field guides, and occasionally go into the field to look at birds. Owning a pair of binoculars would be helpful.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Beginning as a response to the immigrant experience, writing by American Jews emerged as a central literary presence and the inspiration for important films. This course traces the evolution from early writers such as Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska, through major figures such as Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and I.B. Singer, to their contemporaries and heirs, including Stanley Elkin, Joseph Heller, Cynthia Ozick, and Grace Paley.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Engages the question “Dostoevsky or Tolstoy?” through readings of some major works, emphasizing The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina as examples of “dialogic” vs. “monologic” narratives.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A writing-intensive course in which students study the poetry of queer-identified writers through the lenses of sexuality, culture, identity, history, and poetic technique.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines literary dystopian visions from H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic The Time Machine (1895), Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1920), and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016), and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Read a broad cross-section of writings by international authors to facilitate discussion of global and local values that emerge from and respond to disruptive events, such as 9/11 and global pandemics that disorient cultural arrangements and reset social formations. Topics include terror, isolation and alienation, fragility, silence, nostalgia, and the human capacity for recovery and resilience.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the intertwined histories of race and the American police state, with a specific focus on the relationship between US policing practices and crime fiction. Students read literature by Poe, Doyle, Hammett, Christie, Wright, Himes, and others, as well as histories and theoretical texts about race, policing, and the different types of crime fiction (detective fiction, police procedurals, mysteries, etc.).
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
We will examine Baldwin’s moving fictional and nonfictional works to understand his enduring legacy up through our contemporary moment. Students read Baldwin’s work through the lens of literary history, civil rights, transnational black activism, the arts, and queer theory. Major texts include The Fire Next Time, Another Country, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Giovanni’s Room.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Considers the intersections of sexual difference and cinema. Topics include theories of enunciation and sexual difference, female authorship and the idea of “women’s cinema,” gender and genre, woman as spectacle, the female spectator, and feminist film theory. Representations of sexual difference in films by selected male directors are studied as a means of examining the institution(s) of cinematic expression. The bulk of the course is devoted to studying women directors as they attempt to work within and against that institution.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An investigation of the formation of the literary canon and the women who were written out of it. Students become familiar with the novel form as well as genres such as amatory fiction and the Jacobin novel, and read a selection of the most influential women writers of the long eighteenth century.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An investigation of the styles and ideas of “prose” in American literature, fiction and nonfiction. The particular focus is on the sentence—for example, sentences by such writers as Henry James, Melville, Anne Carson, and others. Is there something distinctly “American” about the American sentence? Is there a theory of prose that might emerge?
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An exploration of Toni Morrison’s generous literary career as a playwright, fiction writer, and essayist. Students read a collection of Morrison’s most popular works (Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved) alongside her more recent publications (A Mercy, God Help the Child). Discussions place Morrison in conversation with her literary interlocutors (Hurston, Woolf, Faulkner) and some of her most cherished contemporaries (James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara).
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores a variety of literary and cinematic works that depict the conflicting points of view and the varied interests of contemporary Israeli and Arab writers and filmmakers. Students learn the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and then explore a variety of issues relating to it by reading the work of Amos Oz, David Grossman, Mahmood Darwish, and others. Films include Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, 2005) and Lemon Tree (Eran Riklis, 2008).
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores how ideas about anger influence the tumultuous history of England between 1350 and 1675: an era in which widespread rage against an increasingly unjust establishment fueled massive revolts. In addition to reading historical sources chronicling a variety of uprisings, students read literature by William Langland, John Gower, Margery Kempe, and William Shakespeare that influenced and/or reflected upon these events.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the representation of colonized places and people in the British literary imagination during the 19th century. Topics include otherness, difference, exoticism, transculturation, assimilation, and hybridity. Authors include Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Joseph Conrad, Thomas de Quincey, Rider Haggard, William Jones, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Moore, Olive Schreiner, and Robert Southey.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
No American geographical fact is more significant than the West less a place than an idea, an imaginative provocation. Many American writers have been provoked to represent the West, and students read from among their work, including such writers as Raymond Chandler, Sandra Cisneros, Jack London, Nathanael West, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Willa Cather, and many poets.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
We are “a nation of immigrants,” wrote John F. Kennedy. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing to the present, this course explores issues surrounding immigration, ethnicity, and nationality through the lens of immigrant writing. Students look at shifts and continuities over time and among diverse ethnic groups and explore how America creates ethnicity and immigrants create America.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the narrative strategies and genres that Black American writers have used to publicize discrepancies between Western discourses of freedom and liberality and the realities of slavery, segregation, apartheid, and the prison industrial complex. Students read literary and nonliterary works by writers including Olaudah Equiano, Ralph Ellison, and Michelle Alexander.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of four major novels, their respective national obsessions, and contrasting historical contexts (British: Dickens’ Great Expectations; American: Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; French: Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet; Russian: Dostoevsky’s The Possessed). Texts are read in conjunction with historical background material.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An exploration of representative poems in English and associated poetical theories from the late medieval and early modern period (c. 1450–1660), including erotic and religious lyrics, epic and narrative poems, and the emergence of women poets. Poets studied include Wyatt, Spenser, Philip, Robert and Mary Sidney, Southwell, Greville, Ralegh, Shakespeare, Donne, Wroth, Herbert, and Crashaw.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the literature of England written in French, English, and Latin from the Norman Conquest of 1066 (when England was taken over by a Francophone elite) to the 15th century. Epic, romance, history, and the literature of spiritual devotion are read in their literary relations and social contexts. All readings are in translation.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Covers the literary genre of romance in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. Examines the genre’s roots in classical tales of epic travels, adventure, and fantasy. Includes chivalry, heroism, questing, hospitality, and courtliness and attends to the genre’s place in the periods’ cross-cultural and cross-class encounters. Texts include Arthurian legends, Gawain, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare, Orlando Furioso, Gerusalemme liberata, and Don Quixote.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales for students who want an introduction to medieval studies and for those who wish to extend their knowledge of the Middle Ages.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The principal nondramatic genres—lyric poetry, prose fiction, political theory, social commentary, religious devotion—of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, read in their social and cultural contexts.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Alongside theoretical considerations of the novel as a form of rewriting (Bakhtin, Bloom, Landow, et al.), students consider the effects of Caryl Phillips, Maryse Conde, Zadie Smith, Mario Vargas Llosa, Louisa Hall, Kamel Daoud, and others in rewriting Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Madam Bovary, The Scarlet Letter, Mrs. Dalloway, The Stranger, and other master narratives.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: LIT2450
Department: Literature
Literature from the songs of the troubadours and the rise of romance to the work of Dante is examined in connection with movements in European intellectual life and social history. Readings are in translation.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Drawing from the rich cinematography of Spain and Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Films are discussed and analyzed in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the emergence of national identity as represented in South Asian literature in the aftermath of colonialism. The class explores contemporary literary texts along with selected archival documents. Topics include nationalist literature, colonial discourse, and postcolonial fiction. Writers include Rukun Advani, Anita Desai, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie. Taught in English.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Considers the literature of the Italian Renaissance in connection with such movements as humanism and Neoplatonism. Readings include works by Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Ariosto in translation, but work in the original language is encouraged when possible.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores the process of decolonization in the context of the emergence of India and Pakistan in South Asia and traces the origin of fundamentalism in this region. Students examine the impact that fundamentalism has on religious, regional, and class identity through the works of both literary and nonliterary writers (e.g., Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Nandy, Adiga, Sidhwa, Desai).
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Study LGBTQ identities via novels, short fiction, and films, by queer-identified authors who interrogate heteropatriarchy within a postcolonial framework. Texts include Queer Africa (eds. Martin and Xaba), Leche by R. Zamora Linmark, Walking with Shadows by Jude Bidia, Fire (film by Deepa Mehta), Same-Sex Love in India (eds. Vanita and Kidwai), and Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
One of the greatest English writers and the central poetic influence in the language, Milton is read in the context of the classical literary, political, and religious traditions that he inherited, disputed, and transcended. Special focus is on the relationship of “prophesy” and mythmaking to the radical and dissenting imagination.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Focuses on one of modernism’s most innovative fiction writers, Franz Kafka of Prague (1884–1924). Students explore the relationship of Jewish to European-Christian culture in Kafka’s work, the literary sources and historical contexts of his allegories, and the influential concept of the “Kafkaesque.” The goal is to become familiar with the multiple interpretations generated from works like The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Read the complete short stories of five Eastern European authors, including Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter from The Brothers Karamazov and focus on historical and thematic influences that connect Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Kafka. Trace connections between Dostoevsky’s stories and stories by Gogol and Tolstoy as well as Chekov’s and Kafka’s debt to Dostoevskian psychology and paradox.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The coming of age of poetry in the Americas through the work of the great modernists: Wallace Stevens, Vicente Huidobro, Ezra Pound, Cesar Vallejo, T.S. Eliot, Octavio Paz, William Carlos Williams, and Pablo Neruda. Taught in English. Latin American poets may be read in translation or in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
What constitutes the genre of the novel and its various subgenres? Which historical contexts most shaped the novel’s development, and how? What was the novel’s role in culture and society? This course asks these questions about the 19th-century novel in the U.S. In addition to many of the novels from the period, students read various theoretical and historical considerations of the novel.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The novels of Austen, Dickens, the Brontës, Eliot, and Hardy in the political, intellectual, social, and cultural context of Britain and its empire in the 19th century.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the emergence of the Romantic imagination, the concept of the subject or self, and the plural nature of Romantic discourse in Wollstonecraft, Austen, and Wordsworth, among others. Topics explored include the writers’ diverse concepts of creativity and originality, sense of their place in society, notions of political identity, and relation to British literary traditions.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Traces the evolution of Romanticism in the aftermath of the radical promise of the first generation of Romantic poets, through the prose writers who self-consciously documented their literary and cultural heritage, to the full flowering of such writers as Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Keats, and Emily Brontë.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the continuities of themes and paradigms between the Romantic and Modern periods in British literature. Topics include literary form and its relation to historical and social change; Empire; gender and sexuality; and the romantic fragment and modernist fragmentation.The goal of this advanced course is to enable students to recognize the narrative of British literature by witnessing its transmission.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
From Adam and Eve to the present, numerous authors have written about love. In this course, students examine forms and expressions of both romantic and erotic love in Western literature, from the Bible and ancient Greeks to Bob Dylan. Writers studied include Shakespeare, Emily Brontë, Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Nabokov, in addition to love poems, recent American short stories, and more.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An advanced course examining the construction of India and other “Oriental” spaces in the British imagination during the first phase of imperialism in India (1757–1857). This period coincides with the Romantic movement in England; therefore, British Romanticism and also nonliterary writing in Britain during this period are considered in the context of Empire. Topics include otherness, difference, exoticism, transculturation, assimilation, and hybridity.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Victorian poetry against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world during a period that marked the high point of England’s global power. Writers include Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arnold, and Hopkins.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines racial pride, racial origins, and urban blacks through an exploration of essays, poems, short stories, and novels by writers of the period (1915–1930). Authors include Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston. Emphasis is on students’ written analysis of in-class and outside readings.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of the “middle genre,” encompassing the novella and the short novel. Readings provide ample opportunity to sample works embodying the intensity of short fiction and some of the expanded characterization and plot development of the novel. Readings include works by several significant 19th- and 20th-century authors from many countries.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Metafictions “radically call attention to their status as fictions.” They are hardly new, despite their association with “postmodernity”—Cervantes’ Don Quixote is an example of early metafiction. This course focuses on contemporary texts in the global context: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Murakami; The Hakawati, Alameddine; My Name is Red, Pamuk; Underworld, Delillo. Considerable experience with literature is helpful.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of modern poetry with a focus on T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, and others.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Students consider world literature of the 20th century as it reflects and questions national and international boundaries, politics, religion, freedom, nationalism, sexuality, gender, and identity. Readings include a broad cross-section of contemporary writings by international authors to facilitate discussion of social norms and values and the diversity of global literary tradition.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The 1920s was a decade of promise and anxiety in the US. From shell-shocked soldiers to bootlegging millionaires, flappers to factory workers, expatriates to eugenicists, the Great Migration to the Great Depression, much was changing in Americans’ perceptions of their nation, themselves, and the “other.” This course explores these shifts through Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Hurston, Yezierska, DuBois, and Lewis, among others.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Helping others to read and write better improves one’s own reading and writing dramatically. In this course, advanced students improve their own writing and gain tutoring experience by serving as peer tutors in first-year courses. Each student is attached to a College Writing section and serves as a peer mentor/tutor, attending classes and working closely with the instructor (approx. 2 to 4 hours weekly).
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of the style, production, and reception of Ulysses, one of the founding texts of modernist fiction. Students analyze the distinctive style of each chapter and examine the relationship of the book to political and cultural issues of the period and to other literary texts by Joyce and continental writers. Readings also include historical, cultural, and critical materials.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
In this advanced lecture, the first wave of Gothic novels from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century is examined in relation to visual representations of issues that dominate Gothic discourse. Topics include horror, imprisonment, madness, gender, ghosts and vampires. Authors and artists studied include Austen, the Brontë sisters, Radcliffe, Collins, Blake, Fuseli, and Turner.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
How does embodiment reveal shifting notions of race, gender, sexuality, and ability? Students read performance theory and explore contemporary representations of bodies as sites of display, resistance, and re-construction in literature, performance, and everyday practices in transnational and intersectional contexts. Authors include Ntozake Shange, NourbeSe Philip, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and David Henry Hwang.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Detailed readings of the major essays, poetry, and journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the paradoxical central figure of American culture. The course addresses his powerful influence in literature, political ideology, rhetoric, religion, and popular arts.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer asks, “To whom shall we entrust the custody of the public memory of the Holocaust?” This course examines eyewitness testimony produced either during or after the Holocaust. Students read works such authors as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Kazik (Simha Rotem), Emanuel Ringelblum, Anne Frank, and Hanna Senesh, a true Jewish Joan of Arc.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Focuses on a variety of writings (memoirs, letters, fiction, poetry), theatre, and films depicting the Yiddish world of the Lower East Side, home to more than two million Eastern European Jewish immigrants between 1880 and 1920. Readings include selections from the work of a variety of authors, from Yiddish newspapers, films, and other cultural materials.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of the novels, short stories, and essays of Virginia Woolf.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
What is a realist novel? What does it do, how, and to what end? Students consider these issues by interrogating texts in their cultural contexts, exploring the authors’ critical writings, drawing links among novels, and analyzing their reception over time. Readings include works by William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, and Ann Petry.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Students’ primary focus is on the bizarre and distorted fictions of Poe. Readings also include Poe’s poetry, analogous stories by Hawthorne, works by Melville, poetry by Dickinson, and others, extending to James’ ‘Turn of the Screw’ and other late-19th-century writings.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores constructions and representations of childhood and adolescence in post–Civil War U.S. culture and fiction, focusing particularly on ideological linkages between nation and family and how these connections shape the experiences and writings of authors and educators across cultures. Readings may include works by Alger, Louisa May Alcott, Twain, Dewey, Adams, Riis, Yezierska, Fauset, Cisneros, and Rita Mae Brown.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
From hip-hop to Kerouac, jazz has influenced American culture through its improvisatory nature and capacious style. This course traces the jazz aesthetic (its early developments, definitions, and evolutions) across a range of novels, poems, and musical performances by writers and artists, including Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Billie Holiday, Gayl Jones, Louis Armstrong, Ralph Ellison, Thelonious Monk, and James Baldwin.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores the plays in which Shakespeare most explicitly portrays, solicits, and theorizes the emotion wonder, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. Through a variety of theoretical lenses, students explore aesthetic and ethical questions concerning how and why Shakespeare capitalizes on wonder so differently at various moments throughout his career.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The development of U.S. poetry. The course examines its major figures (Dickinson and Whitman from the 19th century; Stevens, Frost, and Williams from the 20th century) and surveys the “minor” poets. Provides an overview of contemporary poetry, as well as much practice in the close reading of poetic texts.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Bringing post-1960s American extremities into focus and organized around units on the Beat Generation, race in the deep south, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and social class, this course includes texts such as Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Flannery O’Connor’s stories, Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral”, Don DeLillo’s “Libra”, Mohsin Hamid’s “Reluctant Fundamentalist”, C.T. Boyle’s “The Harder They Come”, Tara Westover’s “Educated.”
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The major novels of Melville, as well as some of his poetry and several important shorter works of his fiction.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores the lives, works, and times of the Beat Generation authors, examining the literary and cultural landscape from which the Beats emerged and their profound effect on the nascent counterculture and on the music and literature of a generation of artists that followed.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An introduction to the contemporary novel and the art and practice of book reviewing. Students read exemplary novels (e.g., Cloud Atlas and Netherland); they read exemplary book critics (e.g., Zadie Smith and James Wood); and they write their own exemplary reviews of contemporary fiction. Writing assignments range from blog posts to newspaper-style reviews and magazine-style essays.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Modern and contemporary American poetry is studied with an emphasis on craft and the creative process. Poets include T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and Sylvia Plath, among others. Attention is given to the imagery, structure, and sound patterns (or “music”) of the poems. Poetry writers are encouraged to enroll, and anyone interested in poetry is welcome.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Looking at the Western literary canon from outside, we will consider texts at the margins (national, transnational and postcolonial) of the canon: contemporaneous texts which do not have the same literary success as well as those published later and meant as a critical response to the canon. Class is in English and texts will be taught in (English) translation.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines several texts written by American women, including works by Radstreet, Wheatley, Rowson, Stowe, Dickinson, Jewett, Cather, Wharton, Hurston, Bishop, and Naylor. The question of whether there is a traceable female tradition during the past 350 years is addressed. Readings include feminist literary criticism and theory.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of the novels of Jane Austen. Topics include gender and authorship; irony, sympathy, and point of view; the marriage plot; and filmic adaptation.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of short fiction as it emerged from the oral tradition of storytelling. Biblical tales and parables, Greek romance, saints’ lives, and the great story collections of medieval and early modern Europe are considered from a comparative perspective.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Concise and focused, the short story has been a lens through which Americans have explored their identities. Stories written in the last 25 years examine the changing sense of what being an American means.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Surrealist literature, films, and art in France, Spain, and Latin America. Artists include Aragon, Breton, Buñuel, Césaire, Char, Dali, Eluard, and Lorca. Works are read in translation and lectures given in English; students with French and/or Spanish are encouraged to read in the original language.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Major works of the most celebrated Latin American novelists, such as Cortàzar, García Márquez, Carpentier, and Guiraldes, emphasizing the cultural and social contexts from which these novels spring. Although this is a literature course taught in English, students with competent Spanish language skills are encouraged to read the works in the original and write their papers in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Novels, poems, and plays produced in the U.S. from World War II to the present. Focus is on the development of a postmodern aspect, and attention is concentrated on the flourishing literature of minority groups. Writers include Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, Adrienne Rich, and Tony Kushner.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Centers on a close reading of Don Quixote, with attention to other works of Cervantes and to his importance to European narrative as a whole.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
The notion of the “new” in poetry and art is examined. Students read a range of poetry written in the late 19th century through the 1940s in France, Germany, Spain, Latin America, and the U.S., and explore ways in which expressive novelty is linked to particular cultural and social situations. Along with the poems and some visual art, some contemporary texts that advance theories of the “avant-garde” are considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An in-depth examination of the life and work of Flannery O’Connor, with a consideration of how later writers like Denis Johnson, Toni Morrison, and Kelly Link respond to her legacy.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores how the emotions dread, sadness, and grief are theorized, represented, and solicited by works of literature written in England between 1000 and 1750. Primary readings include “The Wanderer,” Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, Pearl, Hoccleve’s Complaint, More’s The Sadness of Christ, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and Gray’s Elegy Written in a County Churchyard.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explore representations of monstrosity in a variety of early British literature in order to unearth the social anxieties (about gender, class, race, and religion) that animate them. Readings include Beowulf, the Lais of Marie de France, Chaucer’s Prioress’ Tale and Clerk’s Tale, Mandeville’s Travels, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of the development of the British poetic canon in its literary and historical context. The development of lyric poetry is discussed in the context of changing reading practices and uses of literacy, and the multiple relations between literary artistry and the social world.
Credits: 3
Department: Literature
Considers seven novels that represent “modernity” as social, ethical, and/or individual crisis. The course explores overlapping modernist prose styles from romanticism to surrealism and concludes with a “postmodern” novel.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines Hurston’s novels, short stories, plays, and essays alongside archival recordings and visual media. Discussions cover Hurston’s influential role in shaping conversations around race, class, and gender in the 20th century and her impact on other writers, including Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Magic and mythology meet modernity in this unique form of postcolonial narrative critique. What happens when the old gods reemerge in our hyper-rational globalized world? Students read works by Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Amos Tutuola, and Salman Rushdie.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the central role of war in Western literature, with a concentration on English and American texts.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A close reading of the Divine Comedy in the dual context of late medieval Italy and contemporary theoretical inquiry.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
William Carlos Williams and William Faulkner were both deeply engaged with the historical myths of their time and place, and both were central influences in the evolution of American modernism. Readings concentrate on major novels by Faulkner and poetry by Williams.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A survey of science fiction in literature and film, with particular focus on the genre’s ability to investigate large-scale social, political, philosophical, and narratological questions. Works by Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and China Miéville, among others.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A culminating course that draws together the work of the major and prepares students for and complements the senior project. Each course section addresses its own topic; in every section, readings include primary texts, secondary texts that illuminate the primary texts, and works that define the discipline of literature or its interdisciplinary extensions, including theory and cultural studies.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Advanced study of one Shakespeare play that will be mounted in the spring by the acting program. Focuses on the performative, historical, and critical context of the play and provides an in-depth understanding of Shakespeare’s theatrical art. A folio acting version of the play, a modern critical edition, and required background material are used in a close study of the text. Requirements include group and individual research projects.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
An examination of two of the greatest novelists in the English language, George Eliot and Henry James. Topics include point-of-view and its relation to ethics; the nature of sympathy; melodrama and realism; and the representation of consciousness in literary form.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
These two poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, dominate not only the American 19th century, but the entire history of poetry at length and in depth. Students also consider some of their marginal work (Whitman’s prose and Dickinson’s letters, for example).
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Here are poets who epitomize trends, possibilities, or radical departures—poets like Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, and James Merrill, among others—interesting not only in their context within the tradition, but for their manifold intrinsic excellences as well.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
In this seminar, students are guided through the steps required to complete a senior project. Students refine their topic, create a list of secondary sources, write an annotated bibliography, and workshop their first chapter. Required for literature majors in conjunction with the first semester of their senior project.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: LIT2450
Department: Literature
An interdisciplinary examination of the subject of happiness, using a variety of ancient and modern literary and philosophical works as well as films. Students analyze the texts and films for their specific content but also for a deepened sense of the possible relationships between visual and discursive representations of narratives.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Explores what the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas might have meant when he wrote that “all of philosophy may be found in the plays of Shakespeare.” The focus is on a close study of selected works, together with commentary by such thinkers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Derrida, Cavell, and Critchley. Plays include Hamlet, Richard II, Coriolanus, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, and King Lear.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2205 Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110
Department: Literature
A study of how philosophical themes have been developed in recent fiction and an examination of the relationship between philosophy and literary criticism.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A study of memoirs by male and female authors, politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens describing childhood, communities, social changes, and revolutions. Works are drawn from South Africa, South America, Asia, Cuba, and the U.S. The rubric is the non-West’s interaction with the West, a north-south divide.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Who had the idea to name part of the world “Latin America”? What makes it “Latin”? Who has an interest in this definition? Who is included and who isn’t? This course asks these questions and others through readings of texts by Bolívar, Martí, Mariátegui, and others.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Selected examples drawn from the significant number of Latin American writers who have made some of their most interesting contributions in this short form. Selected works from 19th- and 20th-century writers are read closely. Taught in Spanish.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Selected plays spanning Shakespeare’s entire career. In addition to close reading and textual interpretation, students address questions and problems of performing, directing, lighting, costuming, and set designing Shakespeare’s plays. The course examines past and current trends in Shakespearean criticism, as well as the social and theatrical contexts in which the plays were first produced.
Credits: 3
Department: Literature
American drama considered primarily as a critique of American society, values, and life. Covers the period from 1916 to 1964, including plays by Susan Glaspell, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, and Edward Albee.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Western and world theatre from ancient Greece to 1642, when the theatres of Shakespeare’s time were finally closed. What would now be called actors, playwrights, producers, directors, designers, and theatre architects are all considered.
Credits: 3
Department: Literature
A study of the mystery plays, morality plays, interludes, masques, and entertainments of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Analysis of texts is combined with consideration of theatrical production in light of the ideological, religious, and historical contexts of the plays.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Virginia Woolf captures sensory detail and internal thought like few other writers. This dramatization of perception makes her work ripe for adaptation. Students will read selections of Woolf’s essays, short stories, and novels, and study theatrical adaptations of her work. Students will explore translating Woolf’s iconic vision into theatrical shape by creating immersive stage adaptations of her work
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Examines the history of 20th-century black American theatre. Major representative plays are read as literature; playwrights include Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy, August Wilson, Robert O’Hara, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, Kia Corthron, and Lorraine Hansberry.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Shakespeare goes to celluloid, Hollywood, Japan, TV, and elsewhere. On the one hand, this is a Shakespeare seminar, with emphasis on discussions of the plays themselves. On the other, it becomes a film course, focusing on analyses of screen adaptations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2205 Or LIT2205
Department: Literature
American theatre and society during the last 50 years. Plays by Jones (Baraka), Mamet, Shepard, Hwang, Kushner, Fornes, Marsha Norman, Sarah Ruhl, and August Wilson. Some knowledge of the American drama of O’Neill, Williams, and Miller is required.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
A writing workshop on how to develop performance scripts from poetry, prose fiction, and nonfiction. Requires a background in literature, interest in theatrical form, and commitment to the scripting process.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Malaise, futility, despair, and, sometimes, hope in the plays of Pirandello, Brecht, Giraudoux, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Osborne, Pinter, Churchill, and others, from World War I to somewhere short of tomorrow.
Credits: 4
Department: Literature
Though often seen as simply a test of students’ knowledge and ideas, essays go far beyond what is generally required in courses. Students in this course read and experiment with a wide variety of critical, journalistic, academic, personal, and experimental essay forms. In the process, they further develop their skills as critical thinkers and writers.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: WRI1110 Or WRI2110
Department: Literature
In the personal essay, writers adopt distinct points of view, moving beyond the emotional to analytical and reasoned positions. Topics can include personal reflections, thoughts on daily life, art analysis, and political arguments. Students read and analyze contemporary essays and “workshop” each other’s writing. Requirements include attending instructor-supervised events (films, performances, guest speakers) outside of class for some writing assignments.
The philosophy program offers students an intensive engagement with the history of philosophy, ancient and modern, Western and non-Western.
Special attention is given to key 20th- and 21st-century developments in Anglo-American and Continental thought. Courses addressing the arts, gender and sexuality, and social and cultural change and conflict are also among the program’s core offerings. Students may pursue topics of special interest through tutorials and directed independent studies. Coursework in philosophy frequently includes small seminars and intensive writing, and special seminars for juniors and seniors help students develop their senior projects.
The philosophy major is ideal for students who:
seek rigorous preparation for careers that demand articulate, intellectual flexibility and discipline (e.g., law, medicine, government, business, education, and journalism).
wish to pursue a professional career in philosophy and plan to do postgraduate work in the field.
want, regardless of career objective, a liberal arts experience that affords a deep unifying perspective on the complexities of human knowledge and experience.
want an intellectually comprehensive complement to intensive work in another major.
Because of the art- and media-related nature of many programs at Purchase College, the philosophy program also offers courses for arts students and others who wish to investigate the foundation of the fine arts and related cultural media.
Requirements:
In addition to completing general degree requirements, all philosophy majors must complete a minimum of nine courses in philosophy, plus an 8-credit senior project:
PHI 1515/History of Philosophy I: 4 credits
PHI 2110/History of Philosophy II: 4 credits
PHI —/One elective in the history of philosophy: 4 credits
PHI —/One seminar on a major figure (typically Plato, Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger/Arendt) or issue: 4 credits
At least two additional philosophy courses*
*Strongly recommended courses include:
PHI 2120/Methods of Reasoning: 4 credits
PHI —/One additional elective on a major figure or issue: 4 credits
PHI 3899/Junior Seminar: 4 credits
PHI 4860/Senior Colloquium: 1 credit
PHI 4890/Senior Seminar: 2 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Additional notes for philosophy majors:
No more than two courses at the 1000 level may be counted towards the major.
The sequence and selection of courses is to be made in consultation with a philosophy faculty member chosen by the student to serve as a major advisor.
The topic of the senior project is to be developed in conjunction with the junior seminar and in consultation with the advisor, who will normally be the project supervisor.
At the time of graduation, a student must have a minimum 2.0 (C) GPA for courses, excluding the senior project, within the philosophy program.
It is recommended that students take one year of college-level foreign language courses (6–8 credits).
Minor requirements:
The minor in philosophy is designed for students with a general interest in philosophy.
Students interested in pursuing a minor offered by the philosophy program should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the coordinator of the Philosophy program. Upon admission to the minor, the student will be assigned a minor advisor from the philosophy faculty.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Philosophy
Five courses, to include:
PHI 1515/History of Philosophy I or
PHI 2110/History of Philosophy II
One other course in the history of philosophy (e.g., PHI 1515, 2110, or 3212)
Three elective courses in philosophy (including two at the 3000 or 4000 level), to be chosen in consultation with the minor advisor
An exploration of the ways in which various media technologies promote investment and disinvestment in history, community, and tradition. This course pursues the argument that technology does not derive from, but creates the fundamental structures of human experience, affecting people socially, politically, psychologically, and neurologically. Primary authors include Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, Stiegler, and Malabou.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050
Department: Philosophy
Designed for first-year students, this course takes up questions about the nature and significance of property, or owning stuff (including oneself and one’s “properties”). Authors include Aristotle, Justinian, Locke, Marx, Hegel, Fourier, Toni Morrison, Jane Smiley, Cheryl Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court, and St. Francis of Assisi. Students read, write, and discuss primary texts using interpretative methods distinctive of the humanities.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Examines the complex and evolving relationship between modern science and religion from the 16th century to the present. Topics include the influence of the Reformation on emerging secular culture; the modern philosophical debate over the existence of God; “disenchantment” as a defining feature of modern experience; and Darwinian evolutionary theory, humanism, and conflicts between secularism and fundamentalism in the 21st century.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
The emergence of Western philosophy in ancient Greece during the age of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A survey of our most important ethical notions and of the philosophers who were most important in shaping them.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An introduction to philosophy through an examination of influential views of what it is to be human. Topics include the relations among people, machines, and animals; the role of culture in shaping people; and the question of whether there is a distinctively human good.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An introduction to Western culture through the study of tragic drama, Plato’s dramatic dialogues, and philosophical reflections on tragedy. The focus is on the possibilities and limitations of human action. Topics include the relations of individual to city, mortal to divine, and male to female; and the roles of knowledge and desire in human conduct. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and Toni Morrison are included.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An examination of major 19th- and 20th-century European philosophical and literary texts by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Fanon. Topics include “the death of God,” alienation, freedom and commitment, ethics and politics when “everything is permitted,” and the interaction of self and other(s) in the definition of individual and social identities.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Close readings of four or five major philosophers from the modern period (e.g., Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant). Issues and supplementary readings may vary each semester.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Systematic analyses of ordinary arguments, followed by a study of formal languages that are used to represent arguments symbolically.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An overview of the development of philosophy in the Islamic world, with a focus on the medieval period (9th–13th centuries). Key figures and concepts of the Islamic philosophical movement are discussed, together with its influence on Jewish and Christian thinkers, Islamic theology and mysticism, and its impact on modern Islamic projects of reform.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A critical introduction to major Asian philosophical systems, including Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Particular attention is given to core themes in traditional texts and later commentaries pertaining to metaphysical questions about the nature of reality, epistemological questions about the sources of knowledge, ethical questions about virtuous conduct and the good life, and aesthetic questions about art and beauty.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Topics include philosophic conceptions of experience, nature, self, and truth in classical Buddhist schools of India, Tibet, China, and Japan.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
What is gender? What is power? What tools do we have for understanding and addressing gender injustice? This course employs philosophical, feminist, and queer theory to address these and related questions.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A critical examination of the category and idea of race. The course addresses historical, philosophical, ideological, institutional, ethical, and psychological components of race, focusing on the ways race mobilizes systems of domination, including racism and white supremacy. Relationships between race and ethnicity, race and gender, race and class, and other intersections are explored.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An introduction to major traditional and contemporary issues in the philosophy of art. Topics include the problem of defining “art”; the nature of representation; the problem of whether taste has an objective basis; and the relation of art to moral, cognitive, and social values.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An examination of the forms of and challenges to religious experience. Key questions include: Can any religious beliefs be proved or disproved? Is there a basic conflict between reason and faith? Must one be traditionally religious to lead a spiritual life? Does the existence of evil refute the idea of a Supreme Being? Is fundamentalism a distortion of the essence of religion? Readings are drawn from modern, medieval, Western, and non-Western sources.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
relationships between humans, their values, and the nonhuman species that comprise the natural environment. Specific inquiries include: What does it mean, metaphysically, to say that humans are “part of nature”? Do humans have duties towards nonhuman species? Do any nonhuman species have rights? When do ecological philosophies become politically controversial? Readings include a variety of contemporary and traditional philosophers.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An interdisciplinary examination of the subject of happiness, using a variety of ancient and modern literary and philosophical works as well as films. Students analyze the texts and films for their specific content but also for a deepened sense of the possible relationships between visual and discursive representations of narratives.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Philosophical debates about scientific method and the status of scientific findings. Topics include induction, natural vs. social science, realism/antirealism, “normal” science and paradigm shifts, the problem of scientism, and feminist and other critiques of science. Attention may also be paid to one or more specific sciences (e.g., biology, economics, physics, psychology).
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A historical examination of philosophical thought on the structure and meaning of time. Readings emphasize the centrality of time to continental thought, but other approaches are also discussed. Key questions include: What is the relation between subjective and objective temporality, and how are we to conceive of each? Is there anything more to time than our experience of it?
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An introduction to leading figures and themes of 20th-century philosophical pragmatism. Topics include pragmatic critiques of traditional (e.g., Cartesian and Kantian) epistemology; the practical sources of philosophy, science, and art; and the requirements of metaphysical naturalism.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An examination of theories of capitalism from the Industrial Revolution to the age of neoliberalism. Students engage major thinkers and develop critical perspectives on the socioeconomic forces that shape people’s lives. John Locke, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, C.B. McPherson, E.P. Thompson, David Harvey, and Wendy Brown are among the thinkers.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An examination of the rich philosophies of Tibetan Buddhism, drawing on Nagarjuna and the Indian background, developing the tantric tradition through its philosophic assumptions and arguments. (offered Summer, in India)
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Explores what the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas might have meant when he wrote that “all of philosophy may be found in the plays of Shakespeare.” The focus is on a close study of selected works, together with commentary by such thinkers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Derrida, Cavell, and Critchley. Plays include Hamlet, Richard II, Coriolanus, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, and King Lear.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2205 Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110
Department: Philosophy
A critical study of the Enlightenment approach to ethics and politics in the natural rights and social contract theories. Topics include tensions between the individual and the state, liberty and equality, and reason and passion in the theory and practice of the great democratic revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries. Readings include Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Burke, and the Federalists.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A study of thinkers who challenged accepted notions of reason and selfhood and, in doing so, helped shape the intellectual life of our present century. Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche are some of the thinkers studied.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Do photographic images have privileged access to truth? This course explores the complicated relationship between truth and visual (particularly filmic) images. It begins with Plato on the “fakery” that is painting, turns to 17th-century “faithfulness” and “sincerity” in still-life painting and scientific drawing, and looks in depth at 20th-century writings about the nature of photography and realism in representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Examines philosophers’ efforts to rethink fundamental ethical, legal, and political issues in the wake of total war and totalitarian domination in Europe between 1914 and 1945. Focusing on Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, questions about resistance, complicity, guilt, and punishment become central. Additional texts are selected from Jaspers, Beauvoir, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Adorno, and Butler.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
Approaches music (represented in various world music traditions) as a form of experience that raises deeper questions about the metaphysics and evolution of human cognition, emotion, rhythm, sociality, and imagination. Readings draw on the literatures of philosophy of music and philosophy of mind, but also on recent discussions of embodied cognition and meaning in evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A study of three recent thinkers who have had a powerful influence on contemporary intellectual life, and on our assessment of the Enlightenment legacy of the modern world.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
Examines key philosophical ideas of 19th-century German Romanticism and their revolutionary impact on modern cultural history. Romantic reinterpretations of Enlightenment distinctions between thought and feeling, art and philosophy, wholeness and fragmentation, “lower” nature and “higher” spirituality. Readings from early Romantic era German figures, such as Schiller, Schlegel, and Schopenhauer and others, including Coleridge, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Emerson, Dewey, and Cavell.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
Explores the development of phenomenology through selections from the major works of phenomenologists, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. The focus is on how strict adherence to phenomenological description leads one beyond the secluded Cartesian ego to accounts of consciousness that take ego and world to be coeval.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2060 Or PHI2110
Department: Philosophy
An exploration of central issues in 20th-century European philosophy. The focus is on the challenges to traditional humanism posed by the successes of modern science and technology; the fragmentation of social and political life; and the decentering of the subject in psychoanalysis, linguistics, and literary modernism. Texts include works by Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas, and Derrida.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
A study of how philosophical themes have been developed in recent fiction and an examination of the relationship between philosophy and literary criticism.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A critical examination of influential attempts to understand the nature of the cinematic medium. Questions raised include: Is film a fine art? Must a movie “represent reality” if it is to succeed as a movie? Are there certain insights into human experience that are better expressed through film than through other media? Readings include Siegfried Kracauer, André Bazin, and Stanley Cavell.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
An investigation of classical, modern, and contemporary theories of desire and sexuality, with an emphasis on the relationship between familial and other social institutions and on the formation of individual identities. Readings include works by Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and queer theorists.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An investigation of philosophical accounts of the nature of mind, including issues like: What does it mean to have a mind? How are mind and body related? Could animals or machines have minds? How are accounts of the mind important for our understanding of freedom, immortality, human nature, and religion?
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An investigation of what current evolutionary psychology and cognitive science suggest about a philosophical idea that has long been sacred for modern humanistic culture: that human beings can act freely, without constraint by social or biological forces. Are “free will” and “determinism” fundamentally contradictory ideas, or is a compromise position possible? Includes readings from selected philosophers, cognitive psychologists, and others.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
What, if any, moral and political obligations does art have? Should public policy promote some kinds of art and discourage others? This course addresses these and related questions via works from across the arts and philosophical texts.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
A forum for second-semester juniors with two distinct aims: (1) to facilitate the formulation of (a) a senior thesis prospectus, (b) an outline, (c) a bibliography, and (d) a schedule for the composition, during the senior year, of a satisfying 40-page senior thesis; and (2) to introduce the mainstreams of contemporary thought and interpretation in philosophy. Senior thesis topics need not deal with the topic of the junior seminar.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
An intensive study of the major texts, emphasizing their role in defining the work of Western philosophy, with special attention to the interaction of drama with argumentation in the dialogue form.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515
Department: Philosophy
A close study of Aristotle’s most influential texts with discussion of how these texts helped shape the philosophical tradition. Topics may include Aristotle’s ideas about being, soul, cause, nature, ethics, and politics.
Credits: 4
Department: Philosophy
This seminar stages an encounter between the two thinkers: Martin Heidegger, one of the most powerful and controversial philosophers of the 20th century, and Hannah Arendt, arguably its greatest political thinker. Among the central questions studied: individual authenticity vs. being in the world with others; resoluteness and political death vs. the promise of birth; and the relation between philosophic reflection and political action.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
An intensive study of the main ideas and texts of William James and John Dewey, two seminal figures of American pragmatist philosophy. Readings and discussions focus on such topics as the centrality of the idea of experience to philosophical analysis; the relations between thought and action; the epistemological status of metaphysical and religious belief; and the reconstructive role of intelligence in art, science, and social life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
Writing in the latter half of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche has exercised extraordinary influence on subsequent philosophy. He is a powerful thinker and an intriguing writer. This seminar involves an intensive examination of the full range of his work.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
Intensive study of primary texts by major late 20th century thinkers, focusing on relation of subjectivity to language, history and politics.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
Kant is the thinker who has, more than any other, shaped the discussion of intellectual issues over the past two centuries. The semester is devoted to a close study of Kant’s critical philosophy of scientific knowledge, human morality, and judgment in art and the life sciences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI2110
Department: Philosophy
A seminar devoted to close readings from several of Hegel’s texts (e.g., Phenomenology of Spirit, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Science of Logic, Philosophy of History).
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI2110
Department: Philosophy
An examination of the strengths and weaknesses of ancient and modern ethical systems, insofar as they provide a model of living a human life well. Analysis and evaluation of arguments are emphasized.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212
Department: Philosophy
Continues the writing workshop format of PHI 4890 (required in the fall semester), and focuses on the development of oral presentation skills. Students present aspects of their ongoing work to each other, culminating in a public presentation to philosophy majors and faculty at the annual Assessment Day in the late spring. Required of philosophy majors in the second semester of their senior projects.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: PHI4890
Department: Philosophy
For first-semester seniors who are developing their senior theses. Designed to give students the invaluable experience of presenting ongoing work to a critical and supportive public of peers.
This minor is designed for students with a particular interest in philosophy and the arts.
Students interested in pursuing a minor offered by the philosophy program should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the coordinator of the Philosophy Board of Study. Upon admission to the minor, the student will be assigned a minor advisor from the philosophy faculty.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Philosophy and the Arts
Five courses, to include:
Three arts-related philosophy courses, chosen from the list below
Two additional courses in philosophy, to be chosen in consultation with the minor advisor
Arts-Related Philosophy Courses
PHI 1720/Tragedy and Philosophy
PHI 2780/Philosophy of Art: From Plato to Postmodernism
PHI 2835/Happiness: Philosophy, Film, Literature
PHI 3205/Shakespeare and Philosophy
PHI 3265/Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Culture
PHI 3275/Light and Truth: Film, Photography, and Reality
The MA program in modern and contemporary art, criticism, and theory offers a unique and interdisciplinary program that centers engagement with art—as a material, critical, and social practice—in a curriculum designed to train scholars, artists, and museum and gallery professionals in the analytical skills, historical perspective, and theoretical fluency necessary for cultural workers today. Our students learn how art and its institutions have developed over time and acquire the tools to reimagine what they could become.
The program provides an intensive study of contemporary critical and theoretical issues surrounding 20th- and 21st-century artistic practices. During weekly first-year colloquia, students are also introduced to the work of some of the most prominent critics, artists, curators, and historians in the field today. Many courses are supplemented by field trips to museums and art galleries in New York City, just 20 miles south of the Purchase campus. The college’s Neuberger Museum of Art is also a major resource.
Updated 9-24-20
Requirements:
Requirements for the graduate major in art history include eight courses (32 credits), proficiency in one foreign language, and an 8-credit thesis. A minimum 3.0 (B) cumulative GPA must be earned at Purchase College.
Required Courses:
ARH 5101/Proseminar: Method and Theory in Art History
ARH 5325/Master’s Colloquium I
ARH 5326/Master’s Colloquium II
ARH 5—/One course dealing with art before 1950
Four elective courses in art history
ARH 5990/Master’s Thesis I: 4 credits
ARH 5991/Master’s Thesis II: 4 credits
Museum + Curatorial Studies (M+) Option
The Museum + Curatorial (M+) track engages students in object-based research and the study of critical histories of museums and museum practices with an underlying commitment to cultivating more inclusive and accessible institutions and notions of exhibition-making. Building on the required courses for the MA degree in art history, required courses for M+ students include, in the first year, Museology (fall semester) and Critical Curatorial Studies (spring semester). In the second year, students’ coursework will be augmented by workshops, on- and off-campus internships, and the development of an exhibition series based in the Neuberger Museum.
MA Academic Requirements
A total of 40 credits are required for the MA degree: 32 course credits (eight courses), and the eight-credit Master’s Thesis. Any deficiencies and language courses must be completed in addition to these credits, and a language exam must be passed prior to graduation.
Sample Two-Year Schedule
First Year: 24 credits
Fall:
12 credits
ARH 5101/Proseminar: Method and Theory in Art History
4 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Elective (two)*
8 credits
Spring:
12 credits
ARH 5325/Master’s Colloquium I: History and Theory of Modern Art
4 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Elective (two)*
8 credits
Second Year:12 credits
Fall:
12 credits
ARH 5326/Master’s Colloquium II: Critical Issues in Contemporary Art
4 credits
ARH 5990/Master’s Thesis I
4 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Elective*
4 credits
Spring:
8 credits
ARH 5991/Master’s Thesis II
4 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Elective*
4 credits
* At least one course elective must deal with art before 1950
Sample Three-Year Schedule
First Year: 8-24 credits
(Note: at least one course per semester is required during the first two years)
Fall:
4-12 credits
ARH 5101/Proseminar: Method and Theory in Art History
4 credits
(Option: ARH 5—/Art History Elective* (one or two))
(4-8 credits)
Spring:
4-12 credits
ARH 5325/Master’s Colloquium I: History and Theory of Modern Art
4 credits
(Option: ARH 5—/Art History Elective* (one or two))
(4-8 credits)
Second Year: 8-20 credits
(Note: at least one course per semester is required during the first two years)
Fall:
4-12 credits
ARH 5326/Master’s Colloquium II: Critical Issues in Contemporary Art
4 credits
(Option: ARH 5—/Art History Elective* (one or two))
(4-8 credits)
Spring:
4-8 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Elective* (one or two)
4-8 credits
Third Year: 8-24 credits
Fall:
4-12 credits
ARH 5991/Master’s Thesis I
4 credits
(Option: ARH 5—/Art History Elective* (one or two))
(4-8 credits)
Spring:
4-12 credits
ARH 5992/Master’s Thesis II
4 credits
(Option: ARH 5—/Art History Elective* (one or more, as needed to satisfy total 40-credit requirement ))
(4-8 credits (or more as needed))
* At least one course elective must deal with art before 1950
MA/MFA Academic Requirements
In most cases, obtaining both an MA in Art History (through the School of Humanities) and an MFA in visual arts (through the School of Art & Design) at Purchase College requires three years of in-residence study with a total course load of 98 credits. For successful progress through the program, a 3.0 (B) GPA must be maintained.
First Year: 32 credits
Fall:
16 credits
VIS 5150/College Pedagogy or Elective
3 credits
VIS 5720/Graduate Studio Critiques I
3 credits
VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics
3 credits
VIS 5801/Independent Graduate Studio I
3 credits
ARH 5101/Proseminar: Method and Theory in Art History*
4 credits
*ARH 5101 offered alternate years; one semester required
Spring:
16 credits
VIS 5210/Professional Practices: Artists or
VIS 5220/Professional Practices: Institutions
3 credits
Elective (open)
3 credits
VIS 5770/Graduate Critical Topics II
3 credits
VIS 5802/Independent Graduate Studio II
3 credits
ARH 5325/Master’s Colloquium I*
4 credits
*ARH 5325 and 5326 may be taken in either order
Second Year: 34 credits
Fall:
16 credits
VIS 5740/Graduate Studio Critiques III
3 credits
VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics
3 credits
VIS 5803/Independent Graduate Studio III
3 credits
ARH 5326 Master’s Colloquium II*
4 credits
Studio Art Elective
3 credits
*ARH 5325 and 5326 may be taken in either order
Spring:
18 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Elective
4 credits
VIS 5005/MFA Thesis Tutorial
2 credits
VIS 5210/Professional Practices: Artists or
VIS 5220/Professional Practices: Institutions
3 credits
Elective (open)
3 credits
VIS 5790/Graduate Critical Topics IV
3 credits
VIS 5804/Graduate Studio Capstone
3 credits
Third Year: 32 credits
Fall:
16 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Electives (two)**
8 credits
Elective (open)
4 credits
ARH 5990/Master’s Thesis I
4 credits
Spring:
16 credits
ARH 5—/Art History Electives (two)**
8 credits
Elective (open)
4 credits
ARH 5991/Master’s Thesis II
4 credits
**At least one course elective must deal with art before 1950
Notes:
Students must take VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics two times.
Updates to the 2020-21 Catalog
Students in the MA/MFA program now take VIS 5760/Critical Topics two times along with two electives rather than Critical Topics I - IV.
Students focus on developing competence in both critical style and content. Focusing on visual art, the course explores different kinds of critical voices, from belle-lettristic to theoretical. Readings and discussions analyze examples by leading critics. Writing assignments aim for students to develop an engaging argument, and the importance of revision, clear thinking, and descriptive ability is stressed.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores ideas of the “normal” and “non-normal” in art and design today. Through readings, guest speakers, and projects, the class investigates both traditional and unusual depictions of bodies, race, and gender, along with the art and design practices developed in order to represent and understand them.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Since the 1800s, the avant-gardes have tried to resist the delimited role of fine art in Western culture. In this course, students examine the strategies that avant-garde artists have used to reconnect their art practice with the more contentious areas of social and political life.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the resurgence, or persistence, in recent art of the sublime: an experience of overwhelming grandeur. Why have contemporary artists (Matthew Barney, Edward Burtynsky, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, Bill Viola, and others) turned to an 18th-century aesthetic theory in order to address the pressing issues of our time: climate change, the expansion of technology, and economic globalization?
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Participants in this seminar propose, research, plan, and coordinate an exhibition series and related public programming to be undertaken the following semester (as part of the course, Exhibition II). These exhibitions will take place in the Neuberger Museum, other sites around campus, or in a combination of Museum-based and other locations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ARH5035 Or ARH5037
Department: Art History
Participants in this seminar coordinate an exhibition series and related public programming based on the plans and preparations of the previous semester (conducted as part of the course, Exhibition I). These exhibitions take place in the Neuberger Museum, other sites around campus, or in a combination of Museum-based and other locations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ARH5025
Department: Art History
In this seminar, students and the instructor co-curate an exhibition for the Neuberger Museum of Art. The class works on all aspects of the exhibition with the instructor and museum staff. Students learn about the various functions of departments, including curatorial, education, exhibition design, development, and public relations, putting exhibition theory into practice. Exhibition topics vary.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An investigation of the historical development and function of museums. Students examine the growth of collections and exhibitions, along with the various roles that museums have played in relation to art history and society around the world. Central to this course and its final project is the question: “What should a museum be in the 21st century?”
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A rigorous examination of the historical, theoretical, and concrete concerns of curatorial practice. Course-work culminates in a complete exhibition proposal.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Considers the validity of obscene imagery—eroticism, violence, scatology, racism, and hate speech—in recent artistic practice. Students investigate the struggle to define the terms “art” and “obscenity” and the efforts to censor such art. What are the artistic, critical, and political effects of engaging with obscenity? What are the motivations and effects of attempting to censor it?
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Addresses the tension between art and document, or making and recording, in twentieth-century visual culture. The first half investigates the aesthetics and politics of documentary photography and film, including conflicts between realism and modernism. The second half examines the use of documents and documentation by postmodern art and subsequent transformations in the style, form, and truth-content of documentary practices.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Takes a broad view of the aesthetic, historical, and conceptual development of modern and contemporary art and architecture of the Middle East. Topics include legacies of Orientalism; colonialism and decolonization; religion and secularization; relationships between art and nation-building; the rise of petrocultures; and questions of reception in the context of global contemporary art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores the history of twentieth-century architecture through the modern city, tracing the rise and occasional decline of the metropolis internationally. Students analyze how architects and urban planners proposed new visions of urban life and devised solutions for urgent social and political problems related to urbanization (e.g. public space, housing, gentrification, globalization).
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Since the 1990s, the art market has become integral to an understanding of contemporary art practices. This course introduces the economic foundation of the art market and the practices of participants. The focus is on the history of the primary market, where new works of art produced “on spec” are introduced to the public in a retail setting.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The major theoretical orientations and methodologies associated with art historical study are discussed and critiqued. Methods reviewed range from connoisseurship to the iconographical and social-historical. Theories surveyed include formalist, Marxist, literary, feminist, psychoanalytic, and new-historicist concerns that dominated 20th-century interpretative practice. Required for MA students.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The relationship between artistic practice and the social realm is addressed, with emphasis on the development of the avant-garde in the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of artists in contemporary political discourse, and the theoretical discourse that constitutes the larger debate on these issues.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
How and why do certain artworks become embroiled in major public debates, political scandals, and legal disputes? Beginning with the 1863 Salon des Refusés and continuing to the present day through an itinerary that travels the globe, students will examine the role of controversy in defining art, society, and how we imagine the relationship between the two.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The 1970s are often thought about in frivolous terms, as the decade of disco and bell-bottoms. In art, this period is often overshadowed by the radical avant-gardes of the 1960s and new developments in art during the 1980s. This seminar reconsiders the art and culture of the ’70s in the context of social and political currents of the period.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Drawing on both contemporary artists’ and critics’ writings and recent historical accounts, students consider minimalist art of the 1960s as a well-defined movement comprising a specific group of artists, versus “minimalism” as a diffuse tendency appearing in sculpture, painting, film, music, and dance. The relationship of minimalism to subsequent practices—postminimalism, process and land art, and conceptualism—is also explored.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
African-American artistic trends since 1968 are examined by using the binary of East Coast-West Coast as appropriated from hip-hop culture, particularly in Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York. Both the limits of hip-hop aesthetics in the visual arts and the limits of thinking about “black aesthetics” as a stable or quantifiable style are tested.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
This seminar focuses on the inception of the “readymade” and the abandonment of traditional forms of painting in the work of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the later development of readymade practices in the context of New York and Paris Dada. The history of the readymade as an artistic strategy is traced.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A graduate-level independent study based on objects in the Neuberger Museum of Art. Students undertake independent research projects on works in the museum’s collection, investigating issues of documentation, provenance, condition, and interpretation.
Credits: 3
Department: Art History
Examines the relationship between the traditional crafts and the upheavals of modernity. Beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th century and continuing to the present day, students explore how craft is framed as protest against industrialization, as utopian model of labor and exchange, and as aesthetic transformation.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Surveys American painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture until the opening of the Armory Show in 1913. The course explores the distinctiveness of the American art tradition.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A study of African American painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, drawings, photography, film, and vernacular and popular art. The course begins with the Afro-Atlantic era and covers images made by Southern artists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as artists associated with the “New Negro” movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, and postmodernism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A study of artists and exhibitions from and about Africa, spanning a wide variety of traditional and new media. Important exhibitions like The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 (2001) and Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora (2004) are analyzed. Themes include framing “Africa,” African identities, memory and place, and popular culture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on women artists and their place within the art-historical narrative of the 20th century. Students examine both the diverse practices of women artists and the reception of their work by critics, dealers, and collectors.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An introduction to a wide range of photographic practices, from the medium’s conception in the 19th century to the ubiquitous online photo-sharing of today. Lectures have a special focus on the major artistic developments of photography. Topics include the significance of vernacular practices and their historical contexts in different parts of the world.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the history of photography within both the historical and the neo-avant-gardes. Special attention is given to photographic activities of the Weimar Republic, the Soviet avant-garde, surrealism, and American pictorialism, modernism, and FSA documentary work, as well as the postwar formations of the New York School, conceptual art, and photographic postmodernism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Treats the history of photography in a global framework. Topics include the transformation of photography as it spreads from Europe to Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East; the decentering of European modernism in postmodernism; the role of photography in colonialism and decolonization; and its role in fine art as well as vernacular portraiture, journalism, documentary, and other fields.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores the ways in which ability and disability are conceived, represented, and negotiated in museum culture. Weekly discussions, visiting lecturers and screenings will examine key theoretical concepts, practical case studies, as well as the use of educational and internet-based media as assistive technologies. Specific topics will include: museums and the establishment of norms; the category of “assistive technology”; inclusive architecture and design; staring and other practices of looking; disability and performance art; media advocacy and activism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the photographic medium from its earliest forms through the 1920s and 1930s. Topics include technical innovations, manipulations and interventions, function and reception, the relationship to the fine arts, and debates about photography’s claims of realism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Painting has long been accompanied by theories describing its abilities to attract, deceive, and even harm. This course looks at key theories and debates in the history of the medium (e.g., Rubenistes vs. Poussinistes, painting’s role among pluralistic practices) to better understand how both making and seeing a painting are colored by a history of ideas.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Despite a growing interest in the work of the Russian avant-garde, there is still relatively little known about the artists of the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union. This course addresses the broad scope and multidisciplinary practice of Russian modernism, from the shocking primitivism of The Rite of Spring to the cold pragmatism of constructivism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Design is both a noun and a verb. This course deals with the idea of design as a cultural phenomenon and a creative practice. Contemporary design and its making are situated within a broad methodological framework, drawing from existing and emerging theories in anthropology, art history, film studies, criticism, the history of technology, and architecture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Why design? Why consume? What is desire? Are you what you make? Are you what you consume? How does design communicate? Design is a complex activity that touches on fields as diverse as psychoanalysis and anthropology. This course provides a theoretical understanding of design practice, production, and use (consumption). Topics include graphic and digital design, furniture, architecture, and industrial design.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A seminar that considers topics and theoretical models that inform students’ understanding of modern and contemporary art. Within this framework, critics, art historians, and artists are invited to give lectures and lead seminars on their particular research interests. Required for MA students.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A directed investigation of a specific set of issues in contemporary art and culture. The focus, which changes from year to year, introduces students to critical and theoretical models central to contemporary cultural analysis. Invited artists, art historians, and critics participate through individual lectures, seminars, or directed collaborations with students. Required for MA students.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on contemporary Latin American artists working in and out of Latin America: Gabriel Orozco, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Adriana Varejao, Teresa Margolles, Carlos Garaicoa, Betsabeé Romero, Javier Tellez, Nadín Ospina, Tania Bruguera, and Nicolás de Jesus. Students analyze the way these artists address such questions as urban violence, social inequality, pollution, emigration, and national identity.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Focuses on objects and movements influenced by industrialization and mechanization in the U.S. between 1900 and 1940. Topics include the rise of the skyscraper in American architecture and its effect on painters and printmakers, the advent of the automobile and the assembly line’s replacement of the factory worker, and Dada’s expression of the havoc wreaked during World War I by new machine-age technology.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Considers the art movement referred to as land art (or, alternatively, as environmental art) that developed in the late 1960s out of the sculptural and process arts phenomena. Artists central and peripheral to the discourse on this movement are discussed. The time frame explored extends from the 1960s to the global contemporary and DIY sustainability art movements.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the history of design as it parallels the history of technology and industrialization. Covering a variety of design disciplines, including architecture and urban planning, graphic design, fashion, and industrial design, this course focuses less on aesthetics than on the cultural programs that have shaped buildings, objects, and communication systems for more than two centuries.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
The work of Robert Rauschenberg is examined in the context of postwar neo-avant-garde activities in the U.S. and in relation to the work of contemporaries like Jasper Johns and John Cage. Students also review recent theoretical debates about the meaning and significance of the artist’s work.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A practical course in art criticism, which meets regularly in New York. Contemporary works of art form the basis for lectures, discussions, and written essays
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines a selection of poetry, short stories, novels, and films from different historical periods that foreground the visual arts through various means, including the character of the artist, the practices of art, the nature of creativity, and the critical reception of art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
European art from the French Revolution to 1900, with movements in France, Germany, and England receiving particular attention. Major artists studied include David, Gericault, Delacroix, Ingres, Frederich, Constable, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Daumier, Manet, Degas, Monet, and Gauguin.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines the development of performance and body-oriented work as a major mainstream in contemporary art practice, beginning with the work of Fluxus and happenings and continuing to the present.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An examination of contemporary art outside of the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Looking at painting-based performances of the 1950s, feminist body art, guerrilla television, and current political interventions based in digital media, students identify the strategies artists used to create new forms, and assess their success in modifying our understanding of the world.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Examines photography as a medium used by European colonizers and its subsequent use by Africans for self-definition and liberation. Topics include early studio photography, photographs in cultural outlets like the Nigerian edition of Drum magazine, photography during the apartheid era, and contemporary work. The political and stylistic aspects of portrait, documentary, ethnographic, pop, and abstract images are considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
From photography’s 19th-century origins to contemporary practices, this survey course explores how and why photography became central to arguments about the modernity of African visual art. Moving from one regional focus to the next, students examine photography’s role in expeditionary and ethnographic projects, identity formation, political activism, spirituality, documenting the landscape, and representing the fantastical and the everyday.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A critical examination of the concepts of creativity and the artist genius in the era of Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Gentileschi. Artist biographies are compared with art historical evidence, including painting, sculpture, architecture and other media, to explore the historical contexts of Renaissance art creation. Topics include self-portraiture, women artists, workshop practices, and the artist’s and architect’s differing connections to fabrication.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Since the late 1800s, pre-Columbian art and history have inspired Latin American artists. This course investigates that phenomenon through an in-depth study of the work of individual artists, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as more contemporary figures. Students are also introduced to pre-Columbian art and architecture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A variety of intersections between extreme mental conditions and the production of works of art during the modern period are investigated. Topics include connections between creativity and mental instability, artists with a history of mental disorder, and theories about stylistic or formal affinities between madness and art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Although Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s best-known and most beloved artists, his work is often reduced to simplistic notions of madness and genius. This course expands students’ understanding of the artist by exploring his connection to the contemporary contexts of mechanical reproduction, national identity, and urban culture.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Conceptions of what sculpture can be were radically transformed over the course of the 20th century. This course presents a survey of 20th-century sculpture, with emphasis on innovative materials and techniques, the changing relationship between viewer and object, and new modes of exhibition. The work of Duchamp, Bourgeois, Calder, Judd, Hesse, and Smithson, among others, is discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Emerging from a longstanding literary tradition, examples of utopian architecture give insight into the ideals and fears of the cultures that produced them. This course explores both utopian and dystopian architectural visions, beginning with the Enlightenment works of Ledoux and Boullée and ending with the paper projects of 1960s groups like Archigram and Superstudio.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
If the postwar period famously represented the ascendency of American art, what art forms emerged simultaneously in traditional European centers? This course examines seemingly antithetical practices in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere: Art Informel, nouveau réalisme (new realism), Arte Povera, neoexpressionist painting, body art, conceptualism, Young British Art, etc. How has the changing European political landscape affected art and its institutions?
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Explores reciprocal influences of Western and non-Western art in the modern period. Topics include diverse artistic movements like “Orientalism,” “Japonisme,” and “Primitivism.” The class also examines the impact of non-Western art on specific artists, including Delacroix, Manet, Whistler, Picasso, and Pollock.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
This seminar focuses on uses of history—as both subject and method—in art around the turn of the 21st century. Within a globally comparative frame, students investigate contemporary theories and practices that take stock of the past in order to reimagine the future at a moment when the world seems simultaneously more connected and more fractured than ever before.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An examination of critical and theoretical writing by artists about art. The course considers texts from various eras, but focuses primarily on 20th-century and contemporary material. Artists’ writings are analyzed in the context of art criticism as a whole, and students also have the opportunity try their hand at criticism.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
This seminar delves into the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of museum and exhibition practices in the U.S., from encyclopedic museums to storefront galleries. In addition to classroom discussion, students visit arts institutions in the area to consider collection and exhibition-related issues and to learn more about the operational function and structure of museums.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
African art and visual culture are considered in the context of African film. African youth, who make up most of the continent’s population, have had a marked effect on many sociopolitical phenomena. The films screened address African youth culture and such issues as the new independence (1960s), post-apartheid South Africa, youth rebels, religious fundamentalism, HIV, hip-hop and digital culture, and global emigration.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
An analysis of the roots and reinvigorations of West African performance art featuring the artist’s body, with emphasis on manifestations in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and especially Afro-Brazil. Topics include griot styles; contemporary African fashions and pop culture; and musical call and response as adapted for dance, sculpture, painting, film, fashion, and photography.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
A broad look at modern and contemporary Mexican art, using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. Special emphasis is on the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and its aftermath throughout the 20th century. Students analyze links between the visual arts (including mural painting, prints, and photography) and the literature, the popular scene and the mainstream, the street art and the gallery art.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Supervision of research and writing of the master’s thesis. ARH 5990 and 5991 must be taken in consecutive semesters.
Credits: 4
Department: Art History
Supervision of research and writing of the master’s thesis. ARH 5990 and 5991 must be taken in consecutive semesters.
Anthropology is the study of human differences and commonalities in a world of global and transnational connections.
Cultural anthropologists study a wide range of contemporary concerns, from identity and community formation to popular culture and political economy. They engage in long-term ethnographic research in rural, urban, and suburban environments around the world and apply critical cultural analysis to their field experiences.
Anthropology at Purchase College takes the study of culture to be an inherently interdisciplinary practice, drawing not only on other social sciences, but also the natural sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Courses in the anthropology program provide the core of a broad liberal arts education for students majoring in anthropology. These courses also introduce students from a range of other disciplines to the vital connections between anthropology and their own fields of study.
Our graduates go on to careers in social work, development, and activism for nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, curatorial and archival work at museums and historical societies, consumer research and creative communications for marketing and advertising firms, end-user practices for product design firms, and teaching at colleges and universities.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all anthropology majors must complete the following requirements (35–39 credits):
The following courses must be completed with a grade of C or higher:
ANT 1500/Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology: 3 credits
ANT 3150/Classics in Anthropological Literature: 4 credits
ANT 3560/Fieldwork: Qualitative Methods: 4 credits
ANT 4070/Current Anthropological Literature: 4 credits
Four anthropology electives: 12–16 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Anthropology majors are encouraged to undertake an internship, study-abroad opportunity, or community-action independent study. Students may petition to take credit-bearing internships with anthropology faculty sponsors in lieu of one upper-level elective for the major.
The minor in anthropology is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the discipline and to introduce them to some of the major subfields.
Students interested in the minor should consult with a member of the anthropology faculty, then submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study. A student is assigned to the faculty advisor who best meets the student’s academic interest in the minor.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Anthropology
Five courses, to include:
ANT 1500/Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
Plus four elective courses in anthropology, chosen with the assistance of the anthropology faculty
PhD, Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York
Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching
Courses
Hausa is one of the most important African languages, spoken by more than 50 million people in Nigeria and numerous other countries. This course offers intensive first-year instruction in the Hausa language while introducing students to the customs, beliefs, and concerns of Nigerian Hausa speakers as expressed through various media.
Credits: 4
Department: Anthropology
The major fields of interest and contributions of social and cultural anthropologists. Accounts of life in different societies are read to illustrate how institutions vary in different cultural settings and to explore what it means to be a member of a culture different from one’s own.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
Explores the different roles that language plays in the lives of people, communities, and nations. Topics include language and thought, language and power, poetics and verbal art, bilingualism, African-American English (“Ebonics”), pidgin and Creole languages, Native American language revitalization, “politically correct”; language, and the rise of English as a global language.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
How useful a tool is film for the study of peoples who come from cultures entirely different from one’s own? Appropriate readings accompany the visual material, in addition to ethnographic accounts of the societies viewed in class and discussions of the problems encountered in filming non-Western peoples.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
An introductory survey of music, theatre, and dance in Western and non-Western cultures, including the relationships between music and religion, dance and weddings, theatre and curing. The course also explores the performing arts as aesthetic phenomena in their own right. Live performances by non-Western performers and optional field trips are planned.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Anthropology
Using texts and films, students analyze how street drugs and legitimated pharmaceuticals become entangled with the economic and aesthetic practices of marginal and mainstream social worlds. Topics include rural Midwestern methamphetamine production as a cottage industry; the ways that steroids and methamphetamine refashion the HIV+ body and identity; and the designs of “performance enhancers” like Adderall that make machines out of bodies.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
An introduction to the poetics of representation, display, and performance in museums. Students critically analyze museums as spaces of encounter and culture contact; consider the political economy of museums and their links to the education, tourism, and entertainment industries; and participate in and report on curatorial projects at the Neuberger Museum of Art.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or (MSA1050 Or NME1050 )
Department: Anthropology
Investigates magic and witchcraft in the shadow of technology, industrialization, and capitalism. Readings range from athletes who employ superstition to cope with uncertainty, to more challenging case studies on witchcraft, spirit possession, shamanism, and other forms of magic as healing. Alongside classical anthropological texts, concepts such as fetishism, fantasy, and enchantment are explored in contemporary contexts, including film, art, and literature.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or MSA1050
Department: Anthropology
A survey of theoretical orientations and methodologies for the study of musical production, performance, and consumption in particular cultural contexts and within global flows of materials, ideas, cultural forms, and people. Focuses on music as a communication medium and collective poetic process. Students attend and critically engage musical performances and/or engage directly in musical production and performances.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or (MSA1050 Or NME1050 )
Department: Anthropology
Begins with historical examples of ethnographic work on black diasporic cultures and then moves to contemporary anthropological work on black life from around the world. Underscores the history of anthropology in understanding race and racial politics and also draws on an array of topical issues, from mass incarceration to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
Explores and compares the diverse ways in which sexuality and gender are practiced, experienced, and regulated in different communities around the world. Particular attention is paid to how sexual identities and practices have influenced, and been influenced by, global political, economic, and cultural movements, including colonialism, capitalism, feminism, queer activism, and the spread of world religions.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
Explores love as an anthropological concept, focusing on how love is experienced and shaped in families and other intimate relationships, and how it in turn shapes personhood. Students also explore how the idea of love is used in state agencies to determine social welfare provisioning and how people experience love in philanthropy and charity programs across different cultural contexts.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
Theoretical concepts and their use in analyzing empirical data. Students read and critically analyze the work of some of the major thinkers in anthropology, including Benedict, Mead, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Geertz, Turner, and Lévi-Strauss.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 And (ANT1010 Or ANT2175 Or ANT2235 Or ANT2250 Or ANT2320 Or ANT2330 Or ANT2340 Or ANT2400 Or ANT2410 Or ANT2470 Or ANT2555 Or ANT2610 Or ANT2755 ) And (ANT3070 Or ANT3175 Or ANT3185 Or ANT3190 Or ANT3215 Or ANT3255 Or ANT3275 Or ANT3345 Or ANT3350 Or ANT3380 Or ANT3390 Or ANT3410 Or ANT3415 Or JST3455 Or JST3456 Or JST3457 Or ANT3540 Or ANT3600 Or ANT3610 Or ENV3800 )
Department: Anthropology
The experiences and problems of city dwellers in the Third World and migrants from Third World countries to Western cities, including New York. Topics include urbanization and family life, adaptation of migrants, ethnicity and class, the culture of poverty, and methods of urban anthropologists.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or CAN1500 Or ANT2055
Department: Anthropology
Examines both foundational and newer critical approaches to understanding religion from an anthropological perspective. Texts cover a diversity of topics from a variety of cultures, including the construction of religion as an analytical category; religion’s relation to secularism, law, and political ideology; religion and gender; and embodied religious experience. In particular, the relationships between media and religion are explored. Not intended as a general survey of religious traditions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or NME1050 Or MSA1050
Department: Anthropology
Africa is home to some of the oldest and fastest-growing cities in the world. Rapid urbanization brings challenges, opportunities, and expectations. Topics include colonial and postcolonial urban planning; corruption and informal economies; violence and security; ethnicity, nationalism, and pan-Africanism; modernism and traditionalism; youth styles and subcultures; charismatic Christianity and Islamic reformism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500
Department: Anthropology
Explores how African performing artists and audiences have responded to the cultural, political, and economic circumstances of the times and places in which they live. Performance media include music, song, dance, film/video, and the spoken word, with a special focus on western and southern Africa. Students draw on anthropological theories to produce, perform, and critique their own versions of African performance texts.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or (MSA1050 Or NME1050 )
Department: Anthropology
How have myth, ritual, and performance functioned as ways to comprehend, organize, and even generate the world around us? What are the values and constraints of symbolic structures as they shape and influence bodies and environments? Students consider both structural and poststructural approaches to performance as a medium for exploring, but also transgressing, structures of everyday life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or THP2020 Or MSA1050 Or MSA1050
Department: Anthropology
Examines the avant-garde from historical and cultural perspectives, as both a lens and object of social critique. How the avant-garde engages with everyday life through various forms of artistic and technological mediation is also explored. Covers such topics as shock and aesthetics, collage, manifestos, found objects, and commodification, and examines various types of experimental music and performance.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or (MSA1050 Or NME1050 )
Department: Anthropology
Students perform close readings and engage in in-depth discussions of theoretical texts, illustrative ethnographic works, and audio/video recordings on the relationships between language and culture. Questions explored include: What assumptions about culture are implicit in any given method of analyzing language practices? What lies beyond the reach of language? Topics covered include affect, gesture, semiotics, and symbolic violence.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500
Department: Anthropology
An exploration of the arts of a variety of cultures, both Western and non-Western. Topics include the relationship of art to other social institutions; the role of the artist in society; the ways that people make aesthetic judgments; and the evolutionary significance of art.
Credits: 4
Department: Anthropology
An anthropological and ethnomusicological approach to sound and listening with emphasis on the politics of sound. Topics include sound and the senses, weaponization of sound, music as torture, sounds of protest and police surveillance, and background music and consumption.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (ANT2175 Or ANT2320 Or ANT2400 Or ANT2460 Or ANT2555 Or ANT2610 Or ANT2755 Or ANT3150 Or ANT3560 Or ANT3255 Or ANT3190 Or ANT3215 Or ANT3345 Or ANT3350 Or ANT3380 Or ANT3390 Or ANT3540 Or ANT3560 Or ANT3600 Or ANT4070 Or ANT4100 Or ANT4160 Or ANT4860 Or ANT1010 ) And (ANT1500 Or MSA1050 )
Department: Anthropology
What theories of embodiment, mind, and matter must be adopted to adequately grasp experiences of time, space, color, emotion, and attention? How can people conceptualize forms of experience without purging them of poetic resonance? Students explore this interdisciplinary field in connection with the arts. Includes readings in cognitive science, anthropology, and poetry, plus collaborative art projects, sensory experiments, and excursions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or PSY1530 Or BPS1530 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Anthropology
The methodological, political, and ethical issues of participant observation. Students read and discuss classical examples of participant-observation research. Each student conducts a participant-observation field research study and presents a preliminary version of the results to the seminar before submitting the written report. Limited to anthropology majors.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 And ANT3150
Department: Anthropology
Drawing on scholarly texts, novels, films, and music, this course critically examines the aesthetics and politics of modernity in Japan. Topics include fascism and aesthetics in interwar Japan; folk art and Japanese imperialism; criminality and the everyday in postwar Japan; public spectacles (Tokyo Olympics, Osaka Expo); postwar avant-garde movements; consumer culture and department stores.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or CAN1500
Department: Anthropology
Students focus on recent theoretical texts in cultural anthropology and are expected to present short oral reports on these texts and to lead class discussion. Limited to anthropology majors in their senior year.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 And ANT3150
Department: Anthropology
Focuses on the prehistory of the Americas from the first peoples through 1492, beginning with the Ice Age cultures of the New World and moving forward chronologically. South, Central, and North American cultures are examined, including the Olmec, Woodlands, and Mississippi Valley cultures, pueblo culture, and the Maya, Aztec, and Inca.
Credits: 4
Department: Anthropology
Introduces the largest unit of political organization, the empire, and its early appearances in various regions of the world. The focus is on Akkadia in Mesopotamia, Egypt’s New Kingdom, the Qin Dynasty in China, and the Inca Empire in South America (also known as the Inka Empire). The course reviews theories of sociopolitical organization and development drawn from anthropological archaeology, economics, ecology, and political science.
Credits: 4
Department: Anthropology
Students focus on how humans are represented and configured across media platforms, how the self is culturally constructed, and how technology continually redefines the meaning of “human.” The class also considers what these figurations indicate about contemporary political subjectivities, gender identities, and species belonging. The work of notable thinkers, including William Gibson, Masamune Shiroh, Stellarc, and Spike Jonze, is studied.
Credits: 3
Department: Anthropology
Students look at forms of production and exchange in various contexts throughout the world that are alternatives to dominant, formal economies. These include trash picking and trash art-making, piracy and counterfeiting, independent farming, and alternative banking. Students consider the notion of value in a variety of ways and trace how production, exchange, circulation, and consumption elaborate new forms of social life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) Or ANT1500 Or CAN1500
Department: Anthropology
In recent years, anthropologists, physical and cultural geographers, biologists, and media theorists have tried to account for the more-than-human world in order to emplace humans in a general ecology of liveliness. Using methods from multiple disciplines, students explore the animacy of ordinary and extraordinary places. Topics include landscape as a contingent process, geological time, energetics, dwelling, regenerative design, and industrial-chemical ecologies.
The interplay between biology, chemistry, and even mathematics has rapidly changed the field of biomedical research over the past 25 years.
Students entering this field need to have an in-depth interdisciplinary background that includes advanced courses and research experience in both chemistry and biology. The curriculum in the biochemistry major provides a solid foundation for students who plan to continue their study in biochemistry, biomedical sciences, or pharmaceutical science.
Rapid advances in the biomedical field in recent years have created a great demand for a work force that is well trained in the interdisciplinary area of biochemistry. Students completing the biochemistry major are also well prepared for employment in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and other biomedical areas. The biochemistry major also prepares students for medicine, dentistry, and other allied health professions.
Requirements:
To declare biochemistry as a major, students are required to have passed General Chemistry I and II (or the equivalent courses for transfer students) with grades of C or higher.
Other courses required for the biochemistry major, including support courses but excluding the senior project, must be completed with a grade of C- or higher. In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all biochemistry majors must complete the following requirements (83.5 credits):
One advanced elective in biology: 4 credits minimum
*When registering for BIO 3530, biochemistry majors will need to obtain an instructor override exempting them from two prerequisites—BIO 1560 and 2890 (not required for biochemistry majors).
Students complete a senior research proposal, which is submitted to the biochemistry faculty for review and approval. Students also attend research seminars presented by faculty and guest speakers. Required for juniors majoring in biochemistry.
Credits: 2
Department: Biochemistry
Faculty, visiting scientists, and seniors in biochemistry present results of current research projects. Students are graded on the basis of oral presentations of senior project results made to the faculty and their peers.
Credits: 1
COREQ: SPJ4990
Department: Biochemistry
Faculty, visiting scientists, and seniors in biochemistry present results of current research projects. Students are graded on the basis of oral presentations of senior project results made to the faculty and their peers.
Credits: 1
COREQ: SPJ4991
Department: Biochemistry
Introduction to contemporary biology, covering cell structure and function, genetics, development, and molecular biology. This course is for science majors and premedical students; students with limited high school science and mathematics can satisfy college distribution requirements with BIO 1510 or 1520.
Credits: 4
Department: Biochemistry
Lab exercises on cell organization, cell division, genetics, enzyme kinetics, photosynthesis, and development, and the use of light microscopes, spectrophotometer, and chromatography. Required for premedical students, biology majors, biochemistry majors, and environmental studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO1550 Or BBI1550
Department: Biochemistry
Cellular organization and function, and molecular genetics, with emphasis on eukaryotic cells. Topics include cellular genomes; replication and maintenance of genomic DNA; RNA and protein synthesis, processing, and regulation; macromolecular structure and processes of organelles; vesicular transport; cytoskeleton; the cell surface; cell signaling; and cell cycle. Students prepare a paper based on current literature in the field. Required for all biology majors immediately following BIO 1550 and 1560.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (BIO1550 Or BBI1550 ) And (BIO1560 Or BBI1560 ) And BIO2890 And (CHE1550 Or BCH1560 )
Department: Biochemistry
Structure, function, and regulation of genes at the molecular level. Topics include transcription; RNA processing; involvement of RNA in protein synthesis; DNA replication, mutation, and repair; gene cloning; DNA sequencing; PCR ampliflication; and applications of recombinant DNA technology (including gene therapy). Students write a short research grant proposal on a topic of their choice, incorporating molecular approaches learned in class.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biochemistry
The principles and applications of chemistry. Topics include the development of an atomic/molecular model, stoichiometry, interaction of light with matter, and the physical behavior of solids, liquids, and gases.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1150 Or BMA1150 Or MAT1500
Department: Biochemistry
Emphasizes basic techniques in synthetic and analytical chemistry.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE1550
Department: Biochemistry
A continuation of CHE 1550. Topics include chemical kinetics and equilibrium, electrochemistry, thermodynamics, acids and bases, and the chemistry of representative elements..
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHE1550 Or BCH1550 And MAT1150 Or MAT1500 Or BMA1150
Department: Biochemistry
Emphasizes basic techniques in synthetic and analytical chemistry.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE1560
PREREQ: CHE1551
Department: Biochemistry
The lecture covers general analytical chemistry, including gravimetric and volumetric analysis, solution chemistry, and an introduction to the theory and use of modern analytical instruments. The required lab acquaints students with general wet chemistry techniques and with instrumental methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: CHE1560 Or BCH1560
Department: Biochemistry
An introduction to the chemistry of carbon compounds. The structural theory is used to develop an understanding of the physical properties and chemical reactivity of organic compounds. Compounds are grouped according to structure, using a functional group approach. Reactions are organized according to similarities in mechanism, with an emphasis on electron flow. Infrared and NMR spectroscopy are also introduced.
Credits: 4
COREQ: CHE3311
PREREQ: (CHE1560 Or BCH1560 )
Department: Biochemistry
Lab experience in organic chemistry, with an emphasis on microscale techniques.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE3310
Department: Biochemistry
The concepts learned in CHE 3310 are elaborated on and more complex organic reactions are studied, including the mechanism and the use in multistep synthesis problems. More compounds, such as aromatics, carbonyl- and carboxyl-compounds, and their reactions are discussed, and the structure, reactivity, and reactions of carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids are introduced.
Credits: 4
COREQ: CHE3321
PREREQ: CHE3310
Department: Biochemistry
Continued study of the spectroscopic methods for structure determination of unknown compounds. Synthetic methods for the preparation of interesting compounds are emphasized.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE3320
Department: Biochemistry
A lecture course introducing the principles of chemical thermodynamics and chemical dynamics. Applications in chemical equilibria, phase equilibria, properties of solutions, chemical kinetics, and transport properties are included.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: CHE3320 And (PHY1520 Or BPH1520 ) And (MAT1510 Or BMA1510 )
Department: Biochemistry
An introduction to the structure, function, and metabolism of the four classes of biomolecules: proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids. Topics include molecular biology; the structure, regulation, and kinetics of enzymes; and the structure and function of vitamins.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHE3320 Or BCH3320 Or CHE3350 Or CHE3015
Department: Biochemistry
Practical hands-on experimental techniques for isolation and analysis of the four classes of biomolecules: proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids. Required for biochemistry majors.
Biology is an area of explosive scientific, intellectual, and technological advances.
Attention is focusing on the origin and evolution of living organisms (even their possible existence on other planets), the molecular mechanics of heredity, the processes of disease and immunity, the ecological balance among life forms, the effect of synthetic chemicals on molecular functions of the cell, the biological basis of behavior, and the extraordinary technologies for the creation of useful new characteristics in microorganisms, plants, and animals.
The biology program at Purchase College embodies the excitement of the dramatic advances in this rapidly expanding field. Students actively participate in the life sciences, studying and pursuing research with faculty who are active in their fields.
The biology program at Purchase College may be pursued from a variety of perspectives, and our majors are well prepared for graduate school, medical school, teaching, and careers with high-tech industries. Biology majors should be aware that, of all the natural sciences, biology is the least able to stand alone as a discipline; mathematics, physics, and especially chemistry are important for a meaningful appreciation of life processes. In consultation with a faculty advisor, the student will expand upon this base by choosing advanced subjects related to particular objectives. Advanced courses are offered in seven concentrations.
Biology courses are also challenging, rewarding, and immediately relevant studies for students in other disciplines. Students who major in other subjects and have a strong secondary interest in biology may consider a biology minor.
There are two categories of requirements for all biology majors: biology courses and basic science support courses. General Biology I and II, Cell Biology, and the five upper-level electives in the “biology courses” category must be passed with a grade of C- or higher. Students must attain at least a 2.0 (C) GPA in courses used to satisfy the requirements for the major, including the “biology courses” category (excluding the senior project) and the “basic science support courses” category. Students majoring in biology may choose a concentration, but one is not required.
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all BA majors in biology must complete the following courses:
Biology Courses
BIO 1550/General Biology I
BIO 1551/General Biology I Lab
BIO 1560/General Biology II
BIO 1561/General Biology II Lab
BIO 1880/Biology Freshman Seminar
BIO 2890/Biology Program Seminar
BIO 3530/Cell Biology (successful completion of BIO 3530 is a prerequisite for all upper-level biology electives, except BIO 3850)
Five upper-level biology electives, as follows; these must include at least one at the 4000 level and at least four lab studies, taken either in conjunction with lecture courses or as separately registered lab courses:
One of the following courses in biological mechanisms:
BIO 3160/Genetics
BIO 3170/Developmental Biology
BIO 3250/Animal Physiology
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology
One of the following courses in biodiversity and ecology:
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3430/Vertebrate Zoology
BIO 3440/Invertebrate Zoology
ENV 3080/Wildlife Ecology
ENV 3120/General Ecology
ENV 3220/Restoration Ecology
ENV 3250 and 3251/Ecology of Urban Environments and Lab
ENV 3805/Conservation Biology
Three additional upper-level biology electives
BIO 3890/Biology Junior Seminar
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II
If a student elects to conduct a senior project in an area other than the life sciences, two additional biology courses are required.
Basic Science Support Courses
CHE 1550 and 1551/General Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 1560 and 1561/General Chemistry II and Lab
CHE 3310 and 3311/Organic Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 3320 and 3321/Organic Chemistry II and Lab
One of the following courses:
ENV 3025/Biostatistics or
MAT 1600/Introductory Statistics or
PSY 2320/Behavioral Statistics or
PSY 3635/Honors Seminar in Statistics and Research Design
MAT 1500/Calculus I
MAT 1510/Calculus II
MAT 1520/Computer Science I
MAT 3680/Informatics in Biology and Medicine
Additional notes for biology majors:
Many students will want to study additional mathematics. Graduate schools generally require Calculus I; professional schools may require either Calculus I or Statistics.
A year of physics is highly recommended (PHY 1510–1511/Introductory Physics I with lab and PHY 1520–1521/Introductory Physics II with lab). Professional and graduate schools generally require physics.
Some professional and graduate schools may not accept high school AP courses as substitutes for college introductory science courses (e.g., General Biology, General Chemistry, Introductory Physics).
There are two categories of requirements for all biology majors: biology courses and basic science support courses. General Biology I and II, Cell Biology, and the seven upper-level electives in the “biology courses” category must be passed with a grade of C- or higher. Students must attain at least a 2.0 (C) GPA in courses used to satisfy the requirements for the major, including the “biology courses” category (excluding the senior project) and the “basic science support courses” category. Students majoring in biology may choose a concentration, but one is not required.
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all BS majors in biology must complete the following courses:
Biology Courses:
BIO 1550/General Biology I
BIO 1551/General Biology I Lab
BIO 1560/General Biology II
BIO 1561/General Biology II Lab
BIO 1880/Biology Freshman Seminar
BIO 2890/Biology Program Seminar
BIO 3530/Cell Biology (successful completion of BIO 3530 is a prerequisite for all upper-level biology electives, except BIO 3850)
Seven upper-level biology electives, as follows; these must include at least two at the 4000 level and at least four lab courses, taken either in conjunction with lecture courses or as separately registered lab courses:
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology or
CHE 4610/Biochemistry
One of the following courses in biological mechanisms:
BIO 3160/Genetics
BIO 3170/Developmental Biology
BIO 3250/Animal Physiology
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology
One of the following courses in biodiversity and ecology:
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3430/Vertebrate Zoology
BIO 3440/Invertebrate Zoology
ENV 3080 / Wildlife Ecology
ENV 3120/General Ecology
ENV 3220/Restoration Ecology
ENV 3250 and 3251/Ecology of Urban Environments and Lab
ENV 3805/Conservation Biology
Four additional upper-level biology electives
BIO 3890/Biology Junior Seminar
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I*
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II*
*The senior project must be an original research project.
Basic Science Support Courses
CHE 1550 and 1551/General Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 1560 and 1561/General Chemistry II and Lab
CHE 3310 and 3311/Organic Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 3320 and 3321/Organic Chemistry II and Lab
Two of the following courses:
ENV 3025/Biostatistics or
MAT 1600/Introductory Statistics or
PSY 2320/Behavioral Statistics or
PSY 3635/Honors Seminar in Statistics and Research Design
MAT 1500/Calculus I
MAT 1510/Calculus II
MAT 1520/Computer Science I
MAT 3680/Informatics in Biology and Medicine
Additional notes for biology majors:
Many students will want to study additional mathematics. Graduate schools generally require Calculus I; professional schools may require either Calculus I or Statistics.
A year of physics is highly recommended (PHY 1510–1511/Introductory Physics I with lab and PHY 1520–1521/Introductory Physics II with lab). Professional and graduate schools generally require physics.
Some professional and graduate schools may not accept high school AP courses as substitutes for college introductory science courses (e.g., General Biology, General Chemistry, Introductory Physics).
Updates to the 2020-21 Catalog
Removed CHE 3015 as an option to satisfy the Organic Chemistry requirement.
The purpose of the biology minor is to encourage students who are majoring in other disciplines to follow their interest in biology by completing a coherent program of study.
Interested students must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the coordinator of the Biology Board of Study. Upon admission to the biology minor, a student is assigned a minor advisor who will assist in designing an appropriate program.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Biology
A total of 20 credits in biology, including two of the following courses:
BIO 1510/Human Anatomy and Physiology I: Anatomy and Physiology
BIO 1520/Human Anatomy and Physiology II: Physiology and Nutrition
BIO 1550/General Biology I
BIO 1560/General Biology II
A biology-related section of FRS 1200/Science in the Modern World
Additional courses needed to complete 20 credits are to be selected in consultation with the biology minor advisor:
Courses may be chosen from any available biology courses for which the prerequisites are met.
At least two courses must be at the 2000 level or above. Advanced courses for students not taking the General Biology sequence include the following (with permission of instructor):
BIO 3160/Genetics
BIO 3250/Animal Physiology
BIO 3430/Vertebrate Zoology
BIO 3440/Invertebrate Zoology
BIO 4720/Evolution
BIO 4770/Scanning Electron Microscopy and Digital Imaging
ENV 3805/Conservation Biology
ENV 3820/Animal Behavior
ENV 4460/Marine Ecology
PSY 3660/Physiological Psychology
Chemistry Minor for Biology Majors
Many biology majors at Purchase qualify for a minor in chemistry. Biology majors who complete Biochemistry for the BS have already taken enough chemistry and need only submit the Application for a Program of Minor Study. Other biology students must take only one course beyond Organic Chemistry (e.g., CHE 3150, 3510, or 4610).
Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service
Courses
Introduction to the organ systems of the human body, including the neuromuscular, skeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, and digestive systems. The physiological mechanisms of adaptation to exercise are also considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Biology
Students learn about both form and function of the human body. Content includes cells and tissues; gross and microscopic anatomy; integumentary, skeletal, and muscular systems; and kinesiology. Lab exercises use microscope slides, models, and dissection for a hands-on approach and a practical knowledge of anatomy.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO1510
Department: Biology
Introduction to the human body, emphasizing general physiological processes. The body is studied from the viewpoint of homeostasis, concentrating on the relationship of food to the functioning living organism in health and disease. Topics of current interest, controversies, and myths are highlighted.
Credits: 4
Department: Biology
Students learn about both form and function of the human body. Content includes neuroanatomy and neurophysiology; senses (vision, olfaction, taste, hearing, equilibrium); and functional anatomy/physiology of the endocrine, urinary, circulatory, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, and reproductive systems. Lab exercises use microscope slides, models, and dissection for a hands-on approach and a practical knowledge of anatomy.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO1520
Department: Biology
Introduction to contemporary biology, covering cell structure and function, genetics, development, and molecular biology. This course is for science majors and premedical students; students with limited high school science and mathematics can satisfy college distribution requirements with BIO 1510 or 1520.
Credits: 4
Department: Biology
Lab exercises on cell organization, cell division, genetics, enzyme kinetics, photosynthesis, and development, and the use of light microscopes, spectrophotometer, and chromatography. Required for premedical students, biology majors, biochemistry majors, and environmental studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO1550 Or BBI1550
Department: Biology
Second semester of an introduction to contemporary biology, covering plant and animal morphology and physiology, ecology, behavior, and evolution. This course is for science majors and premedical students; students with limited high school science and mathematics can satisfy college distribution requirements with BIO 1510 or 1520.
Credits: 4
Department: Biology
Vertebrate anatomy and physiology, and examination of selected plant and animal phyla through lab exercises, experiments, and field trips. Required for premedical students, biology majors, and environmental studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO1560 Or BBI1560
Department: Biology
This supplement to BIO 1550 introduces biology majors and undeclared potential majors to the biology program and faculty and assists students in planning and succeeding in their course of study. Required for all freshman biology majors enrolled in BIO 1550.
Credits: 1
COREQ: BIO1550
Department: Biology
An introduction to biology and ecology of coral reefs, using scuba diving. Extensive field work, observations of living organisms, projects, lectures, and labs. Topics include reef coral biology and identification; field sampling; reef monitoring; threats to reefs; reef inhabitants (invertebrates, fish, sea turtles, algae); dolphins and whales; mangroves and sea grasses; local culture, history, and environment; substance and process of science. Note: This course involves scuba diving. It will be possible to learn to scuba dive during the program or to complete the open-water dives for a scuba course taken before the program. Scuba divers must be certified by a nationally recognized organization. All students must be physically capable and healthy enough for field work, scuba diving, and boat work; able to swim and willing to scuba dive in the ocean and from boats; and have a physician’s certification of adequate health and physical fitness to participate in course activities.
Credits: 4
Department: Biology
Introduces biology majors and potential majors to the field of study, to the faculty, to the opportunities available to students and graduates, and to necessary computer and writing skills. Programs are presented by biology faculty members and include readings of relevant scientific papers, associated writing assignments, labs, and field trips. Required for all biology majors and potential majors immediately following BIO 1550 and 1560, and for all transfer students.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: (BIO1550 Or BBI1550 ) Or (BIO1560 Or BBI1560 )
Department: Biology
Basic but intensive survey of the mechanisms of heredity, covering gametogenesis, mutagenesis, chromosome mapping, transmission genetics, and an introduction to population genetics. The lab is optional.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Lab and statistical exercises employing Drosophila, human, and plant material, selected to complement the lecture course.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO3160
Department: Biology
Lecture course examining patterns and processes of animal development from fertilization to organogenesis in vertebrates and invertebrates. Emphasis is placed on the genetic control of development and on molecular and cellular mechanisms of differentiation and morphogenesis. The lab is optional.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530 And (CHE1550 Or BCH1550 ) And (CHE1560 Or BCH1560 )
Department: Biology
Students perform lab studies on the embryology of the sea urchin, frog, chick, and zebrafish, as well as slime mold development, gametogenesis, regeneration, and insect development. Students also perform gene knockdown experiments and examine the phenotypic consequences.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: BIO3170
Department: Biology
Lecture and lab course trains students in modern methods. Topics may include isolation and characterization of biomolecules, plasmids, and cellular organelles; restriction endonuclease mapping; transformation with recombinant DNA molecules; DNA amplification using polymerase chain reaction; nucleic acid hybridization; tissue culture; and fluorescent labeling.
Credits: 3.5
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Lecture and lab course trains students in modern methods for work in the biotechnology industry. Lectures and visiting experts provide an overview of the industry and needed skills. Labs may include isolation/characterization of biomolecules and plasmids, restriction endonuclease mapping, transformation with recombinant DNA molecules, DNA amplification using polymerase chain reaction, and nucleic acid hybridization.
Credits: 5.5
PREREQ: BIO3530 And (BIO3200 Or BIO3670 )
Department: Biology
Lecture course examining the major organ systems of the vertebrates. Topics include neurophysiology and sensory biology, muscle contraction, cardiovascular physiology, respiratory physiology, osmoregulation, and digestion. Physiological adaptations of vertebrates to extreme environments (e.g., high altitude and aquatic hypoxia) are also discussed.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Lab course on vertebrate (animal and human) physiology. Topics include neurophysiology and sensory biology, muscle contraction, cardiovascular physiology (anatomy, blood pressure, EKG), respiratory physiology, exercise physiology, fluid balance, and osmoregulation.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: (BIO1550 Or BBI1550 ) And (BIO1560 Or BBI1560 ) And BIO3530 And (CHE1550 Or BCH1550 ) And (CHE1560 Or BCH1560 ) And BIO3250
Department: Biology
Lecture and lab course examining the anatomy and life processes of microorganisms with emphasis on bacteria and viruses. Topics include macromolecular aspects of growth, expression of genetic information, ecological adaptations, and infection and immunity. Lab exercises require time in addition to the scheduled period.
Credits: 5.5
PREREQ: BIO3530 And (CHE1550 Or BCH1550 ) And (CHE1560 Or BCH1560 )
Department: Biology
Lecture and lab course examining the evolution of the major groups of vertebrates and emphasizing the interrelationship of vertebrate form, function, and environment in extinct and extant groups. Topics include locomotion, respiration, circulation, osmoregulation, and sensory physiology. The required lab covers anatomy, morphology, behavior, and evolution of vertebrates and includes studies at the American Museum of Natural History, the Bronx Zoo, the Norwalk Maritime Center, and Greenwich Audubon.
Credits: 5.5
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
A survey of the biology of freshwater, marine, and terrestrial invertebrates. Considers structure, function, development, evolution, ecology, and phylogenetic relationships. The required lab includes examination of representative species and, if possible, some independent field work to study/collect invertebrates in natural environments.
Credits: 5.5
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Cellular organization and function, and molecular genetics, with emphasis on eukaryotic cells. Topics include cellular genomes; replication and maintenance of genomic DNA; RNA and protein synthesis, processing, and regulation; macromolecular structure and processes of organelles; vesicular transport; cytoskeleton; the cell surface; cell signaling; and cell cycle. Students prepare a paper based on current literature in the field. Required for all biology majors immediately following BIO 1550 and 1560.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (BIO1550 Or BBI1550 ) And (BIO1560 Or BBI1560 ) And BIO2890 And (CHE1550 Or BCH1560 )
Department: Biology
An introduction to biology and ecology of coral reefs, using scuba diving. Extensive field work, observations of living organisms, projects, lectures, and labs. Topics include reef coral biology and identification; field sampling; reef monitoring; threats to reefs; reef inhabitants (invertebrates, fish, sea turtles, algae); dolphins and whales; mangroves and sea grasses; local culture, history, and environment; substance and process of science. Note: This course involves scuba diving. It will be possible to learn to scuba dive during the program or to complete the open-water dives for a scuba course taken before the program. Scuba divers must be certified by a nationally recognized organization. All students must be physically capable and healthy enough for field work, scuba diving, and boat work; able to swim and willing to scuba dive in the ocean and from boats; and have a physician’s certification of adequate health and physical fitness to participate in course activities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (BIO1550 Or BBI1550 ) And (BIO1560 Or BBI1560 )
Department: Biology
A series of seminars and exercises on basic skills for research, literature review, scientific writing, and communication. Each biology faculty member presents a seminar on his or her own research, illustrating possibilities for senior projects. Students choose a senior project topic and sponsor and prepare a formal research proposal. Required for all junior biology majors before beginning the senior project; generally taken after completion of BIO 3530 and two advanced electives.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: BIO2890 And BIO3530
Department: Biology
A series of seminars and exercises on basic skills for research, literature review, scientific writing, and communication, with a focus on the Biotechnology industry. Presentations on possibilities for Senior Project topics. Students choose a senior project topic and sponsor, and prepare a formal research proposal. Required for Biology majors in the Biotechnology Concentration before beginning the Senior Project; generally taken in the junior year, and after completion of Cell Biology and two advanced electives, including Biotechnology I.
Credits: 3
COREQ: BIO3205
PREREQ: BIO2890 And BIO3530 And BIO3200
Department: Biology
An overview of central concepts and methods in the rapidly growing field of genomics. Topics focus on genome projects, molecular genetics, genetic architecture, sequencing methods, bioinformatics, phylogenetics, gene expression analysis, and epigenomics. Throughout the course, students explore the impact of advances in genomics on human health, public policy, the environment, and biomedical ethics.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Lecture course examining both the humeral and cellular immune systems. Topics include antibodies; cellular immunity; immunogenetics; inflammation and resistance to bacterial and viral infection; immunoprophylaxis, immunodiagnostics, and immunological diseases, including hypersensitivity (allergy); autoimmunity; and immunodeficiency. Students prepare a paper based on current literature in the field.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Structure, function, and regulation of genes at the molecular level. Topics include transcription; RNA processing; involvement of RNA in protein synthesis; DNA replication, mutation, and repair; gene cloning; DNA sequencing; PCR ampliflication; and applications of recombinant DNA technology (including gene therapy). Students write a short research grant proposal on a topic of their choice, incorporating molecular approaches learned in class.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Lecture course covering the techniques of transmission electron microscopy and the principles of cell ultrastructure. Lectures consider the structural organization of the cell and its organelles. Labs include practical instruction in the basic techniques required for the preparation and examination of biological materials. A written exam, project, and report are required.
Credits: 6
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Lab course covering the techniques of transmission electron microscopy and the principles of cell ultrastructure. Lectures consider the structural organization of the cell and its organelles. Labs include practical instruction in the basic techniques required for the preparation and examination of biological materials. A written exam, project, and report are required.
Credits: 0
COREQ: BIO4650
Department: Biology
A survey of historic, observational, and experimental evidence for past and present processes of biological evolution. Familiarity with the principles of genetics is assumed. Each student presents one seminar on an appropriate topic or organism and submits a fully documented term paper.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
The study of genetic determinants of animal behavior. Each student presents at least one seminar and submits a term paper. Topics include the inheritance of monogenic and polygenic traits; disruptive and stabilizing selection for behavioral traits; ethological and psychological isolation; and assortative mating as it pertains to a variety of animals, including humans.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: BIO3160 And BIO3530
Department: Biology
Preparation and examination of biological and other materials for scanning electron microscopy. Lectures consider theoretical aspects of microscopy and imaging. Interpretation of micrographs is emphasized, and a project and report are required. The lab is required.
Credits: 5.5
PREREQ: BIO3530
Department: Biology
Includes the techniques of tissue preparation; operation of the microscope; and digital image collection, image processing, and image analysis. Students pay for some lab supplies.
Concentrations allow students to focus their coursework in any of several areas of study. They are available to students pursuing either a BA or a BS in biology, but are not required for either degree.
Courses required for the concentration are completed in the course of, or in addition to, satisfying the requirements for the BA or BS in biology. Concentrations require a senior project in the general subject area of the concentration, as well as specific coursework.
Requirements:
BIO 3530/Cell Biology
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology
Three courses from the following list:
BIO 3170/Developmental Biology
BIO 3250/Animal Physiology
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3670/Cellular and Molecular Techniques
BIO 4300/Genomics
BIO 4560/Immunology
BIO 4650/Transmission Electron Microscopy and Cell Ultrastructure
CHE 4610/Biochemistry
Senior project in the general subject area of cellular and molecular biology
BIO 3160/Genetics
BIO 4720/Evolution
ENV 3820/Animal Behavior
Two courses from the following list:
BIO 3250/Animal Physiology
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3430/Vertebrate Zoology
BIO 3440/Invertebrate Zoology
BIO 4300/Genomics
BIO 4760/Behavior Genetics
ENV 3120/General Ecology
PSY 3660/Physiological Psychology
Senior project in the general subject area of evolutionary and behavioral biology
BIO 3200/Biotechnology I
BIO 3205/Biotechnology II
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3530/Cell Biology
One of the following statistics courses:
ENV 3025/Biostatistics or
MAT 1600/Introductory Statistics or
PSY 2320/Behavioral Statistics or
PSY 3635/Honors Seminar in Statistics and Research Design
One of the following courses:
BIO 4300/Genomics
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology
One of the following courses:
BIO 4650/Transmission Electron Microscopy and Cell Ultrastructure
BIO 4770/Scanning Electron Microscopy and Digital Imaging
CHE 4610/Biochemistry
BIO 3***/Biotechnology Seminar [course number to be assigned]
In fulfilling major requirements, this seminar is taken instead of BIO 3890/Junior Seminar
Senior project involving sophisticated laboratory skills and techniques
One of the following courses:
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3430/Vertebrate Zoology
BIO 3440/Invertebrate Zoology
ENV 3120/General Ecology
ENV 4460/Marine Ecology
One field course at a marine laboratory (e.g., BIO 3850/Coral Reef Biology and Ecology, or a course at Shoals Marine Laboratory)
Senior project in the general subject area of marine biology
BIO 3160/Genetics
BIO 4300/Genomics
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology
Two courses from the following list:
BIO 3170/Developmental Biology
BIO 4720/Evolution
BIO 4760/Behavior Genetics
CHE 4610/Biochemistry
Senior project in the general subject area of genetics
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3530/Cell Biology
BIO 4650/Transmission Electron Microscopy and Cell Ultrastructure
BIO 4770/Scanning Electron Microscopy and Digital Imaging
Senior project involving microscopy and imaging techniques
CHE 4610/Biochemistry with CHE 4611/Biochemistry Lab
BIO 4620/Molecular Biology
Two courses from the following list:
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3530/Cell Biology
BIO 3670/Cellular and Molecular Techniques
CHE 3150/Chemical Instrumentation and Analytical Methods
Senior project in the general subject area of biochemistry
Chemistry occupies a key position in the modern sciences, influencing nearly every aspect of human enterprise, from agriculture, industry, and medicine to theoretical research on the origin and structure of the universe.
It forms not only a basis for understanding non-living material systems—its traditional domain—but biological systems and many psychological processes as well. Ultimately, most phenomena in biology, medicine, geology, and environmental sciences can be stated in terms of the chemical and physical behavior of atoms and molecules.
A major in chemistry not only serves students who intend to pursue a career in chemistry; it is also provides a sound foundation for related careers in such fields as medicine and environmental science, teaching, law, business, art conservation, and journalism.
About the Curriculum
The chemistry curriculum at Purchase is designed to introduce students to all of the principal areas of modern chemistry, including organic, inorganic, physical, biological, analytical, and environmental chemistry. A career in chemistry or a closely allied field demands that the individual evolve toward a self-teaching style of scholarly independence. The chemistry curriculum at Purchase provides a foundation from which this long-range educational goal can be achieved.
Freshmen are encouraged to consult members of the chemistry faculty, in addition to their freshman advisors, concerning questions about chemistry at Purchase, program planning, and careers in chemistry and related fields.
Chemistry Education
The chemistry program has a variety of chemistry and related courses tailored to prepare students who are interested in pursuing careers as high school chemistry teachers. Upon completion, the courses allow students to proceed for a “one year” master’s degree in education at one of the SUNY/CUNY campuses and subsequent certification.
Requirements:
To declare chemistry as a major, students are required to have passed General Chemistry I and II (or the equivalent courses for transfer students) with grades of C or higher. Other courses required for the chemistry major, including support courses but excluding the senior project, must be completed with a grade of C- or higher.
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all chemistry majors must complete the following requirements (64 credits):
Chemistry Courses (46 credits)
A minimum cumulative 2.0 (C) GPA is required in all chemistry courses, excluding the senior project:
CHE 1550/General Chemistry I: 4 credits
CHE 1551/General Chemistry I Lab: 1 credit
CHE 1560/General Chemistry II: 4 credits
CHE 1561/General Chemistry II Lab: 1 credit
CHE 3150/Chemical Instrumentation and Analytical Methods: 5 credits
CHE 3310/Organic Chemistry I: 4 credits
CHE 3311/Organic Chemistry I Lab: 1 credit
CHE 3320/Organic Chemistry II: 4 credits
CHE 3321/Organic Chemistry II Lab: 1 credit
CHE 3510/Physical Chemistry I: 5 credits
A minimum of 4 credits of advanced chemistry electives, chosen from the following list:
CHE 3520/Physical Chemistry II: 4 credits
CHE 3740/Medicinal Chemistry: 3 credits
CHE 3997/Independent Study: 1–3 credits
CHE 4600/Bioorganic Mechanisms: 4 credits
CHE 4610/Biochemistry: 4 credits
CHE 4611/Biochemistry Lab: 2 credits
CHE 4800/Special Topics in Chemistry: 3 credits
Students may choose one of the two following pathways:
Pathway One:
CHE 1550 and 1551/General Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 1560 and 1561/General Chemistry II and Lab
CHE 3310 and 3311/Organic Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 3320 and 3321/Organic Chemistry II and Lab
And one upper-level elective in chemistry
Pathway Two:
CHE 1550 and 1551/General Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 1560 and 1561/General Chemistry II and Lab
CHE 3310 and 3311/Organic Chemistry I and Lab
CHE 3350/Organic Chemistry Bridge to Biochemistry
And two upper-level electives in chemistry (a lecture and lab combination satisfies this requirement)
Many biology majors at Purchase automatically qualify for a minor in chemistry. For additional information, refer to Chemistry Minor for Biology Majors.
The principles and applications of chemistry. Topics include the development of an atomic/molecular model, stoichiometry, interaction of light with matter, and the physical behavior of solids, liquids, and gases.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1150 Or BMA1150 Or MAT1500
Department: Chemistry
Emphasizes basic techniques in synthetic and analytical chemistry.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE1550
Department: Chemistry
A continuation of CHE 1550. Topics include chemical kinetics and equilibrium, electrochemistry, thermodynamics, acids and bases, and the chemistry of representative elements..
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHE1550 Or BCH1550 And MAT1150 Or MAT1500 Or BMA1150
Department: Chemistry
Emphasizes basic techniques in synthetic and analytical chemistry.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE1560
PREREQ: CHE1551
Department: Chemistry
The lecture covers general analytical chemistry, including gravimetric and volumetric analysis, solution chemistry, and an introduction to the theory and use of modern analytical instruments. The required lab acquaints students with general wet chemistry techniques and with instrumental methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: CHE1560 Or BCH1560
Department: Chemistry
An introduction to the chemistry of carbon compounds. The structural theory is used to develop an understanding of the physical properties and chemical reactivity of organic compounds. Compounds are grouped according to structure, using a functional group approach. Reactions are organized according to similarities in mechanism, with an emphasis on electron flow. Infrared and NMR spectroscopy are also introduced.
Credits: 4
COREQ: CHE3311
PREREQ: (CHE1560 Or BCH1560 )
Department: Chemistry
Lab experience in organic chemistry, with an emphasis on microscale techniques.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE3310
Department: Chemistry
The concepts learned in CHE 3310 are elaborated on and more complex organic reactions are studied, including the mechanism and the use in multistep synthesis problems. More compounds, such as aromatics, carbonyl- and carboxyl-compounds, and their reactions are discussed, and the structure, reactivity, and reactions of carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids are introduced.
Credits: 4
COREQ: CHE3321
PREREQ: CHE3310
Department: Chemistry
Continued study of the spectroscopic methods for structure determination of unknown compounds. Synthetic methods for the preparation of interesting compounds are emphasized.
Credits: 1
COREQ: CHE3320
Department: Chemistry
A lecture course introducing the principles of chemical thermodynamics and chemical dynamics. Applications in chemical equilibria, phase equilibria, properties of solutions, chemical kinetics, and transport properties are included.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: CHE3320 And (PHY1520 Or BPH1520 ) And (MAT1510 Or BMA1510 )
Department: Chemistry
An introduction to how drugs are designed and the molecular mechanisms by which drugs act in the body. Covers the basic principles and techniques of medicinal chemistry, including drug administration and metabolism, as well as specific topic areas within medicinal chemistry (e.g., opium analgesics and adrenergic receptor antagonists).
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHE3320 Or BCH3320 Or CHE3015 Or CHE3350
Department: Chemistry
Students complete a senior research proposal, which is submitted to the chemistry faculty for review and approval. Students also attend research seminars presented by faculty and guest speakers. Required for juniors majoring in chemistry.
Credits: 2
Department: Chemistry
The mechanisms by which enzymes catalyze reactions in biological systems are examined. Examples may include how a synthase catalyzes a Claisen condensation or a dehydratase catalyzes an elimination reaction in the biosynthesis of fatty acids. Stereochemical, kinetic, and thermodynamic aspects of enzymes are also covered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (CHE3320 Or BCH3320 ) And CHE4610
Department: Chemistry
An introduction to the structure, function, and metabolism of the four classes of biomolecules: proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids. Topics include molecular biology; the structure, regulation, and kinetics of enzymes; and the structure and function of vitamins.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: CHE3320 Or BCH3320 Or CHE3350 Or CHE3015
Department: Chemistry
Practical hands-on experimental techniques for isolation and analysis of the four classes of biomolecules: proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids. Required for biochemistry majors.
Credits: 2
COREQ: CHE4610
PREREQ: CHE3321
Department: Chemistry
Faculty, visiting scientists, and seniors in chemistry present results of current research projects. Students are graded on the basis of oral presentations of senior project results made to the faculty and their peers.
Credits: 1
Department: Chemistry
Faculty, visiting scientists, and seniors in chemistry present results of current research projects. Students are graded on the basis of oral presentations of senior project results made to the faculty and their peers.
The main goal of the economics program is to train students in the “economic way of thinking” and to use economics as a tool to understand, analyze, and solve problems in all walks of life.
The economics major at Purchase College is designed to train students in the tools and language used in economics and to give them:
a rigorous understanding of economic theory and its historical development.
the ability to apply economics theory to real-world problems.
the ability to conduct interdisciplinary analysis.
the ability to combine analytical skills, critical writing skills, and quantitative skills needed to succeed in a highly competitive economy.
The economics minor at Purchase College is designed to introduce students to:
the economic way of thinking.
analytical and quantitative tools.
interdisciplinary analysis.
The economics faculty has an unusual breadth of teaching, research, and policy perspectives rarely found in liberal arts colleges. This provides students with rigorous training in neoclassical economics and an exposure to contemporary Austrian economics, cultural economics, public choice theory, law and economics, urban economics, and behavioral economics. Students have the opportunity to develop their quantitative skills. The program also exposes students to a wide range of policy issues concerning the role of government, economics and the arts, cities and culture, political economy, and international issues.
Given the specialization of the faculty at Purchase College, economics students can take courses that focus on cultural economics, quantitative economics, and political economy. These areas may be studied in regular courses and in tutorials and independent studies. Students also have the opportunity to work in depth on one area in their senior project, mentored closely by a faculty member. In every case, the faculty is dedicated to developing each student’s ability to think critically, write clearly, and conduct research.
Students majoring in economics are also encouraged to engage in related activities, such as attending economics lectures, presenting at conferences, joining reading groups in economics, and pursuing internships and study abroad programs during their four years at Purchase.
About Our Alumni
Many of our alumni pursue graduate training in economics, public policy, business or law; others want a broad-based liberal arts education in economics, but do not pursue advanced work after graduation. Alumni of the economics program have gone on to successful careers in a variety of fields, including finance, journalism, the arts, education, government, law, and entrepreneurship.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all economics majors must complete the following requirements (56 credits):
MAT 1150/Precalculus (4 credits)
Two introductory-level theory courses (8 credits); a grade of C+ or higher is required in each:
ECO 1500/Macroeconomic Theory I
ECO 1510/Microeconomics I
Two intermediate-level theory courses (8 credits):
ECO 3010/Macroeconomic Theory II
ECO 3260/Microeconomics II
One statistics course: MAT 1600/Introductory Statistics or
PSY 2320/Behavioral Statistics (4 credits)
ECO 3070/Econometrics or
ECO 3360/History of Economic Thought (4 credits)
Four electives in economics* (16 credits)
*Refer to the list of examples below.
The following are examples of elective courses in economics. New courses may be added to this list every year.
ECO 2085/Arts and Entertainment in Economics
ECO 2280/Environmental Economics
ECO 2300/Business Economics
ECO 2325/The Development of Modern Capitalism
ECO 2355/Gender Economics
ECO 2550/Law and Economics
ECO 3070/Econometrics
ECO 3080/Game Theory
ECO 3100/Cities, Culture, and Economy
ECO 3190/Money and Banking
ECO 3200/The Global Economy
ECO 3330/Cultural Economics
ECO 3360/History of Economic Thought
ECO 3400/Business, Government, and Society
ECO 3430/Entrepreneurship, Public Policy, and the Law
ECO 3600/Behavioral Economics
ECO 3650/Special Topics in Economics
Additional notes for economics majors:
In addition to the grade requirement in the two introductory courses, economics majors must maintain a GPA of 2.0 (C) or higher in required courses, but not necessarily in any one course (except where specified).
These requirements should, where possible, be taken in the years appropriate to their numbers: 1000-level in the freshman year, 2000-level in the sophomore year, etc. In addition to the required courses, there are many exciting opportunities for economics-related internships in the business, government, and nonprofit sectors.
It is highly recommended that the senior thesis be written in a subject area in which a student already has some knowledge through prior coursework.
Minor requirements:
A minor in economics is awarded to any student who completes at least five economics courses, as outlined below.
This great flexibility permits students to design their own program around a series of economics courses of interest to them. Students interested in the minor should submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study.
Members of the economics faculty assist students in designing their individualized minor. It is recommended that students begin their minor with one or both of the two required introductory-level courses: ECO 1500 and ECO 1510.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Economics
At least five courses, as follows:
ECO 1500/Macroeconomic Theory I
ECO 1510/Microeconomics I
At least three electives (minimum 12 credits), chosen from the following:
ECO 2085/Arts and Entertainment in Economics
ECO 2280/Environmental Economics
ECO 2300/Business Economics
ECO 2325/The Development of Modern Capitalism
ECO 2550/Law and Economics
ECO 2355/Gender Economics
ECO 3010/Macroeconomic Theory II
ECO 3070/Econometrics
ECO 3080/Game Theory
ECO 3100/Cities, Culture, and Economy
ECO 3190/Money and Banking
ECO 3260/Microeconomics II
ECO 3330/Cultural Economics
ECO 3360/History of Economic Thought
ECO 3400/Business, Government, and Society
ECO 3430/Entrepreneurship, Public Policy, and the Law
ECO 3600/Behavioral Economics
ECO 3650 Special Topics in Economics
An introductory course on modern theory of the causes of unemployment, inflation, economic growth, and a strong or weak dollar. The course treats the economy as a system and examines the ways in which its behavior can be influenced by policy (e.g., the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve Board, fiscal policies of Congress and the Administration).
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
A practical introduction to the logic of human action with applications to daily life. This course traces the implication of choice in the face of scarcity and imperfect knowledge. Topics include the nature and value of cost, the spontaneous emergence of social order, demand-supply analysis, theory of markets, and public policy.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
A survey course that reviews economic and financial aspects of the film, music, performing arts, sports, radio, and broadcasting industries.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
Designed for students interested in the economics surrounding startups and entrepreneurship, business financing, and managing a company. This course breaks down the process of launching a business into practical steps, and students are asked to develop a business plan. In doing so, students learn many aspects of financing, managing, and developing tools of entrepreneurial decision-making.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
An advanced entrepreneurship course designed to follow a similar structure to popular entrepreneurship incubator and accelerator programs. Throughout the semester, students will work on bringing their idea to life. These steps include: finalizing the investor pitch, building the product and creating prototypes, implementing effective sales strategies, and setting up book keeping, accounting, and financials.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
An overview of economic conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on competing strategies for national and regional development. Topics include the consequences of the region’s deepening immersion in the global economy; its investment, trade, and labor-market ties to the U.S. economy; and the roots of its principal socioeconomic conflicts.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
Does globalization, the dynamic force of the current global economy, promote or impede global development? Using films, lectures, and selective readings, this course examines the arguments for and against globalization. Topics may include the role of U.S. foreign policy in underdeveloped countries; the impact of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and global corporations; gender and development; the politics of global food production; the historical impact of colonialism and imperialism; cultural imperialism; and the nature of the current American empire.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
Economics can help define, address, and solve many environmental problems. This course provides students with a set of conceptual tools that are useful in addressing environmental issues like pollution and pollution abatement, the conservation of natural resources, environmental regulation, and the political economy of environmentalism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
This course provides the basic analytical tools that are helpful in guiding business and managerial decision-making in various kinds of markets. Topics include production and cost theory, competitive and monopolistic pricing, and how to interpret econometric and statistical data.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
A study of the social and economic history of the great transformation of European civilization from the preindustrial world to the era of industrialization and the shifts in the ideas, ideologies, and social and economic policies that accompanied it.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
Examines different theories of the labor market (neoclassical, institutional, feminist, and political economy) and the history of the labor movement in the U.S., including changes in labor law. Other topics include recent changes in the structure of labor markets, patterns of unionization, the role of gender, immigration, and the impact of changes in business organization on the labor movement.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
This course covers three areas of gender economics. The first examines basic facts and trends regarding women’s distinct economic experiences, particularly the gender gap in education, wages, occupations, and labor supply. The second examines the impact of marriage market forces and reproductive constraints on women’s socio-economic choices. The third provides a historical and international overview of women’s rights.
Credits: 4
Department: Economics
Students apply the basic concepts of economics to examine the formation, structure, processes, and consequences of law and legal institutions. The interactions between the legal process and the market process are studied with respect to policy. Topics include intellectual property, environment protection, bankruptcy, tort law, regulation, and property rights.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or CEC1500 Or ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
A continuation of ECO 1500. Treating the entire economy as a system, contemporary economic theories are introduced to explain: what causes economic growth and a strong or weak dollar; how spending decisions interact with national money and bond markets to affect interest, inflation, and unemployment rates; and how economic performance in one country can affect other countries.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or CEC1500
Department: Economics
An introduction to econometric theory and methods. Particular emphasis is placed on multiple regression techniques widely used in economic research. These include hypothesis testing, choice of functional form, distributed lags, instrumental variable estimation techniques, dummy variables, and two-stage least squares. Problems associated with autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and multicollinearity are also discussed.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1600 Or BMA2400 Or PSY2320 Or BPS2320
Department: Economics
An overview of game theory concepts with emphasis on how successful outcomes of decisions in economics and other disciplines are influenced by the behavior of others. Examples include the “prisoner’s dilemma” and a Nash equilibrium. Students develop analytical tools that allow them to formally analyze outcomes in strategic situations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
Is there a common set of social institutions or environments that gives rise to both successful urban economies and flourishing arts and culture? Proposing that such a set exists, this course attempts to identify it; traces its implications for cultural and economic development; and explores the interrelations of capitalism, cities, and culture. While areas of culture and society are addressed, the analytical framework is that of economics and political economy.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or ECO1510 Or ECO2085 Or ECO2325
Department: Economics
Details the history and functions of banks and financial institutions. Topics include the evolution of banking, the importance of banking in a community, the functions of banking (credit, deposit, and payment), the Federal Reserve System, and current issues and trends in the industry.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500
Department: Economics
Topics include the economic role of financial markets and the major financial institutions operating in these markets, principles of security pricing and portfolio management, security exchanges and investment banking, the capital asset pricing model, securitization, option pricing, and derivatives.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
A policy-oriented examination of current events in international economic relations. Topics include global economic interdependence; the politics and economics of U.S. trade policy; regional trading blocs; European monetary union; reform in transitional economies; U.S.-Japan and U.S.-E.U. economic relations; roles of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization; and debt burdens of developing countries. A background in economics is not required.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or CEC1500 Or ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
Further elaboration and discussion of topics in microeconomics, including applications of decision-making under asymmetric information, market power, common law, politics, and the impact of time and uncertainty on choice.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
Examines the economics of the cultural sector, including differences between U.S. and European policies of government support. Other topics include intellectual property rights, including copyright; emerging trends in art and online; artists’ labor markets (e.g., are artists poor? why do superstars exist?); the economics of religion; and the economics of language.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or CEC1500 Or ECO1510 Or CEC1510 Or ECO2085
Department: Economics
An introduction to experimental methods in economics. Students test some of the standard economic theories learned in previous courses and confirm them (or not) based on evidence derived from experiments.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (ECO1510 Or CEC1510 ) And PSY2320
Department: Economics
Examines the evolution of economic thought from the late 19th century to the present. Topics include the rise of neoclassical theory, the Keynesian critique of orthodoxy, and the later revisions by Keynesians and post-Keynesians. Students may also examine recent contributions in the Marxian tradition.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1000-1994
Department: Economics
An examination and critique of the U.S. government’s objectives and policies concerning business and other social institutions, from the perspective of their influence on individual incentives. Topics vary, but typically include public policies on poverty, urban planning, business, regulation, and antitrust.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1000-1994 Or ECO2000-2994 Or ECO3000-3994 Or ECO4000-4994
Department: Economics
Provides the economic foundations for understanding the role of entrepreneurship in economic growth and how public policy and the law influence entrepreneurship. Students will explore regulations of entrepreneurial activity, with emphasis on new technology companies (e.g., Uber and Airbnb); the legal framework on launching and growing business ventures; and questions regarding how policies encourage or discourage entrepreneurship and innovation.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or ECO1510 Or CEC1500 Or CEC1510
Department: Economics
An introduction to behavioral economics that examines how the economic decisions of economic agents are influenced by cognitive, emotional, and social forces, and how these decisions influence resource allocation and well-being in ways that are often at variance from the analysis of standard economics. Topics include hyperbolic discounting, choice architecture, hedonic pricing, and public policy.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO3260
Department: Economics
An advanced undergraduate course in economics. Topics vary from semester to semester and include such areas as microeconomics, macroeconomics, political economy, economic sociology, law and economics, and the history of ideas.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 Or ECO1510
Department: Economics
Primarily a writing and research methods introduction for economics majors in their junior year, to better equip them to write their senior projects.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ECO1500 And ECO1510
Department: Economics
An advanced seminar geared toward (but not limited to) students interested in pursuing graduate studies in economics or related fields. Topics vary from semester to semester.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1500 And ECO1510
Department: Economics
This required, two-semester seminar assists seniors in undertaking the research and writing of their senior thesis. It focuses on the fundamentals of producing a good senior thesis, selected current issues in economic theory and policy that may be relevant to the research topics chosen by students, research tools available to those conducting economic research, and improvement of writing skills.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: (ECO1500 Or CEC1500 ) And (ECO1510 Or CEC1510 ) And (ECO3260 Or ECO3010 )
Department: Economics
This required, two-semester seminar assists seniors in undertaking the research and writing of their senior thesis. It focuses on the fundamentals of producing a good senior thesis, selected current issues in economic theory and policy that may be relevant to the research topics chosen by students, research tools available to those conducting economic research, and improvement of writing skills.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: (ECO1500 Or CEC1500 ) And (ECO1510 Or CEC1510 ) And (ECO3260 Or ECO3010 ) And (ECO3360 Or ECO3070 )
Department: Economics
Students explore personal finance concepts. Core focus is to prepare students for civic engagement and to develop problem-solving skills, using personal finance topics. Learning outcomes are designed to develop an appreciation of personal finance and quantitative reasoning skills, including: employing quantitative methods to solve finance problems; interpreting and drawing inferences from data; representing and discussing financial information (visually, numerically, & verbally).
Making a Difference: The Natural World and Human Society
Environmental scientists understand the scope and severity of the problems facing human society. We also now recognize the importance of considering people’s beliefs and preferences in the search for solutions to preserve the natural systems on which all life relies.
The environmental studies BA program at Purchase College reflects this new, interdisciplinary focus on the interactions among the sociopolitical, economic, and ecological systems where the natural world and human society overlap. This new approach offers challenges and opportunities for those motivated to help improve the health of our environment and the quality of human existence.
The program culminates in the senior project—a research project undertaken in collaboration with a faculty member. Senior research projects vary widely in topic and method, but all incorporate a common theme: environmental impacts cannot be addressed without consideration of human society.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, environmental studies majors must complete the following requirements (77 credits).
In addition to the foundation and synthesis courses, students must choose a concentration in either ecology or policy. Students are encouraged to complete the requirements for a minor in a cognate field, selected in consultation with the student’s academic advisor. Electives count toward the general degree requirement of 120 total credits. Electives at the 3000- and 4000-level count toward the general degree requirement of 45 upper-level credits.
Required Foundation and Synthesis Courses
The required core of the environmental studies curriculum consists of the following foundation and synthesis courses. Grades earned in these courses must average at least 2.0 (C):
ENV 1500/Introduction to Environmental Science
BIO 1550/General Biology I
BIO 1551/General Biology I Lab
BIO 1560/General Biology II
BIO 1561/General Biology II Lab
ENV 2720/Geology
ENV 3025/Biostatistics
ENV 3030/Environmental Policy
ENV 3120/General Ecology
ENV 3150/Geographic Information Systems
or ENV 3163/Cloud-Based GIS and Remote Sensing Technologies (added Fall 2020)
One of the following courses:
ENV 3045/Environmental Impact Assessment or
ENV 3300/Environmental Regulations
One of the following physical education courses:
PED 1000/Lifeguard Training or
PED 1050/Aerial Challenge Course or
PED 1070/Outdoor Skills or
PED 1105/Scuba or
PED 1120/Rock Climbing or
PED 1460/Kayaking Skills
ENV 3880/Environmental Studies Junior Seminar
ENV 3995/Internship in Environmental Studies (at least 2 credits)
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II
CHE 1550/General Chemistry I
CHE 1551/General Chemistry I Lab
CHE 1560/General Chemistry II
CHE 1561/General Chemistry II Lab
Electives (12 credits):
Students must complete at least 12 credits in elective courses, chosen from the following. Please note that some of these courses have prerequisites and/or corequisites. New and reinstated courses may be added to the following list; students interested in taking elective courses not listed below should check with their faculty advisor before registering.
BIO 2470/Marine Biology of the Mediterranean
BIO 2850 or 3850/Coral Reef Biology and Ecology
BIO 3360/Microbiology
BIO 3430/Vertebrate Zoology
ENV 2030/Computer Applications in the Sciences
ENV 2050/Wildlife Toxicology
ENV 2300/Physical Geography
ENV 3153/GIS Certification Lab
ENV 3070/Economic Botany
ENV 3080/Wildlife Ecology (added Spring 2018)
ENV 3163/Cloud-Based GIS and Remote Sensing Technologies (added Fall 2020)
ENV 3220/Restoration Ecology
ENV 3250/Ecology of Urban Environments
ENV 3640/Watershed Science
ENV 3700/Natural Resources
ENV 3720/Aquatic Pollution
ENV 3805/Conservation Biology
ENV 3820/Animal Behavior
ENV 4460/Marine Ecology
Two of the following courses in political science or economics:
POL 1570/Introduction to United States Politics or
POL 2360/Politics in American Democracy and
POL 2180/Political Theory II: Hobbes to the Present
or
ECO 1500/Macroeconomic Theory I and
ECO 2550/Law and Economics or
ECO 3200/The Global Economy
or
ECO 1510/Microeconomics I and
ECO 2280/Environmental Economics
Electives (14 credits):
Students must complete at least 14 credits in elective courses, chosen from the following. Please note that some of these courses have prerequisites and/or corequisites. New and reinstated courses may be added to the following list; students interested in taking elective courses not listed below should check with their faculty advisor before registering.
ECO 3070/Econometrics
ECO 3100/Cities, Culture, and Economy
ECO 3600/Behavioral Economics
ENV 2030/Computer Applications in the Sciences
ENV 2040/Introduction to Renewable Energy
ENV 2050/Wildlife Toxicology
ENV 3153/GIS Certification Lab
ENV 3163/Cloud-Based GIS and Remote Sensing Technologies (added Fall 2020)
ENV 3220/Restoration Ecology
ENV 3250/Ecology of Urban Environments
ENV 3700/Natural Resources
ENV 3805/Conservation Biology
LEG 3025/Environmental Law* (added 10/11/16)
PHI 2820/Philosophy of the Environment
POL 2080/Environmental Justice
SOC 2165/Culture, Consumption, and the City
SOC 3255/Environmental Sociology
*offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education
Economics can help define, address, and solve many environmental problems. This course provides students with a set of conceptual tools that are useful in addressing environmental issues like pollution and pollution abatement, the conservation of natural resources, environmental regulation, and the political economy of environmentalism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ECO1510 Or CEC1510
Department: Environmental Studies
Explore the nature of life, examine the history of life on Earth, look for life among the rocky planets and icy moons of our solar system, hunt for extrasolar planets, and join in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Are we alone in the universe?
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
A survey of the physical, biological, and cultural dimensions of current and past environmental problems. The nature of scientific inquiry and principles that apply to the study of the environment are covered, with emphasis on developing facility in interpreting environmental data.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
Introduces techniques for advanced use of software commonly employed in the analysis and presentation of lab and field data. Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), image analysis (ImageTool), and reference software (Zotero) are covered.
Credits: 3
Department: Environmental Studies
Renewable energy sources—including solar-thermal, photovoltaic, wind, wave, hydrogen, biomass, and geothermal energies—are discussed and compared with fossil fuels. The course outlines current practices as well as limitations—engineering, economic, social, and ecological—of extracting usable energy. Topics include practical solutions on both the large scale and the scale of the individual homeowner.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
Students explore the source, fate and effect of contaminants on wildlife, along with what we can do to help through education, science and policy. Through the pairing of introductory ecotoxicological concepts with key case studies, this course spans political, scientific, and public relations realms and teaches the importance of being good global stewards of the environment.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
Location and local landscape influence natural resource availability, biome type, and agricultural potential. This course explores the earth’s physical processes to understand the important links between geography and ecosystems. Students examine relationships between landforms, climatic variations, erosion processes, vegetation patterns, and hydrology. While this course focuses on the United States, broader linkages are made to regions around the world.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
The lecture covers interactions among the lithosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. Topics include the formation and subsequent alteration of earth materials, geologic hazards, global change, glaciation, and plate tectonics. Lab work includes identification of rocks and minerals, interpretation of topographic and geologic maps, structural geology, and landform analysis.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: ENV1500
Department: Environmental Studies
An introduction to statistics with a focus on techniques for the biological sciences. The lecture covers probability, sampling, descriptive and inferential statistics, parametric and nonparametric tests, biodiversity statistics, ordination methods, and robust experimental design. In the lab, students apply concepts from the lecture and practice analyzing data, constructing graphs, and testing hypotheses using the R software.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: Math Fluency:20-28 Or MAT1150 Or MAT1100 Or BMA1100 Or BMA1010
Department: Environmental Studies
The environment has become increasingly significant in national and international politics. This course examines the key concepts, players, and issues in environmental policy. Students evaluate the contributions by scientific, political, economic, and social systems to the generation of environmental policy. Environmental topics include population growth, natural resource use, global climate change and energy, endangered species protection, and pollution.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or POL1570 Or POL2360
Department: Environmental Studies
A practical guide to the quantitative assessment of potential impacts to the environment from a proposed development project. Topics include basic federal and New York State SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) requirements; use and interpretation of maps; and assessments related to physical, biological, and socioeconomic components. Students work as teams (using the map room, library, and computer resources) to prepare a sample Environmental Impact Statement related to ongoing development near the campus.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or BIO1560
Department: Environmental Studies
A field-intensive lecture and lab investigating the flora and fauna of the Hudson Valley. Emphasis is placed on the ecology, identification, and taxonomy of local vertebrate groups. Multiple site visits on campus and at local parks provide opportunities for students to master best practices in the application of wildlife observation methods and equipment.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or (BIO1560 And BIO1561 )
Department: Environmental Studies
A rigorous examination of classical and emerging concepts of ecology. Topics include life histories, population growth, competition, sexual selection, symbiosis, predation, disturbance and succession, energy flow and material cycling, biogeography, and conservation ecology. Lab work includes field trips.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: Math Fluency:20-28 Or MAT1150 Or MAT1100 Or BMA1100 Or BMA1010 Or ENV1500 Or BIO1560 Or BBI1560
Department: Environmental Studies
An introduction to one of the most widely used computer tools in environmental science. Used for storage, display, and analysis of spatially related data, this digitized mapping system is of primary importance in fields like land use planning, wildlife management, conservation biology, pollution monitoring, and geological resources. Students learn the ArcView system and become experienced in its use with a variety of data.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
Provides reinforcement and additional development of key technical skills acquired during ENV 3150. Students engage in a series of self-paced, online, instructor-supported learning modules that assess their proficiency in applying Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. Upon completion, students receive third-party certification of their abilities from ESRI, the world’s leading manufacturer of GIS software.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: ENV3150 Or ENV3163
Department: Environmental Studies
Satellites, aircraft, and drones provide safe access to remote, rugged, and otherwise restricted locations. Applications utilizing SONAR, LIDAR, hyperspectral scanning and photogrammetry are used with these craft to create long-term global datasets of natural and cultural features. Using online Geographic Information System platforms students learn the skills to interpret these data, conduct their own analyses, and collaborate with other researchers.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
The study of birds, including topics on anatomy, physiology, evolution, ecology, avian form and function, behavior, migration, and conservation. Students will learn to identify birds of the northeast based on field markings and song. There is no lab, but students are expected to spend time observing birds in the wild (both independently and with the instructor).
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or BIO1560
Department: Environmental Studies
Traces the evolution of the modern city, emphasizing ecological issues including human population growth, urban wildlife ecology, energy, and material flows. These principles are used to consider the future of the city. The focal cities are New York and Phoenix.
Credits: 4
COREQ: ENV3251
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or BIO1560
Department: Environmental Studies
Examines in greater depth concepts discussed in ENV 3250. Field observation, data collection and analysis, and simple models of the urban environment and processes are employed.
Credits: 1
COREQ: ENV3250
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or BIO1560
Department: Environmental Studies
Acquaints students and environmental professionals with basic domestic and international environmental regulations and policies used by enforcement/regulatory agencies and donor/lender institutions. Specific federal acts include NEPA, Clean Air, Clean Water, RCRA, Superfund/CERCLA, TSCA, and FIFRA.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or POL1570
Department: Environmental Studies
The lecture establishes relationships between changes in terrestrial landscapes and changes in the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of associated freshwater systems. Lab work provides technical proficiency in standard methods for assessing the sources and impacts of pollution in freshwater environments. Throughout the semester, land-use decisions are discussed within the context of public policy.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or ENV3720 Or CHE1560 Or BCH1560
Department: Environmental Studies
Principles associated with the development and management of natural resources, including forests, grasslands, streams, and fisheries. Topics include sustainability, environmental and social implications of exploiting the natural environment, and renewable resources.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500
Department: Environmental Studies
Examines the sources and impacts of pollution in freshwater and marine environments, including eutrophication, pathogens, pesticides, heat, heavy metals, oil, acid rain, and plastics. The effects are examined through the lens of ecology.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or BIO1560 Or BBI1560
Department: Environmental Studies
An interdisciplinary review of the reciprocal relationships between culture and environment in both traditional and complex societies. Past human-induced environmental degradation provides lessons applicable to current problems. Topics include the Green Revolution; cultural change and population trends; traditional vs. industrial food production; and the impact of global change, concepts of sustainability, and the commons.
Credits: 3
Department: Environmental Studies
The decline in biodiversity is a serious (and perhaps irreversible) threat to the biosphere. This course covers concepts and questions in a new synthetic discipline, which focuses on biodiversity protection. Beginning with the origin, patterns, and maintenance of biodiversity, the class explores the values of biodiversity, the nature of the threats to biodiversity, the demography and genetics of small populations, strategies to protect biodiversity, and ethical and legal bases of conservation efforts.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ENV1500 Or (BIO1560 And BIO1561 ) Or BBI1560
Department: Environmental Studies
Prepares students for conducting research in environmental studies. Presentation of faculty research, analysis of research papers and proposals, and guest lecturers accompany student development of a senior project research proposal. Required for all environmental studies majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ENV1500
Department: Environmental Studies
This advanced course surveys the organizing ecological principles that structure all marine communities. The lecture and lab synthesize information from all levels of organization (organism, population, and community). Through texts and primary literature, students examine the biotic and abiotic factors controlling the abundance and distribution of marine organisms. Lab work is coupled with field experimentation and observation.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: ENV1500 And BIO1560
Department: Environmental Studies
U.S. environmental law and policy, the common-law foundations of environmental law, and the regulatory process and toolkit are examined. The focus is on major environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, the Compensation and Recovery Act (Superfund), and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
A study of the cultural, literary, and natural history of birds. Students read poems and essays, study ornithology texts and field guides, and occasionally go into the field to look at birds. Owning a pair of binoculars would be helpful.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
relationships between humans, their values, and the nonhuman species that comprise the natural environment. Specific inquiries include: What does it mean, metaphysically, to say that humans are “part of nature”? Do humans have duties towards nonhuman species? Do any nonhuman species have rights? When do ecological philosophies become politically controversial? Readings include a variety of contemporary and traditional philosophers.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
An introduction to the impact of environmental laws and policies on the fair treatment of people of different races and incomes in the U.S. Global climate change, nuclear energy, and public responsibility for the environment constitute the center of a political and legal analysis of the relationship of citizens and government to the environment.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
An introduction to the development of consumer society and consumer culture, with emphasis on the city as a landscape of consumption. Topics include commodification, materialism, large-scale changes in cities and industries, the street as a site for identity, neighborhoods as contest spaces, and the environmental and social consequences of consumerism.
Credits: 3
Department: Environmental Studies
Brings a sociological perspective to environmental issues, both past and present, by asking: Who is civilized? Who is savage? What is nature? By addressing questions of how human societies, animals, and land have shaped each other, students better understand the root causes and consequences of today’s environmental crisis. Topics include world hunger, water, and environmental equity for all.
The mathematics/computer science program offers a BA program that combines mathematics with computer science, as well as an undergraduate minor.
It is designed to introduce students to the principal areas of mathematics and computer science, with an emphasis on applications. Students can choose any 5 upper level elective courses based on their preferences. For example, students more interested in programming careers can take Data Structures and Scripting for the Web, while students more interested in mathematics can take courses in Number Theory and Numerical Analysis.
However, all students acquire a strong foundation in the traditional areas of both disciplines. This serves to distinguish Purchase graduates from others with narrower backgrounds. Classes typically are small, and computer classes include closed labs (scheduled time to work in a computer lab with faculty present to provide guidance).
The Senior Project
The capstone experience is the senior project, a yearlong required research project undertaken by each senior in conjunction with a faculty mentor. Many of these projects are prepared for formal presentation at the annual Natural and Social Sciences Student Symposium. Topics from recent years include:
A Case Study in Developing a Responsive Social Media Network Website
An Interesting Linear Recurrence Relationship
Artificial Intelligence
Challenges and Advantages of Distributed Systems in Modern Computing
Fake News and Influential Figures, An American Love Story
Game Programming in Phaser
Liquid-Cooled PC
Mathematics and Computer Science Phobias
Modern Day Web Application: How to Build it From the Ground Up
Origami Teaching to Improve Math Education
Switching to Swift: An introduction to Apple’s New Programming Language
SUNY Purchase: A 3D Printing Endeavor
In addition, students can gain important experiences as learning assistants for courses, research assistants on projects, technical assistants in the campus technology services department, and by completing off-campus internships. Student work has appeared in the Annals of Discrete Math, Graph Theory Notes of NY, and Journal of Computing at Small Colleges.
About Our Alumni
Our alumni are engaged in careers in a variety of fields, including software engineering, web development, finance, education, and marketing. They work at companies including the New York Life Insurance Company, Accenture, BentoBox, FanDuel, and Morgan Stanley. Several recent graduates have gone on to pursue graduate study at such institutions as Columbia University, Binghamton University, the City University of New York Graduate Center, New York University, Pace University, the University of Chicago, the University of New Hampshire, Stony Brook University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Page Updated 9-17-20
Requirements:
Students majoring in mathematics/computer science usually begin with a three-semester calculus sequence: Calculus I, II, and III.
Students seeking placement beyond Calculus I should consult with a member of the faculty. Placement is determined by interviews and transcripts. Precalculus is offered for those lacking the necessary background for Calculus I.
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, students majoring in mathematics/computer science must complete each of the following requirements. A grade of C- or higher* is required in these courses, excluding the senior project:
MAT 1500, 1510, and 3150/Calculus I, II, and III
MAT 1520 and 1540/Computer Science I and II
MAT 3170/Linear Algebra
Five upper-level electives (20 credits) in mathematics/computer science. One of the five electives may be fulfilled by a tutorial, independent study, learning assistantship, or internship with the approval of the faculty advisor.
Two science courses (minimum 6–8 credits)
MAT 3880/Junior Seminar in Mathematics/Computer Science
MAT 4880/Mathematics Senior Seminar I
MAT 4890/Mathematics Senior Seminar II
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II
*Note: In some MAT courses, a minimum grade of C is required in the prerequisite course(s). For example, the prerequisite for MAT 1510 is a minimum grade of C in MAT 1500. This grade minimum is stated in the prerequisite when applicable.
Minor requirements:
This minor is designed to introduce students to the methods, content, and applications of modern mathematics and computer science.
An introduction to origami, a centuries-old art, practiced all over the world, that is constantly being expanded and is the focus of attention by mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers. Students learn and examine traditional and modern models. Students practice preparing diagrams and teaching models, with opportunity for invention.
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
Students learn basic concepts in quantitative reasoning (numbers, probabilities, basic statistics) and the creation, use, and evaluation of quantitative information (databases, searches, spreadsheets, interactive graphics). This course prepares students for civic engagement by using current events (past and current news stories) as the focal point of study. Students are required to post to online discussion forums, complete short writing assignments, and make presentations on topics involving quantitative reasoning.
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
Students explore personal finance concepts. Core focus is to prepare students for civic engagement and to develop problem-solving skills, using personal finance topics. Learning outcomes are designed to develop an appreciation of personal finance and quantitative reasoning skills, including: employing quantitative methods to solve finance problems; interpreting and drawing inferences from data; representing and discussing financial information (visually, numerically, & verbally).
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
Students learn basic concepts in quantitative reasoning (number systems, data manipulation, basic statistics), with emphasis on problem solving using computational methods. This course uses a textbook and focuses on applications related to consumer issues to develop computational and problem-solving skills. Students learn to transform data into information and apply quantitative methods to evaluate information and solve real-world problems.
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
Prepares students with limited backgrounds in high school mathematics for calculus. Topics include absolute values and inequalities, the properties of functions, graphs, logarithms, fractional exponents, and trigonometry.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: Math Fluency:20-28 Or MAT1150 Or MAT1100 Or BMA1100 Or BMA1010
Department: Mathematics
Using selected points along the timeline of Mathematics students learn basic concepts in quantitative reasoning while seeing them in the time when they were developed. Topics include ancient and modern counting systems, elements of algebra and geometry, logic, and probability. Students learn to provide reasonable estimates, apply math concepts to real life problems, and discuss the validity of the results.
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
The basic concepts of the differential and integral calculus. Focus is on the applicability of these topics to an array of problems. The first course in a three-semester series.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1150 Or BMA1150
Department: Mathematics
A continuation of MAT 1500. Topics include differentiation and integration of logarithmic, exponential, and inverse trigonometric functions; techniques of integration; arc length; infinite series; and improper integrals. Applications include work, growth, and decay problems and volumes of solids of revolution.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1500 Or BMA1500
Department: Mathematics
An introduction to problem solving, using computers. Emphasis is on programming, including the study of syntax, semantics, logical structures, graphics, and object-oriented programming. General topics of algorithm development, formulating problems, finding methods for computer solutions, differences among computer languages, and trends in the industry are also discussed. Experience is acquired through hands-on labs and several programming assignments.
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
A continuation of MAT 1520. Emphasizes programming as a basis for the study of computers. While programming is the main focus, the course will afford us the opportunity to introduce other concepts central to the field including data representation, object-oriented design, algorithms, recursion, Boolean logic and some data structures. We will be studying the Java programming language.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520
Department: Mathematics
Statistics are used everywhere in the modern world. This course covers descriptive statistics, including measures of central tendency, methods of dispersion, and graphs; and inferential statistics, including normal distributions and hypothesis testing, Pearson correlation, and linear regression.
Credits: 4
Department: Mathematics
Covers a variety of topics that provide a foundation for both higher mathematics and computer science. These topics may include logic and formal proofs, set theory, number theory, probability, mathematical induction, algorithms, recurrence relations, equivalence relations and partial orderings, and topics in graph theory (including isomorphism, traversability, planarity, and colorings).
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1500 Or BMA1500 Or MAT1510 Or BMA1510 Or MAT3150 Or BMA3150
Department: Mathematics
Building on the programming introduction in the prerequisite course, students learn about scripting for websites, including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and php. Topics include the use of cookies, localStorage, video/audio, geolocation, an application program interface such as the Google Maps API, responsive design, and accessibility. Comparisons are made between scripting and compiled languages and client versus server computing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1450 Or MAT1540
Department: Mathematics
A continuation of MAT 1500 and 1510. Topics include polar coordinates, vectors in two and three dimensions, parametric equations, quadric surfaces, partial derivatives, multiple integrals, directional derivatives, gradients and their applications, and line integrals.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1510 Or BMA1510
Department: Mathematics
Topics include linear equations, row reduction, matrix algebra, determinants, vectors in three dimensions, abstract vector spaces, dimension, linear transformations, eigenvalues, diagonalization, and applications to other sciences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1510 Or MAT3150
Department: Mathematics
Using selected points along the timeline of Mathematics students learn to appreciate the beauty and cleverness of mathematical topics seeing them in the time when they were developed. The topics include, but are not limited to, the features of geometry, number theory, algebra, calculus, and combinatorics. The understanding and appreciation of the topics is enhanced through research projects/presentations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1500 Or MAT1510 Or MAT3150
Department: Mathematics
Topics in elementary number theory, including primes and other special categories of numbers, Fibonacci sequence, Pascal’s Triangle, prime decomposition, Pell equation, Phi function, modulus equations and cryptography. Programming is included to enhance understanding of the topics and to strengthen skills.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (MAT1500 Or MAT1510 Or MAT3150 ) And (MAT1420 Or NME1420 Or MAT1520 Or NME1520 Or NME1450 Or VIS1450 Or MAT1540 )
Department: Mathematics
Introduces concepts and skills used in analyzing and designing interfaces for computer applications. As students study techniques and “rules of thumb,” they discover that the design and implementation of each interface is a unique challenge, which requires creativity and consideration of technical, aesthetic, and psychological factors. Includes the use of XML, XSL, XHTML-MP, VoiceXML, and usability studies.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520
Department: Mathematics
The theory and implementation of numerical algorithms. Topics include interpolation, approximation, numerical solution of nonlinear equations, numerical integration, numerical linear algebra, and error analysis.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1510
Department: Mathematics
Covers the key conceptual and practical aspects of networking and security, which are increasingly important in the era of the internet, Windows, and Unix. TCP/IP communications protocols are explored at multiple levels of the protocol stack. Performance and reliability issues are also studied, using campus intranet and internet connections as well as protocol analyzer and network management tools. Security topics include encryption, authentication, and the likely change from clear-text to Kereberos-type tools.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520
Department: Mathematics
Covers standard data structures (e.g., lists, stacks, heaps) and object¬-oriented algorithms important to software development. Tradeoffs between time and space are examined. Includes programming as well as theoretical assignments. Examples are often taken from technical interview-style questions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1540
Department: Mathematics
Designed to increase students’ knowledge of research methods, understanding of research articles, and ability to write research papers. These skills prepare students to conduct senior project research and write their senior thesis.
Credits: 1
Department: Mathematics
Topics covered in previous math courses are elaborated on and new topics in advanced mathematics are introduced. Theoretical, numerical, and applied aspects may be covered. Depending on faculty and student interests, material may include mathematical modeling, abstract algebra, complex analysis, numerical analysis, linear programming, graph theory, topology as well as topics in theoretical computer science.PREREQ: MAT3150 and MAT3170
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT3150 And MAT3170
Department: Mathematics
Topics are selected from computability, complexity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, programming languages, data mining, informatics in biology and medicine, cryptography, and other application areas. This course does include topics in theoretical computer science, which has a strong mathematical component, as well as attention to current practical problems. Includes oral presentations by students on approved topics of their choosing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1540
Department: Mathematics
An introduction to concepts and methods of theoretical computer science: what it means for something to be computable (finite state automata, formal languages, Turing machines) and how to measure resources used to solve problems (Big Oh notation and complexity classes like P and NP). Some attention is paid to the relationship between computability, logic, and philosophy, as well as "impossibility" results in these disciplines. This course brings together the two parts of the major in mathematics/computer science and provides historical background as well as insight into current issues.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MAT1540
Department: Mathematics
Explores advanced topics in selected areas of mathematics. Includes required oral presentation by students. Required for seniors majoring in mathematics/computer science.
Credits: 1
Department: Mathematics
Explores advanced topics in selected areas of mathematics. Oral presentation by students required. Required for seniors majoring in mathematics/computer science.
Political science is known as the study of laws and governments, yet it includes much more.
Why did the U.S. invade Iraq and allow Russia to influence events in the Syrian civil war? Why do many U.S. citizens feel animosity toward immigrants? What is the relationship among race, gender, and politics? What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalization for developing countries? In what manner are human rights abused around the globe, and what can be done about it? What are the causes and consequences of political violence and state terrorism? What are the political aspirations of citizens in Muslim-populated countries?
These are a few of the many interesting questions that a political science student explores at Purchase College.
The political science program offers students the opportunity to engage in a variety of courses in American, comparative, and international politics. Students also study age-old political questions concerning equality, rights, and justice and learn how to conduct political science research.
The political science program closely collaborates with other interdisciplinary programs at Purchase College, including Latin American, Caribbean, and LatinX studies, Global Black Studies, Environmental Studies, and Gender Studies. Because politics are intertwined with economic and social issues, many students choose to double-major in Sociology, History, or Journalism. Members of the political science faculty have broad and diverse backgrounds, have won numerous awards, and have published more than 50 books and articles.
The major in political science is particularly designed for students who:
are interested in exploring different social and political issues by taking a range of American and internationally-based courses, or
want to have a focused study of human rights or Islam and the Middle East.
Senior Thesis
The program culminates in a two-semester senior thesis in which each student develops an original in-depth perspective on a topic of their choice, which is supervised by a faculty sponsor.
About Our Graduates
Students graduating with a degree in political science often enter public service, working for government agencies, nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or elected officials. Many political science alumni enroll in law school or graduate programs that focus on international affairs, while others may enter the fields of teaching or journalism.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all political science majors must complete a minimum of nine courses with a grade of C or higher, plus a two-semester senior seminar and an 8-credit senior project (40–45 credits total) as follows:
POL 1570/Introduction to U.S. Politics (3 credits; freshman or sophomore year)
POL 2170/Political Theory I or
POL 2180/Political Theory II (4 credits; sophomore year)
An economics course (4 credits)*
*One of the following is strongly recommended:
– ECO 1500/Macroeconomic Theory I
– ECO 2280/Environmental Economics
– ECO 3080/Game Theory
Two courses in U.S. politics and law, 2000-level or above (6–8 credits)
Three courses in comparative politics and international relations, 2000-level or above (9–12 credits)
POL 3880/Junior Seminar in Political Science (4 credits)
POL 4885Political Science Senior Seminar I (1 credit)
POL 4890/Political Science Senior Seminar II (1 credit)
Note: In addition, students are expected to take courses appropriate to their specific interests in political science in order to fulfill degree requirements for upper-level coursework.
Optional Concentrations
New and reinstated courses may be added to the lists in the following concentrations. Students should consult their advisor to determine whether a new or reinstated course counts toward a specific concentration.
Concentration 1: Islam and the Middle East (42–47 credits)
Political science majors who declare a concentration in Islam and the Middle East must fulfill requirements 1 through 10 listed above. In meeting requirement 5, students in this concentration select four courses from the following list:
POL 2105/Citizens Living Under Islamic Laws
POL 2115/Islam: Culture and Politics
POL 2350/Free Speech, Heresy, and Gender in Islamic Societies
POL 3255/Islamic State, Gender, and Sexuality
POL 3430/Politics of South Asia
POL 3740/The Middle East
Concentration 2: Human Rights (42–47 credits)
Political science majors who declare a concentration in human rights must fulfill requirements 1 through 10 listed above. In meeting requirements 4 and 5, students in this concentration select four courses from the following list:
POL 2080/Environmental Justice
POL 3235/Globalization, Development, and Poverty
POL 3245/Gender and Health: International Issues
POL 3307/Politics and Memoir
POL 3315/Constitutions and Rights: U.S. and China
POL 3361/Cuba, Latin America, and the U.S.
POL 3570/Human Rights
POL 3573/Human Rights and Literature
Updates to 2020-21 Catalog
Removed POL 2360/Politics in the American Democracy as an alternative to POL 1570
Minor requirements:
The minor in political science is designed to provide a broad knowledge of institutions, processes, and theories of politics in the U.S. and international context.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Political Science
Five courses, to include:
POL 1570/Introduction to U.S. Politics
Plus four political science electives in the following two areas (two courses in each area):
1. United States politics and law
2. Comparative politics and international relations
In modern times, ideological debates have revolved around capitalism, socialism, and democracy and were intensified during the Cold War by the U.S.-U.S.SR. rivalry. Focusing on the development of capitalism and socialism in the West and their relationship to democracy, students examine different conceptualizations of democracy, the global impact of Western developments, and arguments on the compatibility of capitalism with authoritarianism.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An examination of historical events, social movements, and intellectual ideas that have shaped modernity from 1500 to the present. The focus is on the evolution of ideas that have influenced both Western and non-Western civilizations.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An introduction to the institutional and ideological components of the American political system, with an emphasis on the broad spectrum of values and sources of power that, when taken together, support and challenge the foundations of American pluralism. Films, field trips, and guest lectures complement the standard classwork.
Credits: 3
Department: Political Science
Develops a basic understanding of concepts used in comparative political analysis. Compares political structures, electoral and party systems, the role of elites and interest groups in public policy decision-making. Examination across diverse international settings provides a deeper perception of political structures.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An introduction to current political systems. The course examines political structures and processes (e.g., parliaments, political parties, elections, legislation, and formation of governments in different political systems) and analyzes the ideological foundations of these systems (e.g., liberalism, socialism). Discussions include social, economic, and political priorities set in each system; their strengths and weaknesses; and the impact of structural constraints.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Examines contemporary international relations from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Topics include East-West conflicts and the Cold War; the balance of power; colonialism, the Vietnam War, and the North-South issues; and the emerging new world order.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Theoretical, historical, and empirical analyses of the relationship between women’s private roles and socialization, and their integration into politics. Topics include changes in the laws affecting women, the impact of feminism on the quality of political discourse and political action, and the vexing problem of the “gender gap.”
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Using African novels and social science literature, both the insights of the artist and the analytic models of the social scientist are employed in the discussion of African politics and political systems. Topics include the impact of Western colonialism and imperialism on traditional African societies, the evolution of new African cultures, the widening gulf between elites and masses, and the role of the African storyteller in articulating African issues.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An introduction to the impact of environmental laws and policies on the fair treatment of people of different races and incomes in the U.S. Global climate change, nuclear energy, and public responsibility for the environment constitute the center of a political and legal analysis of the relationship of citizens and government to the environment.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Focusing on South Asia and the Middle East, this course examines how postcolonial Islamic states currently use “Islamic laws” to negotiate power and control with their citizens. Examples include Hudood, Zina, and blasphemy laws, which result in fatwas (religious decrees) that sometimes lead to extrajudicial killings.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Islam, a popular world religion, is not well known or understood in the U.S. In the public mind, it is typically associated with violence, jihad, and terrorism. This course introduces the origin and main principles of Islam and analyzes its development as a civilization and a political ideology. Topics include secularism, women’s rights, social justice, and democratization in relation to the philosophical and political divisions within Islam.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The U.S. involvement in Iraq raises important questions that mirror those faced by the broader Arab world. Can democracy be brought to the Arab world? Can a people overcome deep, violent divisions to form one nation? Is it possible to have a democratic and pro-Western Arab government? Why is the region characterized by authoritarian regimes and economic stagnation? Why has political Islam taken hold with such force? Why are the U.S. and militant Islamic groups locked in an increasingly violent struggle? In this course, students explore answers to these questions and analyze the complex forces at work in the Arab world today.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Decades after the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the United States remains a nation beset by racial inequalities, divisions, and tensions. This course examines some of the major issues in U.S. race relations today and their political expression.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The first half of a two-course survey of Western political thought. The course concentrates on the classical and medieval contributors to political discourse like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, and concludes with early modern thinkers like Machiavelli and Calvin.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The second half of a two-course survey of Western political thought. Themes characteristic of the last 500 years of political theory include liberalism, feminism, nationalism, and revolution. Theorists typically read are Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, and a 20th-century theorist.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An examination of the media’s impact on political life in the U.S. and its role in shaping public opinion. Both electronic and print media are surveyed and analyzed in terms of their impact on power, legal rights, and ethical obligations. Attention is also given to the media’s influence on political parties and how it shapes political attitudes and influences elections.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An in-depth survey of how redistricting, campaign finance laws, term limits, and other processes and laws have an impact on elections and affect democracy in the U.S.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
In Islamic societies, heresy charges against women and men are leveled for different reasons, including Islamists’ opposition to democracy, modernity, and women’s education and their employment. Instances of heresy leveled by Muslims against Muslims are studied.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The judicial process and the function of the courts in a modern democratic system. Using Supreme Court cases, documents, and readings from academic journals, the course examines how judges, lawyers, and litigants act and react to create both law and public policy.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Examines American social and political history during the last half of the 20th century and the early 21st century as represented in films. Such topics as dissent, censorship, war and peace, and the role of government as creator and arbiter of culture serve as the conceptual center of the discussion.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The Muslim world examined via films on race, gender and politics with the focus on the polarization of secular and theocratic spaces. Global and historical Muslim communities, leaders, governance, security, immigration, colonization and post-colonial society are studied, while art and culture are also considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An introduction to political behavior in the U.S., tying together concepts of culture and identity to see how these social themes affect political outcomes in elections and participation in political activity. Public opinion, socialization of the electorate, the growth of political institutions, and the current state of political participation are analyzed.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Although health is typically treated as a biological issue, health, illness, and wellness are social and political conditions. The politics of health policy as it is experienced, administered, and made accessible to men, women, and gender non-conforming healthcare seekers, and the activism that leads to more equitable treatment from medical professionals, insurance providers, and government service providers, regulators, and legislators is examined. Access to the health care system, poverty, Medicaid/Medicare, managed care, breast cancer, reproductive justice, sexual assault, HIV/AIDS, transgender care, disability, and medical research are investigated from an intersectional feminist perspective that foregrounds issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Introduces the historical and political debates that resulted in the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Case law and collateral readings relevant to the construction of the U.S. constitutional government are used to explore theories of jurisprudence, structures of courts, aspects of litigation, the nature and scope of judicial review and constitutional adjudication, and the role of the judiciary in the maintenance of national power.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: POL1570 Or POL2360
Department: Political Science
A study of American foreign policy since the end of World War II. U.S. involvement in Vietnam serves as a case study for studying the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and the issue of terrorism, and analyzing how foreign policy has been formulated. Topics include the powers of the president vis-à-vis Congress in the formulation of foreign policy and the role of public opinion.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The legal and political dimensions of race and sex discrimination are examined beginning with the 14th (1868) and 19th (1920) amendments to the US Constitution, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), Brown v. the BOE (1954), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Rajender v. University of Minnesota (1982). The way law is shaped by the politics of race and gender is considered. Topics discussed include the intersection of white supremacy, misogyny, capitalism, and the law from perspectives offered by legal studies, critical race theory, and feminism.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Students explore lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social and political movements and how they have fought for and achieved certain social, political, and legal rights in the U.S.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An introduction to the constitutional doctrines of rights and liberties as they have been articulated through First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court. Relevant political analyses of the impact of court decisions and federal legislation on individual rights are included.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: POL1570 Or POL3050 Or POL2360
Department: Political Science
An examination of the institution of the American presidency, its relationship to the other branches of government, and the significance of particular presidents’ “stamp” on the office and U.S. policy. Topics include the impact of the media on the presidency, executive privilege, psychological explanations of presidential character, and the changing role of the president’s spouse.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
People produce enough food to feed the world’s population, yet thousands of children die every day due to malnutrition and other poverty-related factors. This course studies the scope and distribution of global poverty. Topics include political and cultural factors that cause or aggravate the problem in developing countries; economic and political aspects of globalization; and the impact of international organizations, development strategies, and relief efforts.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Examines health concerns on an international scale and analyzes how gender is interwoven with these concerns. The roles of international agencies are explored, with emphasis on their support (or lack thereof) of the health needs of various populations. The role of the U.S. in the implementation of programs through funding issues, restrictions on the use of funds (the “global gag rule”), and other strategies is also analyzed.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An examination of how notions of gender and sexuality are defined in the postcolonial Islamic state. Laws, customs, and cultural practices that enforce control are investigated in South Asian and Middle Eastern contexts.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Provides an understanding of international politics and security questions. Globalization and new forms of international relationships may be changing the way states and non-state actors think and respond to problems of security. Examines changes in the balance of international power, weapons of mass destruction, migration, ethnic conflict and environmental change.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
A survey of major political upheavals and belief systems that have shaped and shaken the modern world. In addition to the origins, social foundations, and variants of liberalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, and feminism, discussions include examples of anti-imperialist, antiracist, and nationalist movements and ideologies from Third World countries and ethnic minorities in the West.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
A study of memoirs by male and female authors, politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens describing childhood, communities, social changes, and revolutions. Works are drawn from South Africa, South America, Asia, Cuba, and the U.S. The rubric is the non-West’s interaction with the West, a north-south divide.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Focuses on the origins of rights in the U.S., with emphasis on judicial review and the judicial construction and interpretation of individual and human rights. Constitutional theories and practices used in U.S. constitutional courts and scholarship are examined. A comparative approach to constitutions and the development of transnational theories of human rights are then considered in the context of current changes in Chinese legal and political institutions and discourse.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: POL1570 Or POL2360
Department: Political Science
An exploration of the extent to which linkage can be made between self-development and a radical concept of democracy. Relationships among personal identity, social location—race, gender, and class—and locality of political action in the U.S. are analyzed so as to develop a definition of an embodied politics that renews the promise of political action.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The course revolves around the international political and economic dynamics that have existed historically between the U.S. and Cuba. Although the course emphasizes the post-1959 era (the Castro years), readings introduce students to the imperial relationship that evolved in the early 20th century. Topics include foreign policy, war, human rights, the U.S. embargo, and the politics of Fidel Castro.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Why does health care cost so much? Why are so many people without health insurance? Why do so many racial/ethnic disparities in health exist in the U.S.? These and other questions are examined as the current crisis in the U.S. health care system is investigated and proposals for reform are evaluated.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Examines the politics of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Kashmir, and Afghanistan. The British occupation from 1857 to 1947 is studied, together with the partition of Pakistan and India. Issues of religion, caste, gender, and militarization are an additional focus. Nuclear states, Pakistan, and India are also part of class discussions.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
While providing a comprehensive understanding of Congress, this course specifically examines the oversight and investigative role of Congress, the influence of political parties, and how elections and partisanship influence decision-making. Questions addressed include: How do the rules and norms that govern the House and the Senate differ? How has redistricting created a more polarized climate?
Credits: 4
PREREQ: POL1570 Or POL2360
Department: Political Science
Although human rights have become a significant theme in international relations, ethnic slaughter and political repression continue to afflict the world. This course examines relevant theoretical issues and practical problems, including: How are human rights viewed from different cultural, political, and religious perspectives? In a multicultural world, can common ground be found to address human rights? What is the relationship between sovereignty and the pursuit of human rights?
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An exploration of various perspectives on human rights. Students examine some modern nation states in relation to geographies of identity and human rights. Global literature is read in colonial and postcolonial contexts that describe state control through the infringement of citizenship and rights of speech, thus violating basic human rights.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Ever since Homer sang the rage of Achilles, storytelling has helped mediate the tension between politics and violence. To better understand this relationship in contemporary life, modern theories of political violence from thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Franz Fanon, Walter Benjamin, Georges Sorel, and Judith Butler are paired with the literature of modern authors such as Reinaldo Arenas, Herman Melville, Langa Mandla, Toni Morrison, and Arundati Roy. Topics discussed include ideological violence and state power, armed and non-violent resistance, and the possibilities for and limitations of literary narrative to remediate the relationship between politics and violence.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
Religion in America has been at the heart of politics from the Puritans to the Christian Coalition. This course addresses the historic role of religious thinking as a significant part of American political traditions (e.g., natural rights, civil liberties, liberal individualism). Students also investigate the contemporary emergence of religion-based political interests as formidable players in the construction of the nation’s political agenda.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
An analysis of the politics of Israel and Palestine. The struggle between Israel and Palestine and the involvement of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia are covered, as well as the role of the U.S. Issues and potential solutions are discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
The meaning of democracy is examined in European and other democratic states. The course investigates who controls the sources and instruments of power and how public policies are made. The limits and problems of contemporary liberal democracies are studied, as is the problem of democratization in developing countries.
Credits: 4
Department: Political Science
A springboard to preparation for the senior project that integrates (a) critical thinking in research—developing appropriate topics, grappling with supporting evidence, and working on hypothesis testing and probabilities; (b) writing—understanding what a research paper is, how it is developed and organized coherently, with emphasis on developing an outline, introduction, and literature review; and (c) conducting research—learning data-gathering techniques and analytic skills with emphasis on conducting interviews, qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and using primary data. The use of surveys, participant observation, and multiple research practices is also discussed.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (POL1570 Or POL2360 ) And (POL2170 Or POL2180 )
Department: Political Science
In this scholarly community of political science majors in their senior year, ideas and methodologies relevant to specific senior-project topics are probed. Two semesters are required (POL 4885 and 4890). Limited to political science majors.
Credits: 1
COREQ: SPJ4990
Department: Political Science
In this scholarly community of political science majors in their senior year, ideas and methodologies relevant to specific senior-project topics are probed. Two semesters are required (POL 4885 and 4890). Limited to political science majors.
Credits: 1
COREQ: SPJ4990
PREREQ: POL4885
Department: Political Science
Offers an in-depth focus on a specific sociological issue, which varies each semester. Includes research, readings, and writings on a topic related to the particular expertise of the faculty member.
Psychology is the study of behavior and experience. As such, it includes topics as diverse as emotion, cognition, personality, social processes, psychobiology, psychopathology, and psychological development in children and across the lifespan.
The psychology program at Purchase College offers basic and advanced courses, as well as research opportunities, in all of these areas. Regardless of the subject matter, there is a strong emphasis on the use of scientific methodology to pursue knowledge.
The psychology major is designed to provide and then build on the basic skills students need for critical analysis of empirical and theoretical material in the field and to provide a sophisticated understanding of the subject matter in a broad range of topic areas. This basic study is enriched by the perspectives drawn from courses in the related disciplines of biology, philosophy, and anthropology or sociology. The learning process culminates in the senior project, a yearlong independent research project conducted under the supervision of a faculty member.
In addition to the senior project, opportunities for hands-on experiences are available through supervised internships, learning assistantships, and a practicum in child development, where students serve as assistants to teachers at the Children’s Center on campus.
About Our Alumni
The psychology program provides a strong foundation for students who plan to continue their studies at graduate and professional schools. Our alumni are equipped to enter advanced degree programs in all areas of psychology as well as programs in education, medicine, social work, and law. Some students move directly into careers in mental health services, research, teaching, and early childhood education.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all psychology majors must meet the following requirements:
PSY 1530/Introduction to Psychology
PSY 3560/Research Methods I: Statistics and Design*
PSY 3561/Research Methods II: Application and Integration
One of the following courses:
PSY 3660/Physiological Psychology
PSY 3705/Special Topics in Neuropsychology
PSY 3715/Human Neuropsychology
PSY 4180/Seminar on Neurocognitive Aging
Five electives in psychology (at least three upper-level) The following do not fulfill the electives requirement: independent studies, tutorials, internships, learning assistantships, and PSY 3850/Practicum in Child Development. Psychology 3000-level courses offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education may not be counted as upper-level electives, but one may be counted as the lower-level elective. Students may petition their academic advisor to have one upper-level psychology elective replaced by an upper-level elective in the liberal arts and sciences that is programmatically relevant.
One of the following biology courses:
BIO 1510/Human Anatomy and Physiology I
BIO 1520/Human Anatomy and Physiology II
BIO 1550/General Biology I
BIO 1560/General Biology II
PSY 4880 and 4890/Psychology Senior Seminar I and II
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II
*Prerequisite: 40 credits, including PSY 1530 with a grade of C or higher
Minimum Grade Requirements
a grade of C or higher in all other required psychology courses, excluding the senior project, and in electives that are used to fulfill requirements for the major
a grade of C- or higher in the biology course(s)
Students who do not meet these standards are required to retake or substitute courses as needed. Students who earn a grade lower than C in PSY 3560 or 3561 must petition the Psychology Board of Study for permission to retake the course.
Transfer Students
The psychology program is carefully structured to prepare students to carry out their senior projects, and all students must complete a four-semester sequence of required courses. Students who plan to transfer to Purchase College from another college should familiarize themselves with the degree requirements.
Minor requirements:
The purpose of the minor in psychology is to provide students in other disciplines with the opportunity to broaden their understanding of psychology through a selection of introductory and advanced courses covering a wide range of topics within the field.
Students interested in pursuing the minor in psychology must choose a faculty member in the Psychology Board of Study to assist in designing an appropriate program and have that advisor sign the Application for a Program of Minor Study.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Psychology
Five courses in psychology, as follows:
PSY 1530/Introduction to Psychology
Four psychology electives*
*The following do not fulfill the electives requirement: independent studies, tutorials, internships, learning assistantships, and PSY 3850/Practicum in Child Development.
Students must earn grades of C- or higher in each course used to satisfy the minor requirements. Because PSY 1530 is a prerequisite for all upper-level courses offered by the Psychology Board of Study, it should be taken early in the student’s program of study.
What theories of embodiment, mind, and matter must be adopted to adequately grasp experiences of time, space, color, emotion, and attention? How can people conceptualize forms of experience without purging them of poetic resonance? Students explore this interdisciplinary field in connection with the arts. Includes readings in cognitive science, anthropology, and poetry, plus collaborative art projects, sensory experiments, and excursions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or PSY1530 Or BPS1530 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050
Department: Psychology
Empirical and theoretical approaches to the basic physiological, cognitive, and social mechanisms underlying behavior. Topics include learning and conditioning; sensation and perception; memory, thinking, and language; psychological development; social processes; and personality and psychopathology.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
An overview of the exciting field of behavioral neuroscience. The four content areas are basic neural processing and neuroanatomy; imaging the brain; the thinking, feeling, remembering, and learning brain; and the ethical brain. In addition, the ways in which brain-behavior relationships are portrayed in the popular media are discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to a topic of broad interest or concern; examples include violence and terror, the global AIDS crisis, poverty, and racism. It is team taught by faculty members in at least two distinct disciplines. Lectures are supplemented by visual presentations and guest lectures.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
The writings of classic and contemporary investigators provide the basis for examining theoretical and empirical issues within the area of human emotions. Topics include the expression of emotions; individual differences in emotional experience; the structure of emotion; and the interplay between emotions, cognition, and behavior.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
Students study classic experiments and contemporary research in the areas of conformity, obedience, helping behavior, attributions, aggression, persuasion, close relationships and attraction, attitudes and social influence, ethics, and prejudice. This material is applied to both current and historical examples in social research.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
Students explore racial biases, including historical mistrust of medicine by underrepresented (UR) groups, health threats to UR groups in the U.S., health policy, language barriers, and representation of UR groups in the science. Students have the opportunity to conduct research by examining health disparities.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
An examination of the biological processes by which the sensory systems pick up information from the environment and the psychological processes by which that information is coded, transformed, and integrated to form perceptions. Emphasis is on the visual systems and visual perception. Aspects of perception in the visual arts and music are also discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
An introduction to data analysis, with coverage of both descriptive and inferential statistics, and an introduction to probability. Class discussions focus on the use of sample, sampling, and population distributions as they are employed in hypothesis testing. Inferential tests include t-tests, ANOVAs, chi square, regression, and nonparametric tests. Note: This course may be used to satisfy the statistics requirement for economics and environmental studies majors, and it counts as a basic science support course for biology majors.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
Examines the effects of a wide range of psychotropic drugs on behavior, including drugs used clinically to treat mental disorders and drugs of abuse (including alcohol). The biological basis of tolerance and withdrawal symptoms, and other issues related to drug addiction, are also covered. Knowledge of basic biology or psychology is helpful, but not required.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
Behavioral and cognitive approaches to the study of human and animal learning are discussed. Topics include classical conditioning, motivation, cognitive models of memory, and applications outside the laboratory.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
The interplay of cyberpsychology, gender, age, culture, and subculture are examined. Theoretical, empirical, and practical research issues are considered. Emphasis is placed on the impact of social media on mental health and psychological well-being. Individual, social, and community-level factors are discussed.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
A broad survey of human development from late childhood through early adulthood. Topics include physiological, social, and cognitive development; peers, the family, and the school; issues of autonomy, identity, and sexual relations; depression; substance abuse; and suicide.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
An examination of both interpersonal relationships and the relationship between the individual and society. Topics include social development, situational and cultural influences on individual functioning, social support networks, interpersonal attraction, and intergroup relations.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
A broad survey of human development from conception through childhood. Topics include prenatal development and birth, cognition, language, parent-child interaction, peer relations, moral development, and sex role development.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
Students examine the psychological research and theory relevant to the understanding of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Topics include the cognitive bases of stereotypes and prejudice, the role of socialization and the media, the nature of in-group-out-group biases, the changing face of prejudice and discrimination, ways to reduce prejudice, and the consequences of prejudice for members of stigmatized groups.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
In this course, the intra- and extra-personal causes of stress are identified, and a variety of assessment instruments are demonstrated and used. The consequences of stress are examined from several physiological and cognitive perspectives. A catalog of effective, direct, and palliative coping strategies is offered so that students can develop personalized stress-management programs.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
A critical examination of social, psychological, and biological factors governing female behavior and experience. Within the context of a life-span model (infancy to old age), topics include gender development, puberty, school performance, sexuality, the body, depression, relationships, and communication styles.
Credits: 3
Department: Psychology
Explores the diagnosis, phenomenology, and scientific and clinical understandings of a wide range of mental disorders. Current research is reviewed to explore the underlying mechanisms of the disorders under discussion. Diagnosis is approached from the perspective of the most recent DSM. At various points, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and neuroscientific viewpoints of psychopathology are represented.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
Students explore classic and contemporary theory and research on the social psychology of stigma, primarily from the perspective of the stigmatized. Topics include functions and nature of stigma, stigma and the self-concept, stereotype threat, attributional ambiguity, stigma and social interaction, and implications of stigma concealability and controllability.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Psychology
Students hone critical thinking and evaluative skills in examining data, evidence, and assumptions underlying the judicial process and the application of psychological principles. The research and clinical practice of forensic psychology in both civil and criminal law-enforcement settings are studied. The training, roles, and responsibilities of forensic psychologists along with methods of interrogation, criminal profiling, and investigation are also examined.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
An examination of the processes by which people develop and maintain a self-concept; how the self-concept influences emotion, motivation, and behavior; and whether or not the beliefs people hold about themselves are accurate or useful. Readings include recent theoretical and empirical writings from psychology journals and edited texts.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Focusing on the longest phase of the life cycle, adulthood, this course examines the developmental processes from the transition to adulthood through old age. Students explore current theories regarding development and examine current research on adults’ capabilities and changes over time, adaptive responses to continuous changes in life, and reciprocal influences of the environment and development.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
In this study of psychology in relation to religion, students explore the definition of religion, its personal meaning to people, and its social and political meaning in the community. The importance of ritual is discussed, and conversion is examined to understand its meaning. The middle of the course focuses on such theorists as Freud, Jung, and Maslow and the role religion played in their theories. Finally, the role religion and culture play in psychotherapy and the difference between religions and cults are examined.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Students study the historical roots of developmental, cognitive, and social psychology through the writings of major European and American psychologists, primarily from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The aim of the course is to expose students to the history of major ideas in psychology through an examination of primary sources.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
A consideration of human behavior within an ecocultural perspective, beginning with historical and methodological issues. Perceptual, cognitive, and developmental processes, personality, and psychopathology are also studied. Distinct cultures serve as case studies.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
The interventions suggested by the biopsychosocial model and mind-body paradigm are examined. Topics include health behavior, social learning theory, attribution theory, and attitude formation as they apply to problems like health promotion, disease prevention, reactions to illness, management of chronic and terminal illnesses, and adherence to treatment regimens. Methods of evaluation of clinical services are addressed.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Based on changes occurring throughout life-span developmental psychology, this course evaluates what is myth, stereotype, potential, and reality about old age. Students examine the theoretical and empirical developments in such areas as psychosocial functioning, including identity and personality development; cultural norms and expectations, including role and status changes; physical and intellectual change; death and dying; and health nutrition.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Do people who speak different languages think about and perceive the world differently? Are some thoughts unthinkable without language? How does language affect decision-making or memory? This course examines the interrelationships between language and other cognitive processes. It brings together theories and empirical findings from cognitive, developmental, and cultural psychology, as well as linguistics, anthropology, ethology, and neuroscience.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
An in-depth exploration of social and personality development from infancy through adolescence. Topics include predispositions for sociability, formation of affectional ties with family members and peers, the development of knowledge of self and others, and the acquisition of interactional knowledge and skills.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
An in-depth exploration of cognitive development from infancy through adolescence. Students study major theories and research findings on the development of problem solving, reasoning, memory, perception, and academic skills.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
A study of human development from infancy through childhood, with particular emphasis on social interaction, cognition, language, play, and representational activity.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Explores the cognitive processes that underlie musical behaviors. Topics include auditory parsing, pitch perception, acculturation, memory, absolute pitch, amusia (tone deafness), music as a communicative device, emotional responses and mood regulation, cognitive similarities with language, music therapy, the relationship between musical training and intelligence, and evolutionary theories.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Covers theoretical and practical aspects of program evaluation and its role in informing policymakers. The readings, which include a textbook and journal articles, cover theory and basic methodology. In addition, students collect, organize, and write about the evaluations they conduct. The applications component focuses on programs in education, childcare, and criminal justice.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (PSY1530 Or BPS1530 ) Or (SOC1500 Or CSO1500 )
Department: Psychology
Provides a foundation in programming, with emphasis on developing software for psychological experiments. Students gain hands-on experience through weekly coding assignments. Topics include creating, counterbalancing, and presenting stimuli; collecting real-time responses; and visualizing and processing data. For the final project, students code a complete experiment related to their own research
Credits: 5.5
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Psychology’s relevance and contributions to social policy are explored in numerous contexts, including grassroots organizing, federal legislation, and within the profession. Students choose and develop their own area of policy expertise and complete several written assignments related to that area: policy topic proposal, opinion-editorial, policy white paper, policy brief, and talking points presentation.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Psychology
Controversial social issues and policies are examined and discussed within a context of theory and research in developmental psychology. The goal is to examine how current developmental research has, and has not, been successfully applied to practical social issues regarding children and adolescents. Topics include day care, sex education, adolescent pregnancy and parenting, changing family structure, infants and children with AIDS, television viewing, and child abuse and neglect.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
An examination of theoretically driven research with a focus on empirical findings and the research methods used to obtain them. Students explore social psychological theories, such as attachment theory, attribution theory, the belongingness hypothesis, cognitive dissonance, construal level theory, dual-process attitude theories, self-perception and social comparison theories, self-verification theory, social exchange theory, social identity theory, and social penetration theory.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Psychology
Starts with an examination of various criteria for and precursors of language. Students read and analyze studies of children’s first words, early syntactical development, speech play, metaphor, storytelling, and bilingualism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
An increasingly important focus in social psychology, social cognition is the study of how people think in social situations. Topics include social categories, scripts and schemas, attribution, inference, memory, and attitudes. Important applications are also considered, including stereotyping and prejudice.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Students receive intensive hands-on experience in the research process, developing the following skills: generating testable hypotheses; designing research studies; understanding large data sets; formatting and managing data; conducting descriptive and inferential statistical tests; and interpreting and reporting results.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530 And (PSY2170 Or PSY2210 Or PSY2250 Or PSY2320 Or PSY2455 Or PSY2520 Or PSY2650 Or PSY2745 Or PSY2755 Or PSY2860 Or PSY2870 )
Department: Psychology
Students develop an untested hypothesis, design and conduct a study to test the hypothesis, and write an empirical paper following American Psychological Association guidelines. Students then conduct a critical review of existing theory and research in a different area of psychology.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: PSY3560 Or PSY3550
Department: Psychology
Examines the foundations of evolutionary psychology, the study of the mind as a collection of cognitive adaptations for the problems faced by our ancestors. Explores the field’s classic and contemporary studies, spanning traditional subject areas including social psychology, perception, memory, developmental psychology, and morality. Emphasis on integrating proximate and ultimate explanations for human behavior.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Psychology
This course covers the basic principles, research, and theories on the testing and measurement of psychological constructs. Topics include test reliability and validity, test development, intelligence and its measurement, personality assessment, and clinical assessment.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Explores the theoretical, methodological, and philosophical underpinnings and ethical concerns within psychology. Students learn the types of research designs employed and the analysis techniques that enable qualitative researchers to make sense of and draw conclusions about data. Through weekly lab sessions, students put these concepts and ideas into practice by engaging in numerous in-depth research-related activities.
Credits: 5
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Psychology
Recommended for students interested in pursuing the MARC U-STAR honors program or research careers in science. Prepares students to participate in scientific research in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, and environmental studies. Statistics and research design are taught through the examination of real-world biomedical problems. Students learn to reason about scientific data, research methods, statistics, and ethics.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BIO1550 Or BIO1560 Or CHE1550 Or CHE1560 Or MAT1500
Department: Psychology
An examination of the biological basis of behavior. Topics include neuronal transmission, the coding and higher-order processing of sensory stimuli, movement, regulatory processes in feeding and drinking, sexual and emotional behavior, learning and memory, and psychopharmacology. The biological bases of various psychological disorders are also covered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Focuses on how personality measures are constructed and how scores on these measures are interpreted and used. The strengths and weaknesses of various projective tests, personality inventories, single-trait measures, IQ tests, behavioral indicators, and physiological measures are reviewed. Topics include the stability of personality, whether or not IQ tests actually measure intelligence, and the accuracy of people’s self-descriptions of their personalities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
One or two topics in neuropsychology are examined in depth. Topics may include memory across the life span, degenerative disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and depression), and communication disorders.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Psychology
This course reviews brain-behavior interactions obtained from studies of human brain damage and from investigations of the normal brain. Topics include hemispheric specialization, the representation of language, memory, spatial ability, attention, movement disorders, developmental disorders, and generalized cognitive disorders.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Addresses early and profound deviations in infancy, childhood schizophrenia, and organic disturbances, as well as the theoretical work of Stern and Mahler on the concept of self. Other topics include depression and the consequences of loss, pathologies of initiative and early socialization, neurotic process and issues of excessive/inadequate control, mental retardation, neglect and abuse, and developmental issues around cultural/ethnic differences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Focuses on the development of the major emotional and behavioral problems of childhood and adolescence, including autism and Asperger’s disorder, AD/HD, depression, trauma-related problems, eating disorders, and personality problems. Empirical research and clinical material are both integral elements of the course, including in-class presentations of clinical research and case studies, as well as videos on psychopathology.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (PSY1530 Or BPS1530 )
Department: Psychology
A study of the basic theories and their applications in counseling and psychotherapy. Theories studied include behavior therapy; drug therapy; interpersonal psychotherapy; psychoanalysis; and group, art, movement, and the “newer” therapies. Variations on the above as applied to different clinical populations are emphasized, as are issues of research and ethics in counseling and psychotherapeutic practice.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Examines the cognitive representations and processes involved in human memory. Topics include short-term and working memory; encoding and forgetting processes; implicit, semantic, and eyewitness memory; reconstructive processes and alterability of memory; and memory for text.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Personality psychologists study consistent ways people think, feel, and behave. This course focuses on classic and contemporary theoretical approaches to personality and how theory influences the research questions psychologists ask, the methods they employ, and their interpretation of results. An examination of research findings furthers understanding of commonalities as well as individual differences in people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
The study of human cognition from the perspective of the mind as a processor of information. Topics include attention, memory, conceptual structure, imagery, reasoning, problem solving, and language use.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Examines the processes involved in the development of gender during childhood, emphasizing the interaction between biology, socialization, and cognition. Students read primary source articles that examine the influence of hormones, parenting, knowledge, friendships, and media on children’s beliefs about their gender and on sex differences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
Students work with preschool children for eight hours per week at the Purchase College Children’s Center, located on campus. The academic component of the practicum is coordinated through weekly class meetings that relate the students’ experience with children at the Center to issues in child development. Note: This course (a) fulfills a requirement for the certificate program in early childhood development, offered by the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education; (b) does not count as one of the psychology electives for psychology majors.
Credits: 4
Department: Psychology
An in-depth exploration of the development and education of young children, ranging in age from two to five years. Topics include physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development; issues of self, autonomy, and independence; day care vs. preschool; developmentally appropriate practice; the assessment of young children; and transitions to kindergarten.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
The topic of aging and cognition is explored by examining work in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Major theories of cognitive aging are reviewed, age-related decline in specific areas of cognition is discussed, and students are familiarized with multiple methodological approaches to understanding both healthy and pathological aging.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Psychology
In the first semester, students meet weekly to present and discuss their senior project proposals. In the second semester, students present the findings of their senior project research. Grading is on a pass/no credit basis.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: PSY3561
Department: Psychology
In the first semester, students meet weekly to present and discuss their senior project proposals. In the second semester, students present the findings of their senior project research. Grading is on a pass/no credit basis.
Do you want to create a better world? Are you fascinated by such topics as race, social class, gender, globalization, the environment, education, social work, or social change?
These subjects and others that deal with social relationships, culture, and the nature of society comprise the discipline of sociology. As a broad and eclectic field of inquiry, sociology uses many different approaches, ranging from cultural and historical studies to survey research.
The sociology major at Purchase College is designed to give students maximum exposure to the breadth of the field. A choice of four concentrations—Sociology (self-design); Local and Global Communities and Social Change; Social and Health Advocacy; and Education and Society—allows students to focus on a particular area of interest. The program also offers a minor in sociology.
The sociology program is based on social action. It offers opportunities for a broad general education in the liberal arts as well as preparation for work in a range of fields and for further professional training in the discipline or in a variety of other areas. Graduates have earned advanced degrees in sociology, education, law, journalism, public administration, social work, hospital administration, and other disciplines.
What can you do with a degree in sociology? Opportunities exist in both the private and public sectors in the fields of social advocacy, social work, human service, education, business, law, criminal justice, social science research, and community relations. For more detailed information about career opportunities, visit the American Sociological Association.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all sociology majors must must complete one of the following concentrations (41–46 credits):
SOC 3015/ProSeminar in Sociology: 1 credit [FALL only]
SOC 3405/Research Methods: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
SOC 3850/Sociological Theory: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
At least four sociology electives, chosen from Group A, B, and C (at least one in each group): 13–16 credits
One internship, study-abroad opportunity, or community-action independent study, chosen in consultation with the faculty advisor: 4 credits
SOC 3885/Sociology Junior Seminar: 4 credits [SPR JR only]
SOC 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SOC 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
SOC 2365/Self and Society
SOC 3035/Birth and Death
SOC 3095/Introduction to Counseling Theory and Professions
SOC 3155/Sociology of the Body and Embodiment
SOC 3265/Urban Ecology and Animal Studies
SOC 3385/Culture and Collective Memory: Latin America
SOC 3455/Conflict Management and Mediation
SOC 3625/Sex, Drugs, and Gray Hair
SOC 3655/Sociology of Childhood
SOC 3670/Contemporary Sociological Theory
SOC 4030/Seminar in Sociological Issues
SOC 4053/Astrosociology & Consciousness Communities
SOC 3135/Politics, Policy, and Society
SOC 3136/Social Policy, Justice, Advocacy
SOC 3137/Contemporary Issues in Bioethics
SOC 3175/Science, Medicine, Culture
SOC 3203/Introduction to Teaching
SOC 3235/Social Organizations
SOC 3287/Science and Technology Studies
SOC 3435/Religion, Culture, and Society
SOC 3475/Surveillance, Technology, Society
SOC 3500/Sociology of Education
SOC 3595/Public Health: Selected Topics
SOC 3615/Families, Communities, Cultures
SOC 3670/Contemporary Sociological Theory
SOC 4030/Seminar in Sociological Issues
SOC 4053/Astrosociology & Consciousness Communities
SOC 1030/Cultural Activism in the Americas
SOC 2020/Human Sexuality
SOC 2105/Art and Outsiderness
SOC 2140/Race and Ethnicity
SOC 2165/Culture, Consumption, and the City
SOC 2210/Sociology of Gender
SOC 2255/Environmental Sociology
SOC 3441/Class, Power, Privilege
SOC 3266/Urban Sociology
SOC 3005/Feminism, Art, and Performance
SOC 3056/Global Social Movements
HIS 3115/Sex Radicals in the 19th-Century U.S.
SOC 3125/Social and Cultural Studies of Food
SOC 3255/Global Populations, Local Problems
SOC 3275/Critical Disability Studies
SOC 3365/Social Movements, Action, Advocacy
SOC 3375/Global Inequalities
SOC 3495/Art Worlds and Their Discontents
VIS 3500/The Arts for Social Change
SOC 3515/Education Across Cultures
SOC 3565/Society and Public Policy
SOC 3585/Communities, Ethnicities, and Exclusion
SOC 3625/Sex, Drugs, and Gray Hair
SOC 3627/The Ageless Self: Technological Gerontology
SOC 3635/I Forgot: Aging, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Anxiety
SOC 3661/Border Wars and Transnational Human Rights
SOC 3670/Contemporary Sociological Theory
SOC 3705/Masculinities: Feminist Perspectives
SOC 3725/Globalization, Culture, Social Change: Latin America
SOC 3755/Sexualities and Society
SOC 4025/Critical Race Theory
SOC 4030/Seminar in Sociological Issues
SOC 4035/Theories of Justice
SOC 4040/Generation XYZ
SOC 4050/Bioethics: Contemporary Issues
SOC 4053/Astrosociology & Consciousness Communities
Concentration 2: Health Advocacy and Social Work (46–47 credits)
SOC 1500/Introduction to Sociology: 3 credits
SOC 3015/ProSeminar in Sociology: 1 credit [FALL only]
SOC 3405/Research Methods: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
SOC 3850/Sociological Theory: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
One internship*, study-abroad opportunity, or community-action independent study, chosen in consultation with the faculty advisor: 4 credits
SOC 3885/Sociology Junior Seminar: 4 credits [SPR JR only]
SOC 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SOC 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Three courses from the following list (12 credits):
SOC 3035/Birth and Death
SOC 3125/Social and Cultural Studies of Food
SOC 3155/Sociology of the Body and Embodiment
SOC 3175/Science, Medicine, Culture
SOC 3255/Global Populations, Local Problems
SOC 3275/Critical Disability Studies
SOC 3287/Science and Technology Studies
SOC 3435/Religion, Culture, and Society
SOC 3475/Surveillance, Technology, Society
SOC 3585/Communities, Ethnicities, and Exclusion
SOC 3615/Families, Communities, Cultures
SOC 3670/Contemporary Sociological Theory
SOC 4030/Seminar in Sociological Issues
Any relevant policy-based political science course
Two of the following courses (6–7 credits):
SOC 2020/Human Sexuality
SOC 2140/Race and Ethnicity
SOC 2210/Sociology of Gender
SOC 3441/Class, Power, Privilege
SOC 3455/Conflict Management and Mediation
SOC 3585/Communities, Ethnicities, and Exclusion
*For students considering graduate school in social work, two internships in human services locations are recommended. Advisors can assist with course planning for a career in social work.
Concentration 3: Local and Global Communities & Social Change (41–43 credits)
SOC 1500/Introduction to Sociology: 3 credits
SOC 3015/ProSeminar in Sociology: 1 credit [FALL only]
SOC 3405/Research Methods: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
SOC 3850/Sociological Theory: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
One internship, study-abroad opportunity, or community-action independent study, chosen in consultation with the faculty advisor: 4 credits
SOC 3885/Sociology Junior Seminar: 4 credits [SPR JR only]
SOC 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SOC 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Three of the following courses (10-12 credits):
SOC 2255/Environmental Sociology
SOC 3056/Global Social Movements
SOC 3095/Introduction to Counseling Theory and Professions
SOC 3135/Politics, Policy, and Society
SOC 3136/Social Policy, Justice, Advocacy
SOC 3137/Contemporary Issues in Bioethics
SOC 3255/Global Populations, Local Problems
SOC 3266/Urban Sociology
SOC 3385/Culture and Collective Memory: Latin America
SOC 3455/Conflict Management and Mediation
SOC 3585/Communities, Ethnicities, and Mediation
SOC 3515/Education Across Cultures
SOC 3585/Communities, Ethnicities, and Exclusion
SOC 3627/The Ageless Self: Technological Gerontology
SOC 3635/I Forgot: Aging, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Anxiety
SOC 3661/Border Wars and Transnational Human Rights
SOC 3725/Globalization, Culture, Social Change
SOC 4030/Seminar in Sociological Issues
SOC 4040/Generation XYZ
SOC 4050/Bioethics: Contemporary Issues
Any relevant anthropology course
Any relevant environmental studies course
One of the following courses (3 credits):
SOC 2140/Race and Ethnicity
SOC 2210/Sociology of Gender
SOC 3441/Class, Power, Privilege
SOC 4025/Critical Race Theory
Concentration 4: Education and Society (45–47 credits)
SOC 1500/Introduction to Sociology: 3 credits
SOC 3015/ProSeminar in Sociology: 1 credit [FALL only]
SOC 3405/Research Methods: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
SOC 3850/Sociological Theory: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
One internship, study-abroad opportunity, or community-action independent study, chosen in consultation with the faculty advisor: 4 credits
SOC 3885/Sociology Junior Seminar: 4 credits [SPR JR only]
SOC 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SOC 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Three courses from the following list (11–12 credits):
SOC 3095/Introduction to Counseling Theory and Professions
SOC 3135/Politics, Policy, and Society
SOC 3203/Introduction to Teaching
SOC 3255/Global Populations, Local Problems
SOC 3275/Critical Disability Studies
SOC 3455/Conflict Management and Mediation
SOC 3500/Sociology of Education
SOC 3515/Education Across Cultures
SOC 3585/Communities, Ethnicities, and Exclusion
SOC 3615/Families, Communities, Cultures
SOC 3661/Border Wars and Transnational Human Rights
SOC 3670/Contemporary Sociological Theory
PSY 2500/Adolescent Psychology or
PSY 2650/Child Development
SOC 4030/Seminar in Sociological Issues
Two of the following courses (6–7 credits):
SOC 2140/Race and Ethnicity
SOC 2210/Sociology of Gender
SOC 3441/Class, Power, Privilege
SOC 4025/Critical Race Theory
HIS 3466/To Enjoy Our Freedom: African American History Since 1865 or HIS 3635/Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in the U.S
Note: An additional writing course is recommended for students in Concentration 4.
The minor in sociology is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the discipline and to introduce them to some of the major subfields.
MA, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Courses
The meaning of freedom and citizenship is a central theme in this examination of the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the lives of African Americans since the end of the Civil War. Topics include Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights and black power movements.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
An examination of the rich philosophies of Tibetan Buddhism, drawing on Nagarjuna and the Indian background, developing the tantric tradition through its philosophic assumptions and arguments. (offered Summer, in India)
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
What does Latin American hip-hop have to do with social change? How do murga dances in Argentina and Uruguay or “theatre of the oppressed” performances in Brazil challenge “social authoritarianism”? Why are Greenpeace campaigns so successful in raising awareness about the Amazon? Why are carnivals in Oruro, Bolivia, or in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, still so lively and engaging? This course explores the relationship between activism and “culture” in different Latin American countries.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
Examines the art and science of contemplative practices in order to cultivate self-knowledge, critical awareness, emotional resilience, and social engagement. Students must be willing to personally explore such practices as meditation and incorporate them into their lives throughout the semester. This experiential approach complements an academic investigation and discussion of contemplative practices in the sciences and humanities.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
An introduction to sociological thinking and to key concepts in sociology. Attention is given to social life, inequality, movements, action, change, institutions, and contemporary social issues.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
An overview of biological, psychological, and sociological approaches to understanding human sexual behavior. Topics include values in sexuality, sexuality through the life span, sexual dysfunction and therapy, sex and disability, sexual preferences, atypical sexualities, and sex and the law.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
Students explore the social construction of the genre of outsider art through an examination of institutional discourses and practices. Emphasis is placed on how the work of marginalized people comes to be viewed as artistically legitimate. Works of asylum art, folk art, prison art, and other genres are analyzed in relationship to creativity, local cultural tradition, and mental illness.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
An examination of the state of race relations in the United States and other industrialized nations. Topics include racial and ethnic stratification, systems of oppression, mechanisms for integration, pluralism, assimilation, and racial politics.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
An introduction to the development of consumer society and consumer culture, with emphasis on the city as a landscape of consumption. Topics include commodification, materialism, large-scale changes in cities and industries, the street as a site for identity, neighborhoods as contest spaces, and the environmental and social consequences of consumerism.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
A cross-cultural examination of social constructions and expressions of gender. Students define gender, examine ideological tensions, and explore the flexibility of gendered systems.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
Introduces microsociology from a social-interactionist perspective. Concepts covered include self; social construction of reality and the symbolic environments; culture and subculture; and identity, social location, and socialization. The interconnectedness of selves and societies is explored by examining the ways in which (a) social arrangements shape individuals and (b) individuals shape the social order of which they are a part.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
After examining the historical development of the profession of social work, this course introduces the profession’s values, ethics, and practice principles. Students examine major intervention methods of practice and explore the social service delivery networks comprising the social welfare system in professional settings. The course format includes volunteer service and visits to social service sites.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
An examination of the impact of feminist thinking on the visual and performing arts. Emphasis is placed on the historical absence of women in art worlds and the creation of work that critiques dominant modes of cultural production. A plurality of feminisms and attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality inform investigations of craft, performance, and collaboration.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
This professional orientation for sociology majors includes sessions with each member of the sociology faculty on such topics as professional presentation and communication skills, preparation for graduate school, and faculty research.
Credits: 1
Department: Sociology
An exploration of different sociological renderings of birth and death in contemporary societies. Understanding the concepts from a sociological perspective offers an opportunity to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, spirituality, and age. This course also focuses on recent biomedical technological innovations and their implications for birth and death representations. Students conduct an independent field trip and do extensive reading and writing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (SOC1500 Or CSO1500 ) Or (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or GND1200
Department: Sociology
The dynamics of community life and strategies for grassroots activism are explored. Readings include theoretical works and case studies about urban and rural community issues and organizations. Efforts, tactics, and successes are assessed. Coursework includes visits to local community organizations and guest lectures by grassroots leaders. Assignments include direct involvement with a campus or regional change organization.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
How do groups mobilize to act for social change and against injustice? This course focuses on contemporary movements that emerge within and outside the United States, e.g., in Latin America. Case studies focus on human rights, feminism, environmentalism, landless rural workers, indigenous peoples, and global justice movements, with a particular focus on how these movements emerge, (re)create their identities, and frame injustice. The class analyzes how 21st-century movements are both global and local.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Provides an overview of the counseling professions. Covers history, theories, methodologies, origins, and ethics within a variety of counseling professions including guidance and vocational, human services, grief, marriage and family, and social work. Skill building will include autoethnography, listening practices, meditation, empathy, and observation. Guest lectures by practitioners from a variety of professions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500 Or SOC3002
Department: Sociology
Investigates the meanings, production, distribution, and consumption of food by human beings. Special attention is paid to social solidarity—the racial, ethnic, and gender relations of food preparation and celebration. Social stratification is examined to understand social inequality in relation to food, particularly in terms of labor and hunger.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (SOC1500 Or CSO1500 ) Or (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or GND1200
Department: Sociology
Food—its production, consumption, and representation—is used as a lens to understand politics, culture, sociality, identities, geographies, and economies. Taking the geographical area of Pisciotta, Italy, as a starting point and ultimately as an ethnographic case study, this course engages students in the local and regional landscape. From visits to the local weekly market to field trips to the local mozzarella or olive oil producers, students interpret how food, as a way of life, has shaped the village.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Food, its production, consumption, and representation are used as a lens to understand politics, culture, sociality, identities, geographies, and economies. Some of the themes examined are salient in contemporary debates within social and cultural studies.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
History of social welfare policy, justice, and social work advocacy. Focus on the elderly, health care, mental health, and child welfare. Application of policy and cost benefit analysis, and systems thinking. Specialized areas include issues related to ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender identity and gender expression, marital status, national origin, race, religion or spirituality, sex, and sexual orientation.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500 Or SOC3002
Department: Sociology
Contemporary sociological studies of the body consider how bodies become social entities through membership in communities and how these bodies are valued according to their gender, social class, religion, and racial, ethnic, and national status. This course attends to bodies, engaging with a growing corpus of material on embodiment, embodied experiences, body regulation, bodywork, representations of bodies, and cultural exposures of the body.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500 Or ANT1500 Or CAN1500
Department: Sociology
How is scientific and medical knowledge researched and developed? What is the relationship between science and medicine? What are the hidden premises or values that lie within different scientific and medical approaches? How is scientific and medical knowledge culturally represented? Additional topics include alternative medicine, epidemiology, and everyday lived experience of medicine and the relation to social inequality.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
What is teaching like? Would you make a good teacher? Designed to familiarize students with the profession of teaching, this course helps students consider whether they want to pursue a teaching career. In addition to addressing the motivation, training, and status of teachers, the course also provides an overview of educational policies and professional organizations. A child-observation component is included.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Focuses on what is meant by organizations, how organizations are shaped by their environment, and how organizations affect societies and individual lives. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and schools are among the organizations covered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Brings a sociological perspective to environmental issues, both past and present, by asking: Who is civilized? Who is savage? What is nature? By addressing questions of how human societies, animals, and land have shaped each other, students better understand the root causes and consequences of today’s environmental crisis. Topics include world hunger, water, and environmental equity for all.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
Students and faculty, humans and animals, subjects and objects collaborate in this rigorous seminar on the “animal problem,” as it is particularly important to urban environments and urban dwellers (human and nonhuman animals). What are nonhuman animals? How do people account for their animal nature while reconciling their cultural aspirations? What are human primary desires with respect to nonhuman animals?
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
An introduction to the study of cities in the U.S. and other countries. Using a “social problems” approach, the development of urban communities and the associated issues are explored. Topics include gentrification, poverty, housing, and public transportation. This course is designed to further develop students’ writing ability and capacity for critical thinking, research, and analysis.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
Examines the “meeting” of scholarship in science and technology studies and queer theory. Topics include social constructionist approaches; the reception of queer theory in the social sciences; feminist critiques of scientific methods; the role of language in science; the scientific construction of bodies and identities, differences, communities, and boundaries; sexual morality and social control; and science, medicine, and the production of sexual subjects.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
Introduction to the main ideas in the field of political sociology. Primary focus includes the study of power and its social implications. Key topics include the use and legitimation of violence, democracy from above and below, policy development processes and outcomes, corruption, citizenship, and revolutions. Historical and contemporary cases locally and globally will be covered.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or POL1570
Department: Sociology
Forms of social movement, action, and advocacy, which are critical to social transformation and social justice, are examined. Essential components, such as fundraising, training, publicity, and movement building, are included, along with coverage of effective forms of social activism and advocacy. The course integrates theory and research with practical applications.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Examines economic inequality and social stratification in global perspective. Sample topics include the egalitarian welfare states of Northern Europe, shantytowns with ultra-luxury high-rises in the mega-cities of Brazil and China, and the effects of social policy on the marginalization of ethnic and racial groups.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Introduction to the sociology of memory, focusing on the United States and Latin America. Topics include memory and the nation, memory and race, memory, gender, and sexuality, the politics of memory, memory tourism, memorials, museums, and memory in art and popular culture.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or PSY1530 Or ANT1500 Or HIS1200 Or HIS1600
Department: Sociology
Students become acquainted with methods that social scientists in general and sociologists in particular use for different types of research. Goals include learning to identify, understand, and evaluate diverse research strategies; distinguish between qualitative and quantitative methods, the types of knowledge they produce, and the strengths and the weaknesses of each; and think critically about objectivity, researcher standpoint, and research ethics
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Given the ethnic complexity of society, major social institutions—including education, criminal justice, health care, social services, and business—face many challenges. This course explores the past, present, and future of race and ethnicity in American society, and how immigration, culture, religion, education, and income play parts in prejudice, discrimination, and racial inequalities.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
The role of religious institutions in the modern American social context. Topics include the role of religious influence on other institutions (especially the political), religious styles, new sectarian and revivalist movements, and conflict within the major religious traditions.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The inequalities in status and class are examined. Literary, philosophical, and sociological works are used to explore the nature and morality of inequality and to provide composite pictures of the different social classes.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
Conflict can signal either a disruption in an organization’s operations or an opportunity for change and growth. This course examines the causes, processes, costs, and benefits of social conflict, and methods for conflict resolution. Using sociological theory and research, the relationship of social issues to organizational and institutional conflict is also addressed. Students are given a broad perspective on making conflict an asset organizationally and interpersonally, including 25 hours of coursework needed for conflict-mediation certification. Provides the foundation for an apprenticeship with a conflict-mediation or dispute-resolution center.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
People’s everyday lives are monitored on multiple levels through mechanisms they take for granted. Surveillance systems and technologies provide knowledge about people through identification, monitoring, and analysis of individuals, groups, data, or systems. These systems are examined as social entities that organize and shape cultural values and norms. Issues of identity, security, fear, control, and vulnerability are also explored.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Students explore the relationship between art and society through an investigation of cultural objects and practices, and within the context of individual and collective identity. Emphasis is placed on the social production, consumption, and distribution of art, the role of art institutions, and the relationship between art and social change.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
An examination of the special relationship of education to other American institutions. Topics include the declining support for public education, attempts to privatize public education (vouchers), and race and class issues in public and private education.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Incorporates service learning and examines immigration and the U.S. school system. Combining hands-on work within local schools with academic readings that address children of immigrants in schools, this course emphasizes applied sociology. Throughout the course, students analyze how school structures, peer networks, relationships with teachers, and familial interactions influence the incorporation and educational trajectories of first- and second-generation immigrants.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Using the key concept of “boundary,” students explore the intersection of community studies and race/ethnicity studies. While community and race/ethnicity define who belongs within the boundary, they also construct who does not belong, creating social, economic, and political exclusions. Readings draw extensively from work done on immigrants in the U.S.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (SOC1500 Or CSO1500 ) Or (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 )
Department: Sociology
Public health has the goal of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society. This course focuses on a specific public health topic that might unexpectedly become significant or an interdisciplinary topic that integrates sociological considerations in relation to the goals of public health (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, abortion, synthetic biology, DNA testing).
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Focuses on the diversity of families, the challenges they face, their relationship to social institutions and communities, and how they interact with society at large. Students explore how social norms and public policy have benefited or constrained particular familial structures over time and examine how contemporary family formations are shifting normative social structures.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (SOC1500 Or CSO1500 ) Or (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 )
Department: Sociology
Examines the ways in which age is socially constructed, and how social factors influence how bodies develop over time and shape our social order. Studies include various ideologies and inequalities related to aging.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Aging is real. It happens to everyone. But some people age “better” than others. How can we maximize our aging potential? Is aging a disease to be treated or a natural progression of life? To answer these questions, this course critically examines new social, medical, genetic and economic advances relating to aging. We also interrogate systemic institutional inequalities in respect to these technological aging innovations. Our goal is to understand how one ages well in our society.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500
Department: Sociology
Examines the truth and dispels the myths about Alzheimer’s disease. Topics include how to help AD family members live a worthwhile life, public health concerns about social impact, caregiver burnout and disease costs, stigma, social memory, gender, race and class. Medical-genomic interventions, optimism about delaying onset, finding cures, and the role of various interpretations of the disease are explained.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500
Department: Sociology
Considers the ways in which children and childhood differ across cultures, what those cultural differences mean, and what childhood means in a larger developmental and cultural sense. Among other topics, students examine children as active social agents, independent of families, and incorporate ideas around children as products, childhood innocence, and children in need of protection.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
An examination of the various causes and consequences of international migration on migrants, their sending communities, and their destination countries. Topics include immigration debates, the social structures and economic and social conditions that facilitate labor migration, undocumented migration, refugee migration and forced migration. New York is an amazing place to explore migration, providing firsthand knowledge about migrant communities.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500 Or ANT1500 Or CAN1500
Department: Sociology
Considers experiences and images of men in U.S. society. Recent feminist theory and research concerning men are studied, with attention to the various meanings of masculinity in American culture. This course provides a sociological understanding of gender and society, with attention to race, class, and other aspects of identity that shape men’s lives, including media representations of masculinity.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
A global sociological examination of the contemporary debates and studies concerning the social organization of cultures that transcends national boundaries. This course examines the highly debated concept of globalization by studying transnational social organizations and the distinctive dynamics of global political economy and culture. Topics include colonialism and postcolonialism, social movements and social change, social inequality, labor, human rights, democracy, global capitalism, urbanization, and cultural identity.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
Sexuality is grounded in bodily experience, but meanings of both body and experience are socially constructed. This advanced seminar examines contemporary sexual constructions and their cultural and historical roots.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: GND1200 Or SOC2020 Or ANT3750 Or GND2020
Department: Sociology
The meaning of theory, and the major theoretical perspectives in social science. Primary attention in reading and discussion is given to the works of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. These thinkers have been chosen because of their seminal, interdisciplinary contributions to political, economic, sociological, and anthropological theory.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Sociology
In preparation for the senior project, sociology majors conduct an in-depth critical review of research and learn how to plan and write a research proposal within a particular area of interest. The goal is to develop critical-thinking skills and the ability to do close reading of primary sources and write in the style of the discipline.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
An advanced seminar in critical race studies specifically designed for juniors and seniors interested in reading theory, history, and research. Focuses on key works that have defined the field and shaped understandings of race in the 21st century, including those of Du Bois, Wacquant, Fanon, hooks, Crenshaw, Davis, Hall, and Said.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Offers an in-depth focus on a specific sociological issue, which varies each semester. Includes research, readings, and writings on a topic related to the particular expertise of the faculty member.
Credits: 4
Department: Sociology
Using a sociological imagination, we will examine the personality and politics of Generation X, Y and Z as compared to their predecessors. In examining birth and age cohorts, we focus on cultural, economic, and political moments that define generations. Emphasis is placed on identity, education, technology, values and the marketing of generations as distinct.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500
Department: Sociology
Contemporary issues in bioethics; the study of ethical issues in the field of medical treatment, the life sciences and medical research. Examines moral and philosophical theories of ethics, applies these concepts to current topics, including end of life decisions, reproductive technologies, patient autonomy, human, animal and fetal research and technologies, organ transplantation, and genetic testing and engineering.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 And WRI1110
Department: Sociology
How meanings of all things extraterrestrial are shaped by culture and what those meanings reveal about humanness. Topics include constructions of difference, conflict, community, knowledge, science, and social change. The culminating question: What does it mean to be human? What counts as reality? What about our humanness have we cultivated or suppressed and in the service of what interests?
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Sociology
Public art is used in this course to promote community engagement and cross-cultural interaction. Students use established, recognized methods of collaboration to explore local community issues, concluding with the physical implementation and exhibition of student-led solutions.
Credits: 3
Department: Sociology
School of Liberal Studies
We believe that students entering professions ultimately benefit from a broad-based exposure to the liberal arts. Majors in the liberal studies program offer an array of pre-professional courses within the context of a liberal arts education. The School of Liberal Studies provides evening-enabled bachelor’s degree programs for students who are attracted to and will benefit from a distinctly Purchase education—one that emphasizes creativity, interdisciplinary work, and social activism. The experiential capstone project is designed to integrate coursework into a compelling piece of work to showcase graduates’ accomplishments.
This major focuses on crafting messages appropriate to a variety of mediated channels; considering the impact of messages on diverse audiences, and promoting brands, products and companies.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all communications majors must complete the following requirements (35 credits):
COM 1500/Intro to Communication: 4 credits
COM 2010/Group Collaboration: 3 credits
One of the following courses:
COM 1400/Intro to Video Techniques and Technology: 3 credits
COM 2050/Intro to Media Writing: 4 credits
COM 3100/Communication Research: 4 credits
COM 3110/Strategic Message Design: 4 credits
Area of Interest: TV Production/ Advertising/ Public Relations: 12 credits
CAP 4800/Senior Capstone: 4 credits
A minimum grade of C- is required for all classes applied towards major requirements.
*The list below outlines requirements for communication majors prior to Fall 2018.
Humanities courses (15 credits)
Natural sciences courses, including PSY 3365/Advanced Psychology of Communication (15 credits)
Social sciences courses, including one of the following:
COM 1500/Introduction to Communication*
*formerly CMS 1500/Intro. to Mass Media and Communications (through fall 2016)
MSA 1050/Introduction to Media Studies (15 credits)
Performing and/or visual arts courses (6 credits)
Upper-level courses:
a. Social sciences courses, including two survey courses on the history or
sociology of film or other mass media (12 credits)
b. All in humanities courses or all in natural sciences courses (8 credits)
Communications electives (15 Credits), including the following:
COM 3100/Communication Research
COM 3110/Strategic Message Design
This introduction to the art and science of video production focuses on developing visual literacy and postproduction skills. Starting with an examination of basic video technology and traditional media aesthetics, all stages of the video production process are covered. Students receive introductory technical training and hands-on experience with digital camcorders, microphones, and nonlinear editing equipment.
Credits: 3
Department: Communication
The history and impact of communication technologies are examined, beginning with speech and moving forward through print and digital media, advertising and public relations, media regulation and potential, and ending with a consideration of the future.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
The art of the spoken word is studied in many of its forms, including political speeches, story-based podcasts, and slam poetry. Students research and create concise stories; examine the role that rhythm, cadence, structure, and sound patterns play in creating a memorable performance; and then practice delivering the message for their intended audience. Uses and impacts for inspiring, informing, and persuading are considered.
Credits: 2
Department: Communication
Students develop expertise in public speaking by preparing and presenting different types of speeches for a variety of purposes. The focus is on the main elements of planning and delivering a speech: the message, the speaker, the audience, and the occasion. All speeches are critiqued in class. As an integral part of the course, students learn PowerPoint.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
Students will learn how to collaborate in order to work with others to achieve goals. Those goals may be personal, social and/or task oriented. Through practical, hands-on exercises, students will apply theories of group interaction to demonstrate their working knowledge of effective process. Students will be able to recognize when groups become stuck and brainstorm ways to move forward.
Credits: 3
Department: Communication
Students will learn the fundamental principles of design and how these relate to effective visual communication. We will explore the role that advertising plays in society and how to create effective visual advertisements. Students will also learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and how to shoot and edit photos.
Credits: 3
Department: Communication
Introduces basic concepts of intercultural communication. By examining communication practices in diverse contexts (e.g., family, education, workplace, health and recreation), students learn how cultural rules and norms are enacted and how violations are sanctioned. International factors, cross-cultural competence, and global citizenship are discussed with the goal of increasing understanding, enhancing each student’s ability to interact appropriately in the U.S. and abroad.
Credits: 2
Department: Communication
In this writing intensive course, students build foundational skills in writing for a variety of media and purposes: print, digital, and broadcast media, public relations and advertising. Students begin to explore the divergent applications of written communication by analyzing their roles as both consumers of and writers for media. Ethical and legal issues are also introduced.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
The First Amendment allows the mass media certain freedoms to publish, broadcast, advertise, and promote. Yet with those rights come responsibilities. This course examines the legal and ethical dimensions and issues involved with contemporary American mass media.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
An interdisciplinary (social science and humanities) course that emphasizes critical thinking in understanding the social and historical effects of mass media in the U.S. and throughout the world. This course begins in 19th-century America, when print media shaped and defined the national culture, and concludes in the current century with the mass-media convergence of print, electronic, and digital multimedia that is shaping and defining our global culture.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
Students become acquainted with methods that communication practitioners use to conduct different types of research. Goals include learning to identify, understand, and evaluate diverse research strategies; distinguish between qualitative and quantitative methods, the types of knowledge they produce (big/small data), and the strengths and the weaknesses of each; and think critically about objectivity, researcher standpoint, and research ethics.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
What are the different forms messages take in spoken and written communication? After examining actual messages in different contexts and assessing their impact on individuals and groups, students learn how to craft messages and select the appropriate timing, style, and medium for delivery. Participants have the opportunity to design, deliver, and test the impact of new messages.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
Negotiation is approached from a communication perspective in this course. Students explore the cooperative decision-making process in which individuals and groups work together to attempt to achieve goals that may initially seem divergent. By examining the way language is used to frame arguments and barriers, students practice planning, reframing, and bargaining to maintain roles and relationships.
Credits: 2
Department: Communication
Students learn how to inform and influence large audiences about noncommercial issues through a series of purposeful communication activities. By examining cases in environment, health, human and animal welfare, and disaster prevention, participants differentiate successful from unsuccessful campaigns and review the process for crafting appropriate mediated messages and selecting specific channels to produce a desired impact.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
Media literacy encompasses the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media. In this course, students learn to critically examine visual, audio, and online media while gaining an understanding of the media’s effect on culture and society.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
The roles and theories of communication and leadership, together with the skills and traits of effective managers, are studied. Students examine how managers use behavioral modification and motivation techniques, develop coaching skills, manage change and conflict, and create a vision for their employees. The topics of strategy, organizational culture, and diversity are also included.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
An examination of the history, cultural impact, and aesthetics of documentary film and video production. Through viewings, lectures, discussions, and hands-on exercises, students learn how to research, write, interview, direct, shoot, and edit a documentary. Using camcorders and editing equipment, students produce their own short documentaries.
Credits: 3
Department: Communication
Students learn how to influence others by crafting and orally delivering convincing messages that appeal to logic, reason, emotion, and feelings. Ancient rhetorical and contemporary scholarship is used to examine and compare persuasive speeches and advertisements. The class explores written, face-to-face, and digitally-mediated arguments in legal discourse, health, and marketing promotions. The student’s ability to identify speaking differences in style, arguments, and credibility is also sharpened.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
This course focuses on understanding communication in relationships (interpersonal) and within the mind (intrapsychic: thinking, alone time, analyzing, understanding the external world and how one communicates internally). Topics include communication styles and communication in the intimate relationship, within the family, and at the workplace.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
How do brands communicate during times of crisis? Students will analyze case-studies, leverage best practices and develop their own campaigns to demonstrate how to successfully steer a brand through their most troubling hour. We will touch on key concepts including reputation management, spokesperson training and press conferences, rich and social media, and more in this public relations course.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: COM2050 Or CMS2050
Department: Communication
Students will learn different styles of podcasting, best practices for developing and pitching a show, how to use professional audio recorders, basic audio editing techniques with Adobe Audition and how to build an audience and distribute a podcast once it’s complete.
Credits: 3
Department: Journalism
Students will learn different styles of podcasting, best practices for developing and pitching a show, how to use professional audio recorders, basic audio editing techniques with Adobe Audition and how to build an audience and distribute a podcast once it’s complete.
Credits: 3
Department: Communication
Provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals needed to build an integrated marketing communications plan, from creating a common objective, aligning strategies, and producing a consistent message. By strategically aligning various marketing functions and leveraging each disciplines strength’s, (i.e. paid advertising, public relations, social media, point of purchase and digital marketing), students can more purposefully design campaigns for maximum impact.
Credits: 3
Department: Communication
Knowing how to get work done through meetings is an increasingly important skill set. Students explore the discursive strategies used in a variety of multicultural business meetings, both face-to-face and virtual. Using communication methods, students analyze why some meetings are considered productive and others not so much, as well as the roles, relationships, conflict, and written documentation enacted therein.
Credits: 2
Department: Communication
Offers hands-on tools to prepare students to market their work while staying true to their artistic and creative sensibilities. Topics include how to submit work to producers, competitions, and companies. Students learn how to write professional synopses, query letters, and one-sheets, plus the technique of pitching, with practice pitching sessions.
Credits: 2
Department: Communication
After reviewing basic presentation skills and techniques, student gain experience handling digital devices to record presentations of themselves and others. Providing hands-on instruction and practice for conducting and recording professional presentations and interviews (still frame and in motion), the course also covers essential production elements: shooting and editing, interviewing and selecting sound bites, and writing and voicing.
Credits: 2
Department: Communication
Learn how to write, edit, punch up and perform your own unique standup comedy piece. The course will focus on creating comedic stories, joke construction and performance techniques. An essential part of being successful is learning to give and receive feedback. The class will provide a safe, non-judgmental environment where feedback can be shared and everyone can continuously improve.
Credits: 2
Department: Liberal Studies
Television is much more than a passive, incessant means of diversion—it is a powerful environment of ideas, emotions, and values that influences people’s thoughts, actions, and relationships. Students become acquainted with current issues concerning television in society and explore the impact of television on society. Aspects examined include the 1950s and mass culture, viewer response, serial/episodic structure, and the rise of cable.
Credits: 4
Department: Communication
Hands-on work in the TV studio from conceptualization to post-production. In small groups, students will gain a practical understanding of writing, camera work, editing and working with on-camera personalities. The course will be structured as follows: demonstrating skillful use of equipment, enacting production techniques, and coordinating shooting logistics.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: COM1400 Or FLM1050
Department: Communication
Students will work in small groups to produce, shoot and edit Purchase Presents, a television show focused on issues happening on campus.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: COM3750 Or JOU3160
Department: Communication
Charles Morazé, in The Triumph of the Middle Classes, describes the political and social history of the bourgeoisie during the 19th century. This course traces themes from Morazé; through the 20th century, with attention to how the middle class sees itself through art, literature, film, advertising, and television.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
The past century saw two world wars and countless smaller, armed conflagrations over land, political influence, and ancient hatreds. This course focuses on a variety of post–World War II conflicts as reported by international journalists. Students learn about the atrocities in Bosnia, the Middle East, and Africa, among others, but most of all, they learn how war and conflict are reported.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
A study of music in its cultural contexts, including how it defines and perpetuates national, cultural, ethnic, and personal identity around the world. The class examines the recording, performing, and broadcasting of music and the role of race, class, and gender in Spain, Central Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Looking through the lens of culture, students see who drives the music industry, who listens, and for what purposes.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Students explore contemporary literary and cinematic expressions of immigrant groups seeking acceptance in Western cultures. The focus is on issues related to assimilation, identity, and the reactions of the Western mainstream cultures as outside forces compete for recognition. The immigrant groups depicted include those originating in Southeast Asia, China, Africa, and the Middle East.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
A discussion of the constructs, theories, and ideas in the field of social psychology that are most relevant to contemporary society. Films that are rich in examples of social psychological theory are analyzed to facilitate mastery of these concepts.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
The most successful films function as both art and entertainment; students explore why this balance is a rare achievement. Topics include the business origins and aspects of cinema, films that concern and depict artistic process, and a critical/historical evaluation of films as works of art. Film aesthetics are examined from several perspectives, including grammar, genres and forms, and auteur theory.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
This focus on African American cinema includes the work of major African American directors and performers and the films that reflect the complex issues attending the relationship between race and film in the United States.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Investigates celebrity culture through the lens of advertising and public relations. Particular attention is paid to how celebrity culture is created and shaped by various forms of media, ranging from print to social media platforms. Students consider the ways celebrities create change and consider their impact on public and private lives.
Credits: 3
Department: Liberal Studies
What does it mean to be part of a subculture? This phenomenon is explored through film, focusing on subcultures that are usually not in the mainstream spotlight and analyzing what it means to live on the margins. The subcultures may include, for example, the Amish, big rig drivers, Scrabble champions, graffiti artists, quadriplegic athletes, prison inmates, and outsider artists.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Explores the many types of families presented on the silver screen in the 20th century and today: perfect/idyllic families, families threatened by divorce, dysfunctional families, eccentric families, families facing a crisis, and current notions of extended or nontraditional families.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Throughout the history of cinema, the comedy film has been one of the most financially profitable genres, producing some of the biggest movie stars. Topics include various comedy film styles and performers, and the role of the comedy film genre within the context of world history, especially during darker periods like the Depression and World War II.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
“The city” is examined from some of the perspectives in which it has been depicted in film, beginning with early screen melodramas where the evils of the city are juxtaposed against the virtues of country life. Discussions range from the plight of anonymous individuals struggling for recognition and representations of the “urban jungle” in 1940s film noir to more contemporary perspectives. Filmmakers who incorporate the city as an identifying aspect of their directorial styles are also considered.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
By focusing on masculinities, femininities, and the space in between, this course examines the cultural structure of gender and investigates the various ways that gender is expressed visually in film.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Examines the elements and messages in sports films that make people cheer for the underdog and care about teams, players, and sports. Using both big-budget Hollywood films and documentaries with a small scope, this course explores the ideas of team, sport, and athletics and investigates the grip that sports have on American culture.
Liberal Studies is an interdisciplinary program featuring courses that converge around 21st century problems and their implications for a sustainable future.
The curriculum is organized around critical contemporary topics such as: food, water, health, migration, transportation, and energy. Courses are team-taught by two or more faculty from across the social and natural sciences, humanities and the arts, with a focus on integrating local and global knowledge and skills. Using sustainability as one of the broad organizing principles around which curricular content is structured, students learn to identify intersections between local life and global forces, and to understand how contemporary problems are mediated by particular geographic, demographic and sociopolitical forces across local-global scales.
Students gain broad knowledge of key competencies required to succeed in life and work – with emphasis on how to manage complexity, diversity and change, and how to apply acquired knowledge in real-world settings. Core competencies that students develop include: interdisciplinary critical analysis, evidence-based reasoning (qualitative and quantitative), the ability to link local-global theory and practice, collaboration across differences, and ethical reasoning and action.
Requirements:
Fall 2019: New Major Requirements
LBS 3017/Structured Inquiry Across the Disciplines (4 credits) introducing academics at Purchase College and the core competencies of the interdisciplinary study.
6 upper-level core LBS courses (24 credits) that focus on major contemporary social issues from interdisciplinary perspectives. Core courses will integrate problem-oriented learning reflecting core competencies and learning outcomes.
LBS 3880/Junior Seminar (4 credits) covering multidisciplinary theory and research methods in preparation for the Senior Capstone, with emphasis on e-Portfolio development and reflection.
CAP/4800 Senior Capstone (4 credits) will align with core course problem areas.
A minimum grade of C- is required for all classes applied towards major requirements.
The information below outlines requirements for liberal studies majors prior to Fall 2019.
Humanities courses: A grade of C- or higher must be earned. (15 credits)
Natural sciences courses: A grade of C- or higher must be earned. (15 credits)
Social sciences courses: A grade of C- or higher must be earned. (15 credits)
Performing and/or visual arts courses: A grade of C- or higher must be earned. (6 credits)
Upper-level liberal arts courses: a. First area* (12 credits) b. Second area* (8 credits)
*Areas: Humanities, natural sciences, social sciences; the first and second areas must be distinct. A grade of C- or higher must be earned.
One-semester project that involves empirical research, library investigation, or an on or off-campus applied learning experience. Regardless of the format, the project will culminate in a significant paper. Course sections are overseen by faculty within each concentration to foster integration of prior coursework, and should be selected in consultation with academic advisors. Required for all liberal studies students.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: WRI1110 Or LWR1110 Or WRI2110 Or Or
Department: Liberal Studies
Liberal Studies
Introduces students to the historical, artistic, and natural treasures of the Hudson River Valley. Students experience the Valley’s historical and natural development from multiple disciplinary lenses. Sites may include: Jay Homestead, Marshlands Conservancy, Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, St Paul’s National Historic Site; Croton Point Park and Gorge Dam; Sunnyside, Philipsburg Manor, Hudson River Museum.
Credits: 2
Department: Liberal Studies
An interdisciplinary course that examines the way air, ground, and marine transportation is structured and used to move demographically diverse people. Discussions about the role of public participation in planning efforts includes particular attention to youth, minority populations, and people with low income. Programs to increase participation from people traditionally under-heard in planning processes are examined and proposed.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
The modern conception of health and its resulting issues are examined from an interdisciplinary perspective. Topics include the origins of emerging health and related public policy issues; the impact on the local, national, and global economy and educational systems; national security; preventive efforts; and approaches to planning policy that address these health challenges now and in the future.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
An interdisciplinary course that examines physical aspects of the world’s water, from oceans and rivers to streams and ponds. Noting the role that water plays in ecosystems and social systems provides the basis for further exploration into the history of use, contamination, and protection. The physical and chemical properties of water provide the basis for questions of safety and sustainability.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Food preferences differ culture by culture. This interdisciplinary course explores practices and politics of food production, consumption, and regulation locally and globally. After taking a historic look at how food practices have changed, students examine microbial and chemical agents that may contaminate food supplies and learn practical considerations for preventing food scarcity and contamination on small and large scales.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Contemporary culture cannot be adequately understood without considering the impact of religious extremism. While other factors play a role, it is religious passions that fuel the jihadist movement in the Islamic world, incite violence in the occupied Palestinian territories, and amplify culture wars between secular and religious forces in the U.S. This course examines the root causes of such cultural phenomena, asking whether fundamentalism can exist in modern society without leading to bloodshed.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
This interdisciplinary course examines ethical, technical and workplace issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). By discussing conceptual dilemmas about human-AI interaction from science fiction, TV and film, considering the rise of workplace automation, and exploring specific cases from self-driving cars to intelligent systems that (un)lock front doors and control household items within the internet of things, students tackle policy implications.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
This course will examine the meanings and determinants of happiness from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including cultural anthropology, economics, and psychology. Coursework will combine sociocultural and economic analyses with scientific research from the field of positive psychology regarding the psychosocial and neuropsychological nature of happiness, including how positive emotions influence cognition, health, wealth and social relations.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
This course emphasizes the importance of integrating interdisciplinary perspectives in problem-solving, as well as combining academic and experiential learning in confronting real-world challenges. Students will reflect on the meanings and purpose of higher education as a community of learners, will engage in a variety of activities designed to strengthen academic skills, and will address contemporary social issues from cross-disciplinary perspectives.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Explores the meanings and definitions of ability and disability. Students examine genealogies of ‘disability’ in the United States and cross-culturally from historical, legal, and sociocultural perspectives. Representations of disability in art history, museums, and theatre and film are critically analyzed in efforts to move toward diverse and inclusive understandings of human ability and universal design principles.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Provides a broad view of migration from multiple disciplinary perspectives, at multiple scales of analysis (local-global), and across geopolitical space. Explore how migration intersects with development, environment, security, and identity. A central concern includes how such sociopolitical considerations vis-a-vis migration, in turn, impact and fashion our sense of responsibility for the global commons.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Explore the sociopolitical dimensions of the arts across diverse creative outlets. Students examine art in relation to the politics of power in society, and engage the activist dynamics of artistic expression with regards to persistent forms of inequality and oppression.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
How do energy systems and our energy choices affect anthropogenic climate change across the global north and south? This course examines the technological, sociopolitical, and cross-cultural dimensions of energy use, and their implications for the environment, human life and non-human life. Students explore alternative sources of energy, with particular emphasis on sustainable policy and governance at the local level.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Housing is a basic necessity of life yet the most costly expenditure for most U.S. households. It configures the well-being of individuals and families in fundamental ways, affecting everything from daily quality of life to (in)equality of opportunity. Students examine the sociopolitical and cultural implications of housing for individuals, families and communities, with a view toward sustainable living.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Humans have produced waste since the days of genus Homo, with approximately 102 tons of refuse accumulated by the average U.S. individual today. What can we learn from the waste of past and contemporary societies using household archeology and garbology? Students explore life through the lens of waste, examining such topics as pollution, waste management, consumer capitalism, and environmental justice.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Questions of justice are as old as civilization and involve historically and culturally contingent processes. How do we understand justice in light of widening disparities between groups of people across contemporary societies? Students examine how definitions of justice are interpreted, mediated and put into practice, particularly as part of public policy and the social institutions that structure our lives.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
A course that examines the meanings of belonging in relation to identity formation, group membership, social institutions, regional and national boundaries, sociocultural practices, and natural ecosystems. Topics include nationalism, kinship, race and ethnicity, economy and class, gender and sexuality, and the environment. Students explore the concept of a global commons and its role in forging a sense of global collective belonging.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
A course that examines the concepts, practices, experiences and theory of leisure and play as part of human existence, and their role in cultivating vision and innovation. The essential function of leisure and play in the human lifecycle is explored, including cross-cultural perspectives on their importance for allaying fears, maintaining hope, envisioning possibilities, and creating pathways toward invention.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
Examines intersections between communication technology, media and political power. Can media maintain its function in producing informed, democratic members of society who hold governments accountable during a time when the lines between fact and fiction are blurred? Students contemplate how the transforming practices of social media alter the meanings of civic engagement, public awareness, and democratic governance.
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
How we treat animals reveals a great deal about who we are, as a society and species. This course examines intersections between animals, humans and society from multiple perspectives (ecology, history, sociology, literature). Using text, media, documentaries and photojournalism, students explore contemporary topics, including animal intelligence and emotions, biodiversity and keystone species, animals in captivity, and zoonotic disease (i.e., Coronavirus).
Credits: 4
Department: Liberal Studies
This seminar will prepare students to select among research methods to examine and address a challenging social problem from multiple angles and perspectives for their capstone. By conducting a comprehensive literature review, students explore disciplinary connections and compile reflections within an e-portfolio. They will draft a field-based research proposal that addresses one complicated contemporary issue.
This major examines the relationship between law and society, with a focus on ethical legal practices and social justice. Additional coursework in political science, sociology, and philosophy is strongly encouraged.
Students in our program possess a keen interest in closely examining the social, political, and historical processes of law. By studying with practicing lawyers, students learn about the ways in which legal concepts and theories frame our judicial system. Students learn how to conduct and analyze legal research, develop well-crafted legal arguments, and deliver persuasive oral arguments.
Updated 9-23-20
Requirements:
While fulfilling general degree requirements, students must complete the following requirements for this major:
1.
Humanities courses
15 credits
2.
Natural sciences courses
15 credits
3.
Social sciences courses, including:
LEG 1510/Introduction to Criminal Law and
LEG 1520/Introduction to Civil Law
15 credits
4.
Performing and/or visual arts courses
6 credits
5.
Upper-level courses:
a. Social sciences courses, including:
LEG 3065/Legal Research and one of the following:
LEG 3020/Law and the Family
LEG 3185/The Nature and Function of Law
LEG 3480/Censorship
POL 3050/American Constitutional Law
b. All in humanities courses or all in natural sciences courses
12 credits
8 credits
6.
Legal studies electives
15 credits
7.
General electives
30 credits
8.
CAP 4800/Senior Capstone
4 credits
TOTAL:
120 credits
Minor requirements:
Legal Issues and Society
Students interested in this minor should contact the Chair of the Legal Studies minor, Laura Ricciardi.
Three courses from the following
LEG 3010: Anatomy of a Trial and the Jury Process
LEG 3185: The Nature and Function of Law
LEG 3200: Communications Law
LEG 3300: Current Social Issues and the Law
LEG 3390: Immigration Law
LEG 3480: Censorship: Sociological and Legal Perspectives
LEG/AMG 3100: Copyright & Culture
and
Two courses from the following
ENV/LEG 3025: Environmental Law
ENV 3030: Environmental Policy
ENV 3300: Environmental Regulations
SOC 3475: Surveillance, Technology, Society
SOC 3661: Border Wars and Human Rights
PHI 1530: Introduction to Philosophy: Ideas of Good and Evil
PHI 2120: Methods of Reasoning
PHI 3085: Objectivity
PHI 3360: Responsibility and Judgment: Postwar European Philosophy
Lecturer in Entrepreneurship in the Arts, Minor Advisor for Legal Studies
BA, Yale University
JD, New York University
Courses
Topics include the structure of the criminal justice system; the impact of the Supreme Court on criminal justice; and the process of arrest, prosecution, and sentencing.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
An exploration of the day-to-day applications of civil law: who can sue and be sued, the basis for lawsuits, and how to win cases. Through case studies and mock litigation, students explore such issues as product liability, medical malpractice, negligence, strict liability, and legal procedure, including document production and the use of expert witnesses.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Focuses on major Supreme Court decisions pertaining to civil liberties. Caselaw examined includes: privacy, free expression, free exercise of religion, reproductive rights, and same-sex marriage. Students gain a deeper understanding of the current state of the law on major civil liberties issues and a grasp on how Supreme Court decisions affect everyday life.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Topics include the mechanism of the U.S. jury system; the truth-seeking process of juries; the concepts of mistrials, jury nullification, and hung juries; and a consideration of whether trial by jury is the best method for attaining justice. Students participate in a week-by-week mock trial, permitting hands-on experience in jury selection, opening statements, cross-examination, and summation.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
The law touches everyone from conception to the grave and beyond. Family interactions between spouses, parents, children, and elders are dictated by rights and duties defined in the law. This course explores how the law weaves in and out of family structures in an attempt to protect and preserve certain rights and values.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
U.S. environmental law and policy, the common-law foundations of environmental law, and the regulatory process and toolkit are examined. The focus is on major environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, the Compensation and Recovery Act (Superfund), and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
U.S. environmental law and policy, the common-law foundations of environmental law, and the regulatory process and toolkit are examined. The focus is on major environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, the Compensation and Recovery Act (Superfund), and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Credits: 4
Department: Environmental Studies
Students learn how to engage in the research process in the practice of law and assess law’s impact on a range of areas (e.g., consumer rights; the rights of women, students, minorities, and immigrants the rights of both the accused and the victims of crime).
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
An examination of the historical, moral, and legal issues surrounding the death penalty. Students confront the major controversial issues in the current death penalty debate and learn to form arguments from both the pro– and anti–death penalty perspectives. Topics include retribution, deterrence, proportionality, discrimination, error, and public opinion. Students analyze Supreme Court decisions and scholarly treatments of capital punishment.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Examines U.S. copyright law as it relates to the practice and management of the arts. Students gain a concrete understanding of the rules and regulations that govern the protection of creative work, while exploring broader questions of cultural policy. Content and assignments cover use and applications of copyright in music, visual art, dance, literature, video games, fashion, and social media.
Credits: 3
Department: Legal Studies
The study of law from a liberal arts perspective, emphasizing the role that law and the legal order play in the institutional arrangements and human relations of a society. The course examines the basic concepts, language, institutions, and forms of law that characterize the American legal order.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Explores the American legal system and examines the role of each branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—in shaping the laws that govern the right to free speech and the right to privacy, along with conflicts between those two rights that arise in the media, the private sector, and public institutions.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Focuses on current legal issues such as abortion, the death penalty, and affirmative action. The pivotal Supreme Court cases establishing the law in each area are read. In addition, research in sociology and psychology is examined to understand the conditions that led to the key court decisions and the impact of those decisions on society.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Issues related to immigration law are placed in context by reviewing their historical evolution. Students examine current law and issues related to family and labor-based petitions for permanent residence, political asylum and refugee applications, the status of undocumented workers, immigration and national security, and deportation policies and procedures.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Protection of civil rights in the U.S. has been characterized by both civil disobedience and widespread violence. This course analyzes milestones in American history, periods of unrest, and the sociolegal changes associated with them. Landmark constitutional cases, law, and justice in U.S. culture are studied, and historical lawbreakers and high-profile dissidents are examined through various media.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Examines the causes and controls of juvenile delinquency. Topics include a historical overview of children, their legal status, the evolution of the juvenile justice system, alternatives to incarceration and community-based solutions, and reform efforts. The effectiveness of prevention and deterrence efforts is evaluated.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
Sociologists have long understood that the study of censorship can yield an understanding of the structure and values of a society. Modern societies define and enforce limits on expression by defining certain forms of expression as obscene, pornographic, subversive, etc. Censorship in film, literature, and theatre is the major focus.
Credits: 4
Department: Legal Studies
School of the Arts
The School of the Arts offers developing visual and performing artists and arts managers access to the highest level of professional training. Students will graduate equipped with the tools and inspiration for engaged, innovative, and socially impactful careers.
Prestigious faculty in the Arts Management and Entrepreneurship Program, the Conservatories of Dance, Music, and Theatre Arts, and the School of Art+Design cultivate, nurture, and prepare students for entry into their fields through rigorous and comprehensive studio practice, fortified by theoretical, conceptual, and historical study.
Vibrant performance and studio-based degree programs challenge students to interrogate, articulate, produce, and innovate. Students learn entrepreneurial skills within a thriving intellectual culture, informed by the School of the Arts’ uniquely synergistic relationship with the broader college community.
The BA program in arts management at Purchase College is designed for students seeking a foundation for further education and for careers in a wide range of creative industries, including dance and theatre companies; symphony orchestras and opera; galleries and museums; presenting and community arts centers; festival and concert venues; and record companies and artist management agencies.
Led by a diverse faculty of arts management educators and field professionals, the BA program prepares a new generation of engaged managers who value the arts and are committed to the creative process. Emphasis is placed on developing critical inquiry, creative thinking, and the business and communication skills necessary to support the arts and entertainment industry in a changing environment.
practical business courses focused on building the core knowledge and skills vital to supporting a wide variety of arts-based initiatives
performing and visual arts history, theory, and practice-based courses
exploration of chronic and current factors affecting artists and arts entities
applied learning opportunities to pursue individual career interests and to gain practical insight and experience through internships, interaction with field professionals and organizations, and a yearlong case study in arts management
a broad-based education in the liberal arts and sciences
The program also offers a minor in arts management, which is open to students in all disciplines.
The tradition of artistic excellence and diversity at Purchase College, an accomplished faculty with wide-ranging experience, and the college’s proximity to the vast cultural resources in Westchester County and New York City are among the outstanding features enhancing the arts management program.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all arts management majors must meet the following requirements (48–49 credits).
Freshman and Sophomore Years (19 credits):
AMG 1100/Fundamentals of Arts Management: 4 credits
AMG 2200/Finance for the Arts or
ECO 2085/Arts and Entertainment in Economics: 4 credits
AMG 2300/Communicating the Arts: 3 credits
Elective courses in literary, performing, or visual arts history, theory, or practice: 8 credits (at least 3 credits to be completed in the freshman year and before registering for AMG 1100)
Junior and Senior Years (29–30 credits):
AMG 3100/Funding the Arts: 4 credits
AMG 3170/Arts and Entertainment Law: 4 credits
AMG 3520/Marketing the Arts: 4 credits
AMG 3880/Junior Seminar in Arts Management: 2 credits
AMG 3995/Arts Management Internship: 4 credits
AMG —/Arts management elective: 3–4 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Notes:
Students must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses required for the major, excluding the internship and senior project. Students who do not meet these standards must repeat the course(s) or complete acceptable substitutes (for example, ECO 2085 instead of AMG 2200), chosen in consultation with the program faculty.
AMG 1100 is a prerequisite for required upper-level arts management courses.
Students are strongly encouraged to take additional courses in the literary, performing, and visual arts and in arts management, beyond those required for the major.
Minor requirements:
The minor in arts management is designed for students in all disciplines who are interested in exploring the field of arts management and gaining the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to promote and support the arts.
Students interested in pursuing this minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the coordinator of the arts management program. Upon admission to the minor, the student will be assigned a minor advisor from the arts management faculty.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Arts Management
Five courses, as follows:
AMG 1100/Fundamentals of Arts Management
AMG 2200/Finance for the Arts
AMG 3100/Funding the Arts
AMG 3170/Arts and Entertainment Law
AMG 3520/Marketing the Arts
Notes:
Students must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses required for the minor. Students who do not meet these standards must repeat the course(s) or complete acceptable substitutes, chosen in consultation with the program faculty.
AMG 1100 is a prerequisite for required upper-level arts management courses.
This introductory survey provides an overview of creative industries and management theory and principles common in both the nonprofit and commercial sectors, preparing students for upper-level courses in the arts management program. Topics include history of arts management, arts and creativity, leadership and management, business structures, programming, marketing, funding, finance and budgeting, arts advocacy, activism and social justice.
Credits: 4
Department: Arts Management
A student-centered course in which teams collaborate to explore the creative process by envisioning a nonprofit performing or visual arts organization, conceiving it from mission statement to the first body of work. As projects progress, students develop innovative and critical thinking skills while applying basic principles of arts management to sustain their ventures in today’s cultural environment.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: AMG1100 Or CAM1100
Department: Arts Management
To do more than survive in a competitive economy, artists and their managers must learn business strategies for the financial side of their profession. Students are introduced to the basics of budgets, financial management, and accounting concepts that translate into usable information with practical significance for financial decision-making.
Credits: 4
Department: Arts Management
The ability to communicate effectively is frequently ranked by business leaders worldwide as the most important skill for achieving success. This course develops the written, presentation, and interpersonal skills needed to advance career and business objectives in arts management. Assignments build familiarity and practice in internal and external communication tools and tactics common for informing, engaging, and influencing diverse stakeholders.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG1100
Department: Arts Management
Communicating the power of the arts to enhance the lives of individuals and transform communities is central to the success of artists, arts managers, and arts educators. Students explore U.S. cultural policy, law, social values, and market forces affecting the arts and entertainment industry as they develop a theoretical framework and advocacy skills to support arts participation as a fundamental human right.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG1100 Or CAM1100
Department: Arts Management
In this service-learning course, students design, plan, implement, and manage a mentoring program in art education for middle or high school students. Activities include designing and developing a curriculum, creating and curating artwork, and managing and evaluating the program. Includes an eight-week residency at a local middle or high school, culminating with a public presentation of artwork created by the students.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: AMG1100
Department: Arts Management
A study of fundraising and philanthropy for the nonprofit sector, which includes soliciting charitable donations from individuals and seeking grants, and capital formation for commercial entities, which includes issues of self-financing, bank loans, and investors. Focusing on relationship fundraising and research techniques for identifying prospects, this course also explores the rapidly expanding world of crowdfunding and digital fundraising.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Covers accounting principles, procedures, and internal controls; forecasting, balance-sheet analysis, and budgeting procedures; financial reporting for both nonprofit and commercial entities; and the development of pro forma budgets for start-up enterprises.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG2200
Department: Arts Management
What a creative entrepreneur wants to achieve and how to achieve it are fundamental questions at the heart of strategic planning. This course covers a survey of the theory and practice of planning and evaluation, with topics including: the development of critical issues, goals, and strategies; outcomes research planning; protocol development; and strategic planning from individuals, companies, and cities.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
The most successful arts-based enterprises require collaborations with public and private sectors in diverse fields, including healthcare, education, community development, and social justice. To find relevance in an increasingly competitive world that demands evidence and results, students learn how to structure projects that transcend the insular art world and strengthen the places where people live, work, and play.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
An introduction to fund development for growing and sustaining businesses in the arts. Topics include prospect research, proposal development, special events, corporate sponsorship, capitalization, and internet-based fundraising. Students also examine the history of U.S. arts and cultural philanthropy. Guest speakers and/or case studies give students an opportunity to apply concepts and techniques to real-world arts organizations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (AMG1100 Or CAM1100 ) And (AMG2200 Or ECO2085 )
Department: Arts Management
How does someone become a grassroots indie producer? Students learn what it takes to produce their own work for film, theatre, and web-based projects. Topics include building and maintaining healthy collaborations, pitching a script, cultivating investors, casting/staffing, budgeting, marketing, outreach and strategic communications, audience development, distribution, festivals, and crowd-funding platforms. Guest producers share their trade secrets for success.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: AMG1100
Department: Arts Management
An introduction to fundamental legal and business concepts that affect artists and arts managers, with an emphasis on copyright protection and infringement. Students learn the basics of copyright and contract law, analyzing both contracts and case law relevant to the creative industries. Additional course topics include privacy, defamation, moral rights, and free speech protection.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: AMG1100 Or CAM1100
Department: Arts Management
Exploring the exhibition within new museology, this course introduces students to key concepts and practices in museums and non-profit visual art venues. Focusing in particular on exhibition history and interpretation, students will explore what is means to be “exhibition literate” and how meaning is inscribed onto museum objects.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: AMG1100
Department: Arts Management
Provides students with an understanding of the occupations and career paths associated with managing creative artists, structures and processes in talent management, and strategies for developing and maintaining an artist/manager business relationship. Geared toward students with an interest in launching an agency or working within an existing firm, and toward individual artists with an interest in self-management.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG1100 And AMG3170
Department: Arts Management
Provides an overview of fundamental concepts and strategies necessary to build diverse audiences for a variety of arts experience. Topics include market research, audience segmentation, and application of the “4 P’s” of marketing strategy in an arts context. Students develop the knowledge and communication skills to conceive, develop and report a strategic plan to promote an arts event or business.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: AMG1100 Or CAM1100
Department: Arts Management
Students learn the fundamentals of operating commercial art galleries, including curating, artist contracts, and developing client relationships. Additional topics include connoisseurship, detecting fakes in the secondary (antique) art market, and the current regimen of high-profile art fairs. Texts, class discussions, and practical assignments are applicable to a wide variety of visual arts–based careers.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Offers an in-depth introduction to curatorial practice and examines the art of exhibition creation from a cultural, theoretical, and pragmatic perspective. Students study the historical and cultural trajectory of curators-as-connoisseurs in Western societies and current practices and trends in art museum curatorship.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Provides students with an introduction to planning for an arts business or arts project. Topics include management theories, leadership styles and principles, business structures and strategies, and financial management. Students review examples of professional business plans and conceive, develop and complete a plan throughout the semester.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (AMG1100 Or CAM1100 ) And (AMG2085 Or ECO2085 And AMG2200 ) And (AMG3100 And AMG3520 )
Department: Arts Management
Social media is integral to effective business communication and marketing. Students develop and analyze social media strategies, content and campaigns while gaining a better understanding of how to build individual and organizational brands utilizing social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Other topics include influencer campaigns, budgeting, analytics, and split testing.
Credits: 4
Department: Arts Management
Prepares students to complete their Senior Projects in Arts Management through the exploration and application of various research methods and tools of analysis, and by strengthening research and writing skills. Students develop a Senior Project topic relevant to the creative industries and practitioners, learn how to assess its viability, and design a research plan.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: (AMG1100 Or CAM1100 ) And AMG2200 And AMG2300
Department: Arts Management
Using a hands-on approach, this course explores digital marketing campaigns in the arts. Topics include Facebook, Twitter, blogging, microblogging, video and photo sharing, search engine optimization (SEO), mobile/location-based platforms, virtual realities, and social media integration, strategies, and tactics. Viral theories, trends, and case studies are also explored.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG1100
Department: Arts Management
The most successful arts-based enterprises require collaborations with public and private sectors in diverse fields, including healthcare, education, community development, and social justice. To find relevance in an increasingly competitive world that demands evidence and results, students learn how to structure projects that transcend the insular art world and strengthen the places where people live, work, and play.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG1100
Department: Arts Management
Audiences are increasingly seeking creative experiences that are multi-disciplinary, thematically constructed, actively engaging and convenient. Students explore the curatorial process for the live performing arts across the non-profit and commercial sectors. Resources, internal and external factors and strategies that guide artistic planning are among topics examined and applied to a range of real-world scenarios and projects.
Credits: 4
Department: Arts Management
A survey course that reviews economic and financial aspects of the film, music, performing arts, sports, radio, and broadcasting industries.
Credits: 4
Department: Arts Management
Examines U.S. copyright law as it relates to the practice and management of the arts. Students gain a concrete understanding of the rules and regulations that govern the protection of creative work, while exploring broader questions of cultural policy. Content and assignments cover use and applications of copyright in music, visual art, dance, literature, video games, fashion, and social media.
This unique and affordable graduate program is designed for individuals exploring entrepreneurial paths in the arts. With a low student/teacher ratio, students work closely with professional faculty in leadership, finance, marketing, law, and strategy.
The Entrepreneurship in the Arts MA program addresses a critical need for imaginative and skillful leadership in both the commercial and nonprofit arts sectors in the U.S. and in countries that model the U.S. system. Future arts leaders will need to reinvent and create a new landscape; build a solid foundation in management and leadership skills; and think, act, and work as entrepreneurs. The goal of this degree program is to enable graduates to identify, imagine, and build enterprises that will create and sustain the arts marketplace of tomorrow. Such enterprises could include: organizations that deliver services, like a dance therapy studio for athletes; companies that build websites and apps, like a social network tailored for visual artists to share their work, build contacts, and find inspiration; and ideas that completely reimagine how the arts interact with society, like an artist agency that partners with businesses and governments to place art in public and private spaces, and strengthens the economy by employing artists.
Applicants to this MA program are expected to demonstrate marketing, project/program management, and accounting experience, either through undergraduate coursework or employment, upon entry into the program.
Requirements:
Requirements for the graduate major in entrepreneurship in the arts include 10 courses (30 credits) and a 3-credit capstone, which may be completed in three semesters of full-time study or 5 semesters of part-time study.
Electives in the program may be taken in any semester at no additional cost when attending full-time. Students must earn a minimum 3.0 (B) cumulative GPA at Purchase College. In the final semester, students create a plan for a new business venture in their master’s thesis, the capstone experience.
First Year: 24 credits
Fall:
12 credits
AMG 5005/Entrepreneurship in the Arts
3 credits
AMG 5025/Start-Up Capital Formation
3 credits
AMG 5035/Finance for the Arts
3 credits
AMG 5015/Leadership and Management Techniques
3 credits
Spring:
12 credits
AMG 5040/Seminar in Arts Entrepreneurship
3 credits
AMG 5060/Digital Marketing and the Arts
3 credits
AMG 5110/Cross-Disciplinary Partnerships in the Arts
Students learn and practice creative thinking, ideation, and business planning; and embark on an exploration of both commercial and nonprofit entity models, their governance/organizational structures, and funding mechanisms. Students explore and shape innovative creative ideas, learn how to develop and mold them into feasible forms, and build business plans for their new enterprises.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Students build the skills one needs to be an entrepreneur in an increasingly competitive environment by assessing their personal management tactics, developing their communication styles and needs, learning how to personally organize for success, and building skills and strategies to maximize effectiveness. Human resources principles and laws, governance, effective negotiations, decision making, and managing change are also covered.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
A study of fundraising and philanthropy for the nonprofit sector, which includes soliciting charitable donations from individuals and seeking grants, and capital formation for commercial entities, which includes issues of self-financing, bank loans, and investors. Focusing on relationship fundraising and research techniques for identifying prospects, this course also explores the rapidly expanding world of crowdfunding and digital fundraising.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Covers accounting principles, procedures, and internal controls; forecasting, balance-sheet analysis, and budgeting procedures; financial reporting for both nonprofit and commercial entities; and the development of pro forma budgets for start-up enterprises.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
A series of highly successful entrepreneurs from all aspects of the arts, both commercial and nonprofit, and from a variety of art forms, are presented in an interview/interaction format. Students analyze case studies and then develop comparative papers and projects that assist them in shaping their own ideas in entity creation.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AMG5005
Department: Arts Management
A survey of the theory and practice of planning and evaluation as they relate to arts programs. Topics include the development of critical issues, goals, strategies, outcomes research planning, and protocol development.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Using a hands-on approach, this course explores digital marketing campaigns in the arts. Topics include Facebook, Twitter, blogging, microblogging, video and photo sharing, search engine optimization (SEO), mobile/location-based platforms, virtual realities, and social media integration, strategies, and tactics. Viral theories, trends, and case studies are also explored.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
This course continues the work from Start-Up Capital Formation, but expounds on learning and experience from weekly guest lecturers with specialized funding and investment focuses. This course will build on the knowledge gained in the first year of the program and provide a more in-depth and real-world exposure to a range of commercial and non-commercial funders.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Presents legal issues that have an impact on entity creation and maintenance in the arts and culture sectors. Issues include copyright and fair use, contracts, patents and trademarks, employment, ethics, and compliance. Students identify and express an understanding of legal issues in crucial areas of the law that affect arts management, arts professionals, and the arts generally.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
The most successful arts-based enterprises require collaborations with public and private sectors in diverse fields, including healthcare, education, community development, and social justice. To find relevance in an increasingly competitive world that demands evidence and results, students learn how to structure projects that transcend the insular art world and strengthen the places where people live, work, and play.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
In the capstone project for the program, students create an entity that is a demonstration of readiness and capacity to engage responsibly and creatively in his or her profession. Students’ projects will exhibit discernable innovation; thorough and research-grounded market feasibility testing; and a concomitant business plan that, among its elements illustrates how capital will be amassed for initial implementation.
Credits: 3
Department: Arts Management
Conservatory of Dance
The Conservatory of Dance in the School of the Arts at Purchase College is one of only a handful of conservatories in the world where you can learn what it means to be a dance professional. The opportunity provided to individuals committed to the full realization of themselves as artists is second to none.
The Conservatory of Dance’s BFA program gives students a comprehensive entrée into the world of professional dance. Purchase alumni currently perform with many of the foremost international contemporary modern and ballet dance companies. They also teach, direct, and choreograph major productions, dance on Broadway, have founded companies across the globe, and are nurturing the next generation as professors in higher education.
The BFA curriculum offers the serious and dedicated dance student professional training in classical ballet and contemporary modern dance, as well as an extensive curriculum in composition. Performance both on campus and on tour is an integral part of dance training at Purchase.
Criteria for Acceptance:
Talent and potential as a performer
Prior training and the ability to demonstrate a knowledge of modern dance and/or classical ballet techniques
Musicality
Good physical proportions in a healthy body that is injury-free
Requirements for Graduation
The BFA in dance is awarded upon the successful completion of course requirements and demonstrated quality of the student’s technical ability and creative initiative, based on the standards of the professional dance world. The standard residency requirement in the Conservatory of Dance BFA program is four years (eight semesters), with rare exceptions; the minimum residency requirement is three years (six semesters).
Students earn a BFA in dance. All students enter the conservatory program in the area of dance performance. Subsequently, they may remain in dance performance or apply for one the following concentrations: ballet, dance composition (choreography), or dance production.
Graduation is dependent on the successful completion of course requirements, which include a minimum of 30 liberal arts credits, and the demonstrated fitness of the student for a professional performing career in dance. Students must meet all general degree requirements as well as conservatory requirements for graduation.
Minimum Grade Requirements
Conservatory of Dance students in all concentrations are expected to maintain a grade of C or higher in all required dance courses, excluding the senior project. (For students in the composition concentration, a minimum GPA of B+ is required in all composition courses.) A grade of C- or lower constitutes a failure to demonstrate successful academic or artistic progress. A student who receives grades of C- or lower for two or more semesters may no longer be eligible for scholarship funds and performance opportunities and may be dismissed from the conservatory.
BFA Concentrations
All students take the same required dance courses in the freshman and sophomore years. At the end of the sophomore year, the Dance Board of Study evaluates each student’s progress and potential and makes recommendations for the direction of future study in one of the following areas: dance performance, ballet, dance composition, or dance production. Professional dance credits are awarded on the basis of the student’s consistent artistic growth.
Concentration decisions are approved by the Dance Board of Study. Sophomore jury results determine a student’s concentration status.
The Training Program
All BFA students study classical ballet and modern dance daily. Students audition in a placement class at the beginning of each year and are evaluated and placed in technique class levels at the discretion of the faculty.
Performance is an integral and required part of the professional training program. The Purchase Dance Company (selected BFA students in the Conservatory of Dance) performs major concerts in the Performing Arts Center; in student and faculty concerts in the Dance Theatre Lab; and on tour in New York City, New York State, and abroad. They also participate in special performances for children and at lecture/demonstrations. The program culminates in the senior project, for which each senior performs a repertory piece and co-produces a concert as requirements for graduation.
Repertory for the Purchase Dance Company’s major concerts and tours has included George Balanchine’s Serenade, Valse Fantaisie, The Four Temperaments, and Tarantella; Merce Cunningham’s Changing Steps, Duets, and Septet; Martha Graham’s Chronicle; Jose Limón’s A Choreographic Offering; Doris Humphrey’s The Shakers and Passacaglia; Paul Taylor’s Cloven Kingdom, Le Sacre du Printemps, Junction, and Company B; Mark Morris’ Gloria, A Lake and Grand Duo; Aszure Barton’s Over/Come; Lar Lubovitch’s Dvorak Serenade; Kenneth MacMillan’s Pas de Deux from Concerto; Cynthia Gregory’s Solo; Lester Horton’s Beloved; Twyla Tharp’s Sweet Fields; Bill T. Jones’ D-Man in the Waters; Dianne McIntyre’s Lyric Fire; Doug Varone’s Strict Love, Possession, Lux, and Rise; Kyle Abraham’s Counterpoint; Stephen Petronio’s Lareigne; Lin Hwai Min’s Crossing the Black Water; and frequent productions of the Nutcracker, as well as work created for the Purchase Dance Company by Shen Wei, Matthew Neenan, Ori Flomin, Nicole Fonte, Loni Landon, Gregory Dolbashian, Jessica Lang, Claire Porter, Luca Veggetti, Shen Wei, Stanton Welch, Lauri Stallings, Helen Pickett, Pam Tanowitz, Robert Hill, Kimberly Bartosik, Alexandra Beller, Adam Barruch and Shannon Gillen, and works by guest artists, emerging choreographers, alumni, and faculty.
New works and classics in both ballet and modern dance are prepared and rehearsed for performance each year. The choreography is licensed from major artists or created by faculty and guest artists.
Students receive advanced-level training in classical ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Classes are taught on progressive levels of technical proficiency. In addition, there are partnering, pointe/variation, men’s classes, and concert repertory, which further develop specific skills required of the classically trained dancer.
Classical modern and contemporary dance techniques, originated by distinguished dance artists, are studied on progressive levels as a dynamic and developing art form. Technique is amplified by classes in modern partnering, improvisation and contact improvisation, the repertory of classic and current choreography, and collaboration with artists in other disciplines.
The creative process of choreography is studied through a three-year program in dance composition preceded by one year of improvisation. Juniors present choreographic projects in preparation for their senior projects the following year. The program culminates in fully produced senior projects in composition, performed in the Dance Theatre Lab as a requirement for graduation. Student choreography is auditioned for student concerts, student/faculty concerts, and lecture/demonstrations.
The Conservatory of Dance has a strong commitment to the musical training of its students. This is reflected in the curriculum, which includes a historical survey of musical resources and courses that explore the shared elements of temporal arts (meter, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, texture, phrase, form, etc.), coaching for musicality, and score reading, together with extensive listening and analysis. Students receive hands-on percussion/rhythmic training and investigate the long relationship between music and dance history
In addition to training in technique and composition, students study the history of dance as an evolving form. Eight credits of dance history are a requirement for graduation. These 8 credits may count toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
Students supplement their movement practices with courses in somatics designed to heighten their strength, stability, muscular balance, connection to breath, and neuromuscular connectivity.
A course in anatomy helps students understand the biomechanical functioning of the dancing body. Students investigate the skeletal structure, muscles, tendons, and ligaments; movement range in joints; and injury care, cure, and prevention through the principles of Swedish massage.
Students’ schedules are rounded out with a wide variety of elective courses, allowing them to expand their knowledge of the diversity of the art form. Elective courses vary and may include dance styles (Gaga, musical theatre, West African, jazz, text and movement, etc.), acting, and “Your Brain on Art.”
complete 6 credits of Purchase Dance Company and Participation in Senior Project.
register for Ballet Technique and Modern Dance Technique each semester, and complete a minimum of seven semesters of both ballet and modern technique with a minimum grade of C.
As a minimum technique requirement for graduation, students must complete a 3000-level course in either ballet or modern for two consecutive semesters during their last year.
Freshman Year
DPB —/Ballet Technique, according to level
DPB 1000/Ballet Vocabulary
DPB 1300 and 1301/Special Ballet/Partnering: First Year and/or
DPB 1400/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe I/Freshmen and/or
DPB 1655 and 1665/Men’s Class/Variation and/or
DPB 1670 and 1671/Men’s Class/Partnering: First Year and/or
DPB 1800 and 1820/Special Ballet Technique: First Year and/or
DPM 1800 and 1820/Special Modern Technique: First Year
DPB 1600 and 1610/Ballet Partnering I
DPC 1710 and 1720/Composition I-A and I-B: Improvisation Skills
DPD 1030/Dance Freshman Seminar
DPD 1250/Anatomy for Dancers
DPD 1650 and 1660/Music I
DPD 1710 and 1720/Dance Production I
DPM —/Modern Dance Technique, according to level
DPM 155–/Somatic Practice for Dancers (Yoga, Fluid Form, Alexander Technique, or Massage)
Sophomore Year
DPB —/Ballet Technique, according to level and/or
DPB 3130/Ballet Technique/Ballet Concentration A and/or
DPB 3840/Ballet Technique/Ballet Concentration
DPB 1600 and 1610/Ballet Partnering I
DPB 1655 and 1665/Men’s Class/Variation and/or
DPB 3030 and 3031/Men’s Class/Partnering and/or
DPB 3530 and 3535/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe I and/or
DPB 3540 and 3545/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe II/Variation and/or
DPB 3570 and 3571/Special Ballet/Partnering and/or
DPB 3800 and 3820/Special Ballet Technique and/or
DPM 3800 and 3820/Special Modern Technique: Upper Level
DPC 2700 and 2710/Composition II-A and II-B: Choreographic Principles and Movement Invention
DPD 2060 and 2070/Western Dance History I and II
DPD 2650 and 2660/Music II
DPM —/Modern Dance Technique, according to level and/or
DPM 3130/Modern Technique/Ballet Concentration and/or
DPM 3840/Modern Technique/Ballet Concentration
DPM 1330 and 1331/Contact Improvisation
DPM 155–/Somatic Practice for Dancers (Yoga, Fluid Form, Alexander Technique, or Massage)
Junior Year
DPB —/Ballet Technique, according to level and/or
DPB 3130/Ballet Technique/Ballet Concentration A and/or
DPB 3840/Ballet Technique/Ballet Concentration
DPB 3030 and 3031/Men’s Class/Partnering and/or
DPB 3530 and 3535/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe I and/or
DPB 3540 and 3545/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe II/Variation and/or
DPB 3570 and 3571/Special Ballet/Partnering and/or
DPM 3570 and 3571/Special Modern/Partnering and/or
DPB 3800 and 3820/Special Ballet Technique and/or
DPM 3800 and 3820/Special Modern Technique: Upper Level
DPC 3700 and 3710/Composition III-A and III-B: Discovery and Development
DPD 3330 and 3331/20th- and 21st-Century Performance
DPD 3880/Junior Project
DPM —/Modern Dance Technique, according to level and/or
DPM 3130: Modern Technique/Ballet Concentration and/or
DPM 3840: Modern Technique/Ballet Concentration
DPM 155–/Somatic Practice for Dancers (Yoga, Fluid Form, Alexander Technique, or Massage) or
DPB 4600 or 4610/Ballet Partnering II
Senior Year
DPB —/Ballet Technique, according to level and/or
DPB 3130/Ballet Technique/Ballet Concentration A and/or
DPB 3840/Ballet Technique/Ballet Concentration
DPB 3030 and 3031/Men’s Class/Partnering and/or
DPB 3530 and 3535/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe I and/or
DPB 3540 and 3545/Ballet Technique: Advanced Pointe II/Variation and/or
DPB 3570 and 3571/Special Ballet/Partnering and/or
DPM 3570 and 3571/Special Modern/Partnering and/or
DPB 3800 and 3820/Special Ballet Technique and/or
DPM 3800 and 3820/Special Modern Technique: Upper Level
DPC 4700 and 4710/Composition IV-A and IV-B: Senior Process
DPC 4990/Senior Project
DPM —/Modern Dance Technique, according to level and/or
DPM 3130/Modern Technique/Ballet Concentration and/or
DPM 3840/Modern Technique/Ballet Concentration
Notes:
All men must register for a somatic practice course (DPM 1551–1554) in at least the first two years (four semesters) of study.
All men must register for men’s class (DPB 1655 and 1665) in at least the first two years (four semesters) of study and for ballet partnering (DPB 1600, 1610, 4600, and 4610) in at least the first three years (six semesters) of study.
All men must complete at least two semesters of modern partnering (DPM 1510 and 1520).
All women must register for a somatic practice course (DPM 1551–1554) in at least the first three years (six semesters) of study.
All women must complete at least four semesters of either modern partnering (DPM 1510 and 1520) or ballet partnering (DPB 1600, 1610, 4600, and 4610).
All women in the ballet concentration must take Advanced Pointe (DPB 1400, 3530, 3540) every semester, in addition to the four semesters of partnering.
Received early training in Washington, D.C., at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts
Continued studies at California Institute of the Arts and Purchase College, SUNY
Courses
A lecture course focusing on the knowledge of ballet nomenclature.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
The fall semester of a year-long technique class that provides intermediate-level training for students in Level I ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
The spring semester of a year-long technique class that provides intermediate-level training for students in Level I ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB1010
Department: Dance
Emphasis on the basic techniques of classical ballet.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Emphasis on the basic techniques of classical ballet.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Classical ballet course designed especially for students in all disciplines.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
Intermediate-level course in classical ballet, designed especially for students in all disciplines.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
A classical ballet technique class for the freshman dance major. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux. from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A classical ballet technique class for the freshman dance major. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Proper use of ballet technique while on pointe. Includes ballet barre warm-up and strengthening exercises at the barre and in the center, followed by classical phrases and/or variations.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Provides intermediate and advanced-level training in ballet technique, with additional emphasis on pointe work. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. A regular class session consists of barre, adagio, center practice, a traveling or waltz combination, petit allegro, and grand allegro.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
A ballet class focusing on pirouettes, jumps, tour en l’air, petit allegro, grand allegro, virtuoso steps, and the musical quality of male variations in dance.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
The spring semester of a year-long class focusing on pirouettes, jumps, tour en l’air, petit allegro, grand allegro, virtuoso steps, and the musical quality of male variations in dance. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
The fall semester of a year-long class focusing on pirouettes, jumps, tour en l’air, petit allegro, grand allegro, virtuoso steps, and the musical quality of male variations in dance. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
The spring semester of a year-long class focusing on pirouettes, jumps, tour en l’air, petit allegro, grand allegro, virtuoso steps, and the musical quality of male variations in dance. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Classical ballet technique class for freshman dance majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Classical ballet technique class for freshman dance majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced-level training for students in Level II ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB1020
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced-level training for students in Level II ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB2010
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced/professional level training for students in Level III ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Placement audition required, placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB2020
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced/professional level training for students in Level III ballet technique. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. Placement audition required, placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB3010
Department: Dance
The fall semester of a year-long class focusing on pirouettes, jumps, tour en l’air, petit allegro, grand allegro, virtuoso steps, and the musical quality of male variations in dance. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
The spring semester of a year-long class focusing on pirouettes, jumps, tour en l’air, petit allegro, grand allegro, virtuoso steps, and the musical quality of male variations in dance. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Students participate in the process of rehearsing a ballet work to be performed at the Performing Arts Center, on tour, or in the Dance Theatre Lab. In a practical application of technique, students are required to analyze movement vocabulary and adapt general principles to specific movement challenges. They also engage in various professional models of creating, rehearsing, and performing: learning material taught by the choreographer, altering or inflecting material as directed, and responding to creative assignments. Students practice receiving and/or participating in critical feedback and are guided in understanding the individual performer’s responsibility in achieving the success of the whole work.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced/professional level Ballet training for students in the Conservatory of Dance’s Ballet Concentration. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
A continuation of DPB 1400. Audition required.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A continuation of DPB 1400. Audition required.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A continuation of DPB 3530 and 3535. Audition required.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPB3535
Department: Dance
A continuation of DPB 3530 and 3535. Audition required.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPB3535 Or DPB3540
Department: Dance
Provides intermediate and advanced-level training in ballet technique, with additional emphasis on pointe work. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles. A regular class session consists of barre, adagio, center practice, a traveling or waltz combination, petit allegro, and grand allegro.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
A classical ballet technique class for sophomore, junior, and senior dance majors. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPB1301 Or DPB1610
Department: Dance
A classical ballet technique class for sophomore, junior, and senior dance majors. The art of classical ballet partnering is studied and practiced to increase each dancer’s knowledge of the skills required to perform pas de deux. Focuses on reinforcing the basics of classical partnering (adagio, pirouettes, lifts, and grand allegro) and partnerships. Segments of choreography of classical pas de deux from the repertoire are taught.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Classical ballet technique class.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Classical ballet technique class.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced/professional level Ballet training for students in the Conservatory of Dance’s Ballet Concentration. Emphasis is placed on correct body alignment, awareness of musical phrasing and performance, knowledge of classical ballet vocabulary, and understanding of training principles.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class. Placement audition required, placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB3020
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class. Placement audition required, placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPB4010
Department: Dance
Introduces tools, strategies, and ideologies for spontaneous movement creation, also known as improvisation. Dancers gather research about their individual bodies through guided exercises, discussions, reading, and journaling. Each dancer practices full investment and presence in the current moment. This designated “safe space” for experimentation and discovery allows all participants the freedom to expand beyond their own comfort zones.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A continuation of DPC 1700, the spring semester offers a basic foundation for inventing movement and creating an inner voice that is indigenous to the individual. The focus is on developing a physical and mental connection through movement exploration exercises that expand the imagination and memory, creating a limitless and easily accessible language that empowers the individual dancer to physically respond at any moment in time.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A continuation of DPC 1010 and 1020, this workshop focuses on increasing movement possibilities specific to each student. Concepts of body sequencing and thrust/counterthrust are combined with improvisatory techniques. Open to students in other disciplines.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPC1020
Department: Dance
A year-long course, required for all sophomore dance majors, that explores basic compositional structures and movement development techniques. Students will be introduced and encouraged to investigate processes in dance making and the craft of choreography. Students will explore dance ideas through in-class improvisations and compositional tasks leading to the development of dance studies.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
Choreographic studies presented in class at progressive stages of development. Feedback sessions, discussions, lectures, readings, critical analysis and journaling play an important role in the learning process as they enrich the student’s understanding of the creative process and the range of approaches explored, as well as develop their observation and critiquing skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
Offers the opportunity to continue an exploration of choreography, and encourages students in an investigation of the creative process and the development of their own creativity.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
Dance ideas are explored through improvisation and compositional tasks moving towards the presentation of a group work. Focus on experimentation and discovery, on developing and structuring of movement material to communicate dance images and ideas. Students will continue to develop observation and critiquing skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
An opportunity to continue to explore the process of dance making. The focus is on directing students in an investigation of the creative process and the development of their own creativity. At this level of composition studies, the student should have a firm grasp of structure and form. Students are guided to think quickly and intuitively with instinct, then craft those ideas into choreography.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A continuation of the fall course, in the spring semester, students continue exploring dance ideas through compositional tasks, moving toward the presentation of a fully formed choreographic final project. The focus is on experimentation and discovery, and on developing and structuring movement material to communicate images and ideas. Students further develop their observation and critiquing skills in terms of their own work and that of their peers.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Dancers in senior project productions. Evaluations and selection of participants are made by seniors with approval of the faculty Senior Project Committee.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Freshmen dance majors are given an orientation to the campus and its services, such as health, counseling, and the library, and to the professional dance world. Includes an introduction to the resources and performance spaces in New York City, one of the major dance capitals of the world.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A study of the origins and training in the technique of hip-hop as a contemporary form of “street dance.”
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
The first semester offers a foundation for video production with movement; the second semester expands on the basics to explore experimental applications. In this combined lab and lecture course, an emphasis is placed on project-based learning.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
Introduces students to the art of dance through live performance. Drawing on the resources of the Conservatory of Dance, students meet in the Dance Theatre Lab to view a wide range of performances by dance majors. Pre-performance lectures provide context for the works viewed and explore how dance functions as a form of communication, individual expression, and sociopolitical reflection.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
Surveys the history of black dance in America and highlights the contributions of African American dancers and choreographers to a broad range of genres, including social dance, jazz, tap, modern, ballet, and hip hop. Reveals the interdependent relationship between dance and sociopolitical forces and explores the many contexts that shaped the contributions of African American artists, including plantation practice, minstrel shows, vaudeville, and the concert stage.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
An introduction to major choreographers of the 20th and 21st century with a focus on Western theatrical dance. Original source readings, videos, and discussions reveal dance as an art form imbued with personal aesthetics and influenced by broader sociopolitical contexts. Subject matter includes modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary practice.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
An introduction to traditional and contemporary international dance, presented by a visiting scholar. Topics change annually.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
A lecture course, required for freshman dance majors, in which students study the skeletal structure, muscles, tendons, and ligaments; movement range in joints; and injury care, cure, and prevention.
Credits: 3
Department: Dance
Introduction to Rhythm aims to train dancers to hear music in a thoughtful, informed, and critical manner by studying elements, terminology, and notation skills. A further aim is to improve students’ musicality when dancing.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
A year-long eclectic exploration of music’s many dimensions as they relate to the professional dancer. Such concepts as line, symmetry, balance, form, tension and release, and force of gravity serve as a bridge between the two disciplines. Landmark musical works are studied, as well as the way various choreographers have approached them. DPD 1655 focuses more on fundamental musical skills (e.g., rhythm, score reading, harmony), while DPD 1665 pursues broader philosophical issues (e.g., the idea of narrative, anti-narrative, texture, and historical style).
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
This semester builds upon the foundational work in rhythmic training from the fall. The course aims to train dancers to hear music in a thoughtful, informed, and critical manner by studying elements, terminology, and notation skills. A further aim is to improve students’ musicality when dancing.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
A year-long eclectic exploration of music’s many dimensions as they relate to the professional dancer. Such concepts as line, symmetry, balance, form, tension and release, and force of gravity serve as a bridge between the two disciplines. Landmark musical works are studied, as well as the way various choreographers have approached them. DPD 1655 focuses more on fundamental musical skills (e.g., rhythm, score reading, harmony), while DPD 1665 pursues broader philosophical issues (e.g., the idea of narrative, anti-narrative, texture, and historical style).
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
A year-long course, required for all freshman dance majors. An introduction to basic dance production techniques, including lighting, sound/recording, stage management, and running crew. Involves classwork and crew assignments on dance productions.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
A year-long course, required for all freshman dance majors. An introduction to basic dance production techniques, including lighting, sound/recording, stage management, and running crew. Involves class work and crew assignments on dance productions. Open to students in other disciplines.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
An introduction to the core elements of the actor’s craft with the goal of developing sensitivity, awareness, and spontaneity on stage. Awareness of the body, voice, mind, and soul is heightened through improvisations, exercises, monologues, nontextual and scene work, and in-class performances. This course builds on the dancers’ work of physical articulation and incorporates a deep attention to psychological intention, character, and emotion. No previous experience required; open to students in other disciplines.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A survey of Western theatrical dance. The roots of the ballet in Renaissance Italy and France through 20th-century developments in ballet and modern dance are studied as our cultural heritage. Required for all sophomore dance majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
A survey of Western theatrical dance. The roots of the ballet in Renaissance Italy and France through 20th-century developments in ballet and modern dance are studied as our cultural heritage. Required for all sophomore dance majors.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: DPD2060
Department: Dance
An in-depth exploration of historical style and the elements of music. Fall: Musical masterworks from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, with an analysis of their compositional techniques, along with examples of choreographic works and approaches especially suited to the music cited. Spring: Musical masterworks from the 20th and 21st centuries. The approaches covered include Impressionism, Expressionism, atonality, folk- and jazz-inflected works, Cubist and Dadaist movements, neoclassicism, midcentury experimentalism, indeterminacy, electronic, minimalism, and the influence of world music.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: DPD1653 And DPD1663
Department: Dance
An in-depth exploration of historical style and the elements of music. Fall: Musical masterworks from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, with an analysis of their compositional techniques, along with examples of choreographic works and approaches especially suited to the music cited. Spring: Musical masterworks from the 20th and 21st centuries. The approaches covered include Impressionism, Expressionism, atonality, folk- and jazz-inflected works, Cubist and Dadaist movements, neoclassicism, midcentury experimentalism, indeterminacy, electronic, minimalism, and the influence of world music.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: DPD1650 And DPD1660
Department: Dance
Dance and Theatre students come together exploring new ways to conceive theatre, incorporating choreographic and dramaturgical components through text and movement, creating a combined form of storytelling. The goal is to expand the students’ understanding and ability to use different techniques pulling from both genres; merging disciplines to fully live inside the story, creating art that is immersive and integrative.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
In this exploration of neuroaesthetics, students examine the ways in which new advances in cognitive research have enriched people’s understanding and appreciation of art making. Art forms covered include dance, music, and visual arts.
Credits: 4
Department: Dance
The fall semester of a year-long overview of the development of Western theatrical dance from the early 20th century to the present day. The interdependent relationship between dance and society is revealed as students examine dance as a phenomenon that shapes and is shaped by history, culture, politics, religion, artistry, and aesthetics. Periods and topics covered include modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary practice. DPD 3330 focuses on American choreographers.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: DPD2060 And DPD2070
Department: Dance
The spring semester of a year-long overview of the development of Western theatrical dance from the early 20th century to the present day. The interdependent relationship between dance and society is revealed as students examine dance as a phenomenon that shapes and is shaped by history, culture, politics, religion, artistry, and aesthetics. Periods and topics covered include modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary practice. DPD 3331 features a global perspective.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: DPD2060 And DPD2070
Department: Dance
Learn basic costume construction techniques and design principles, with a focus on understanding the challenges of designing costumes for dance.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
Enables dancers to communicate effectively about music; review scores and recordings; select music for choreography; and increase the musical sensibility of their dancing. Fundamental elements of music across multiple cultures are tied together, and music from the 20th century to the present is explored in the context of important choreography. Student read/perform rhythms in single and mixed meters.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DPD2650 And DPD2660
Department: Dance
Enables dancers to communicate effectively about music; review scores and recordings; select music for choreography; and increase the musical sensibility of their dancing. Fundamental elements of music across multiple cultures are tied together, and music from the 20th century to the present is explored in the context of important choreography.
Credits: 2.5
Department: Dance
Prepares graduating seniors to enter the professional world by preparing them to make aesthetic choices regarding the music that they use for their own compositions and to work with live musical accompanists.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
An evaluation of juniors in all dance concentrations, designed to prepare students for their senior projects. Requirements include: completion of a junior credit audit and a written junior project proposal; preparation of one composition piece, to be presented to the faculty; a performance; and completion of a crew assignment. Required for all junior dance majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A seminar for dancers in preparation for their transition into the professional field. Lectures include guest speakers who address relevant issues in career building.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
The fall semester of a year-long technique course that provides intermediate-level training for students in Level I modern technique. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
The spring semester of a year-long technique course that provides intermediate-level training for students in Level I modern technique. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM1010
Department: Dance
For beginners and those with little dance experience, or those who have not had modern training for many years. Includes warm-up exercises, alignment focus, and movement patterns and combinations.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
Intermediate-level course in modern dance, designed especially for students in all disciplines.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM1060 Or SOA1280
Department: Dance
Learn the diverse dance & drum culture of West Africa, through dancing, drumming, singing, presentations and video clips. Cultural learning will focus on the meaning and purpose of the dances; call and response singing; the role of the drum; and social expressions of communal life.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
Discover New Way Vogue, a core conditioning warm-up and stretch series will prep the body to Vogue. Arms control will be a main element with a focus on precision work to create lines, shapes, and face-framing movements with the arms. Students will emulate the poses of models from the eponymous fashion magazine while incorporating duck walks and dips.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
Introduces dancers to the fundamentals of contact improvisation technique and explores contact improvisation as a dance and performance practice in duet, group, and solo form.
Credits: .5
PREREQ: DPC1020
Department: Dance
Introduces dancers to the fundamentals of contact improvisation technique and explores contact improvisation as a dance and performance practice in duet, group, and solo form.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
A modern dance technique class for junior and senior dance majors that explores the movement ranges of modern partnering. Trust and the physical expertise required to execute modern partnering are built through choreographed combinations that are mastered weekly in class.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A modern dance technique class for junior and senior dance majors that explores the movement ranges of modern partnering. Trust and the physical expertise required to execute modern partnering are built through choreographed combinations that are mastered weekly in class.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Students learn the principles of yoga, including meditation, pranayama (breathing techniques), and asana (postures). The focus is on awareness of breath and the body as a means toward self-awareness, both on and off the mat. In calming tensions of the body and busyness of the mind, overall well-being is enhanced. In doing so, students become more aware of how they experience life.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students delve into courting, accessing, and developing creativity, imagination, and innovation through whole-body fluidity. Several creative processes are explored, such as choreography, voice, and movement into text and movement; poetry in motion; writing; acting; and becoming aware of presence and how to embody it in a wide range of performance and life circumstances.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn the principles of the Alexander Technique, a psycho-physical method for re-educating the body. By identifying habitual ways of moving and making a different choice, students can improve the use of their bodies. The focus is on discussion and exploration of major body joints, movement explorations based on everyday actions, and movement explorations from the floor to standing and moving in space.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn the basic techniques of Swedish massage and develop their own personal sequence (style) of stroke applications, to be applied in a typical one-hour massage session. The focus is on draping techniques, basic anatomy, pathology, and the “dos and don’ts” of dealing with injuries.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn the methodology of Joseph Pilates. The six major principles of the Pilates method of body conditioning, the five elements of the mind, the powerhouse, and core stabilization are explained and discussed. Applying these concepts, students perform the basic Pilates mat exercises.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn the methodology of Joseph Pilates. The six major principles of the Pilates method of body conditioning, the five elements of the mind, the powerhouse, and core stabilization are explained and discussed. Applying these concepts, students perform the basic Pilates mat exercises.
Credits: .5
PREREQ: DPM1555 Or DPC1300
Department: Dance
An introduction to the methodology of Joseph Pilates via his originally designed Pilates equipment, which is spring-based resistance. The focus is on the Reformer; the Cadillac/Wall Units, the Wunda Chair, Electric Chair, and Ladder Barrel, plus additional equipment such as the Small Barrel and Spine Corrector are secondary. Students participate in servicing the Pilates equipment.
Credits: .5
PREREQ: DPM1555 Or DPC1300
Department: Dance
An introduction to the methodology of Joseph Pilates via his originally designed Pilates equipment, which is spring-based resistance. The focus is on the Reformer; the Cadillac/Wall Units, the Wunda Chair, Electric Chair, and Ladder Barrel, plus additional equipment such as the Small Barrel and Spine Corrector are secondary. Students participate in servicing the Pilates equipment.
Credits: .5
PREREQ: DPM1555
Department: Dance
Students learn the principles of Somatic Practice – a self-treatment that encourages awareness of the body and its ability to restore balance and to repair itself. Students learn to reduce the effects of accumulated tension and stress caused by daily living and to listen deeply to the body in order to heal the mind/body split.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn the principles of the MELT Method – a self-treatment that improves the body’s ability to restore balance and repair itself, which can create remarkable, lasting changes. Students learn to reduce the effects of accumulated tension and stress caused by daily living. MELT focuses on a balanced nervous system and healthy connective tissue to provide the body with ultimate support and optimal mind-body connection.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn the principles of the MELT Method – a self-treatment that improves the body’s ability to restore balance and repair itself, which can create remarkable, lasting changes. Students learn to reduce the effects of accumulated tension and stress caused by daily living. MELT focuses on a balanced nervous system and healthy connective tissue to provide the body with ultimate support and optimal mind-body connection.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
An exploration of the diverse dance and drum culture of Africa and the diaspora through dancing, drumming, singing, presentations, and video clips. Cultural learning focuses on the meaning and purpose of the dances and the call-and-response singing, the role of the drum, and social expressions of communal life.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Gaga is a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company. It provides a framework for discovering and strengthening the body and adding flexibility, stamina, and agility while lightening the senses and imagination. Gaga raises awareness of physical weaknesses, awakens numb areas, exposes physical fixations, and offers ways for their elimination. Classes are provided by Gaga USA.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
An introduction to the cultural history and contemporary practice of Irish dance. Students learn traditional solo and ensemble Irish dance forms and investigate the stylistic and historical connections between Irish dance and more mainstream forms of ballet and tap dance. Special focus is on choreographic experimentation within traditional Irish dance forms and on learning the repertory of contemporary Irish dance choreographers.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn a wide range of choreography from numerous Broadway shows and different eras of dance in the theatre world. The focus is on musicality, improvisation skills, and character development. Choreography is placed in the context of song lyrics and relationships with other dancers and the audience.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Explores the various uses of text and movement in choreography and performance. Students experiment with the use of movement and pre-existing text, including poetry, prose, and theatrical dialogue. The focus is on the creation of original text and movement. The contemporary work of such choreographers as Bill T. Jones, David Gordon, William Forsythe, and Claire Porter is also investigated.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Class in modern/contemporary dance technique for freshman dance majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Class in modern/contemporary dance technique for freshman dance majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A year-long technique course that provides advanced-level training for students in Level II modern technique. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques. Placement audition required; placement by faculty..
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM1020
Department: Dance
A year-long technique course that provides advanced-level training for students in Level II modern technique. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM2010
Department: Dance
Students continue to learn the methodology of Joseph Pilates and master the physical and mental principles and philosophy of the Traditional Pilates Mat Program. Students gain a thorough understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the motion of the body and focus on efficiency in each and every movement taught.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPM1555
Department: Dance
A year-long technique course that provides intermediate/professional-level training for students in Level III modern technique. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM2020
Department: Dance
A year-long technique course that provides intermediate/professional-level training for students in Level III modern technique. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques. Placement audition required; placement by faculty.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM3010
Department: Dance
Students work under the direction of faculty and/or guest choreographers on repertory material designed for this course. Content includes artistic interpretation, style, musicality, and coaching relevant to the movement presented weekly and developed throughout the semester.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students participate in the process of rehearsing a ballet work to be performed at the Performing Arts Center, on tour, or in the Dance Theatre Lab. In a practical application of technique, students are required to analyze movement vocabulary and adapt general principles to specific movement challenges. They also engage in various professional models of creating, rehearsing, and performing: learning material taught by the choreographer, altering or inflecting material as directed, and responding to creative assignments. Students practice receiving and/or participating in critical feedback and are guided in understanding the individual performer’s responsibility in achieving the success of the whole work.
Credits: 2
Department: Dance
Students work under the direction of faculty and/or guest choreographers on repertory material designed for this course. Content includes artistic interpretation, style, musicality, and coaching relevant to the movement presented weekly and developed throughout the semester.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced/professional level Modern training for students in the Conservatory of Dance’s Ballet Concentration. Techniques covered may include: Cunningham, Graham, Limon, and Contemporary. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
Students continue to learn the methodology of Joseph Pilates and master the physical and mental principles and philosophy of the Traditional Pilates Mat Program. Applying these concepts, students perform the advanced Pilates mat exercises.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPM1555 And DPM1556
Department: Dance
Students continue to learn the methodology of Joseph Pilates and master the physical and mental principles and philosophy of the Traditional Pilates Mat Program. Students learn to physically perform the Traditional Pilates Mat exercises and to instruct others on how to perform them with clear and detailed step-by-step directions.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: DPM3550
Department: Dance
A modern dance technique class for junior and senior dance majors that explores the movement ranges of modern partnering. Trust and the physical expertise required to execute modern partnering are built through choreographed combinations that are mastered weekly in class.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A modern dance technique class for junior and senior dance majors that explores the movement ranges of modern partnering. Trust and the physical expertise required to execute modern partnering are built through choreographed combinations that are mastered weekly in class.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
An exploration of the diverse dance and drum culture of Africa and the diaspora through dancing, drumming, singing, presentations, and video clips. Cultural learning focuses on the meaning and purpose of the dances and the call-and-response singing, the role of the drum, and social expressions of communal life.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Gaga is a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company. It provides a framework for discovering and strengthening the body and adding flexibility, stamina, and agility while lightening the senses and imagination. Gaga raises awareness of physical weaknesses, awakens numb areas, exposes physical fixations, and offers ways for their elimination. Classes are provided by Gaga USA.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
An introduction to the cultural history and contemporary practice of Irish dance. Students learn traditional solo and ensemble Irish dance forms and investigate the stylistic and historical connections between Irish dance and more mainstream forms of ballet and tap dance. Special focus is on choreographic experimentation within traditional Irish dance forms and on learning the repertory of contemporary Irish dance choreographers.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Students learn a wide range of choreography from numerous Broadway shows and different eras of dance in the theatre world. The focus is on musicality, improvisation skills, and character development. Choreography is placed in the context of song lyrics and relationships with other dancers and the audience.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Explores the various uses of text and movement in choreography and performance. Students experiment with the use of movement and pre-existing text, including poetry, prose, and theatrical dialogue. The focus is on the creation of original text and movement. The contemporary work of such choreographers as Bill T. Jones, David Gordon, William Forsythe, and Claire Porter is also investigated.
Credits: .5
Department: Dance
Class in modern/contemporary dance technique.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
Class in modern/contemporary dance technique.
Credits: 1
Department: Dance
A year-long technique class that provides advanced/professional level Modern training for students in the Conservatory of Dance’s Ballet Concentration. Techniques covered may include: Cunningham, Graham, Limon, and Contemporary. Students improve and reinforce technical proficiency, artistic growth, and performance skills. They also build and retain a movement range and vocabulary that demonstrates an increase in strength, agility, flexibility, and endurance through classical and contemporary modern dance techniques.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Dance
A year-long technique course. Placement audition required; placement by faculty. Two semesters of Modern Dance Technique IV are required for BFA dance performance students.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM3020
Department: Dance
A year-long technique course. Placement audition required; placement by faculty. Two semesters of Modern Dance Technique IV are required for BFA dance performance students.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: DPM4010
Department: Dance
Ballet Concentration
At the end of the freshman year, the ballet faculty invites students who, in their judgment, demonstrate potential for a career in classical ballet to join the ballet concentration.
Once students have been invited to join the ballet concentration, they may accept or decline. Students may also request to be considered as candidates for the ballet concentration in the spring of their freshman year.
Students in the ballet concentration take at least six ballet classes a week, in addition to pointe/variation and ballet partnering classes. They also audition for all ballet repertory and should qualify for Ballet Technique IV in their final two years. The senior project must be in ballet.
Ballet Concentration Requirements
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all students in the ballet concentration are required to:
audition for all ballet repertory pieces presented by the Purchase Dance Company
perform ballet repertory in major concerts
take pointe and partnering each semester
qualify for Ballet Technique IV in their final two years
maintain a minimum grade of B in all ballet technique, pointe, and ballet partnering courses, and in their modern technique courses
Approval to continue in the ballet concentration may be determined at any time by the faculty, based on the student’s work ethic and improvement.
Composition Concentration
Application Prerequisites
Students who apply for the composition concentration in the second semester of their sophomore year should have a strong motivation for, and evidenced talent in, the art of choreography.
Students must have completed two semesters of Improvisation/Composition I and the first semester of Composition II, each with a minimum grade of B+. A student who has a grade lower than a B+ or an Incomplete in Improvisation/Composition I or Composition II, or who is on professional probation, is not eligible for the composition concentration.
Students must notify their composition teacher during the second semester of Composition II of their intention to apply for composition concentration.
Application Process
The student writes a letter explaining why he or she wishes to pursue the composition concentration, attaches his or her transcripts, and submits the letter and attached transcripts to the administrative assistant in the Conservatory of Dance main office by the end of the first week of the spring semester.
The administrative assistant distributes these applications to the Composition Committee, which is composed of all members of the composition and improvisation faculty and the conservatory director.
The committee evaluates the applications and sends recommendations to the board of study.
Within two weeks of the application submission, the committee will inform students of its provisional decision.
Audition Process
At the end of February, the Composition Committee views a preliminary showing by sophomores of a piece for three to five dancers, 3 to 5 minutes in length, with music advised by the composition teacher.
A student who has been provisionally accepted for the composition concentration presents a second audition piece in May. The nature of this work is determined by the student and the composition teacher and/or Composition Committee and designed to challenge the student’s talents. The student and composition teacher determine the music. The committee and two additional board-of-study representatives view this audition piece.
On the basis of this second showing, the provisional student will be accepted or denied for the composition concentration.
Composition Concentration Requirements
Students must meet all general degree requirements as well as conservatory requirements for graduation. Students accepted in the composition concentration must:
remain with their original academic advisor.
complete one summer composition workshop, and audit one semester of another composition teacher’s course in the conservatory; or audit two semesters of another composition teacher’s courses in the conservatory. All workshops must be approved by the Composition Committee.
maintain a minimum GPA of B+ in all composition courses. (Students who do not maintain this minimum GPA will be dropped from the composition concentration.)
complete a one-semester course in art history, and/or a one-semester course in aesthetics or another art history course, as advised by the composition teacher and Composition Committee.
complete one year of level III or IV ballet or modern technique and 2 credits of repertory as a minimum requirement for graduation. In their senior year, students in the composition concentration might elect to take only one technique class a day on Mondays, Tuesday, and Thursdays.
Junior Year
Each student prepares a showing for the Composition Committee and two additional board-of-study representatives, consisting of:
a work determined by the student and the composition teacher and/or Composition Committee and designed to challenge the student’s talents
a junior composition project, following the Junior Composition Showing Guidelines
These two projects are shown during the Junior Project Showing, which usually takes place during the third week in March.
Senior Year
The student’s mentor for the senior project must be a member of the composition faculty.
The student choreographs three works that include the following:
a dance with the same requirements as those outlined for the senior choreographic project
a visual art or multimedia collaboration
a project designed by the student in consultation with the composition teacher and/or Composition Committee
In consultation with her or his composition teacher and mentor, the student chooses to show two of these three works during a senior project weekend shared with other seniors. The combined total length of works shown is 20 minutes maximum.
Additional choreographic challenges that might be assigned to the student by the composition teacher and/or Composition Committee would be tailored to further enrich and deepen the student’s developing artistry.
Production Concentration
Students apply for the dance production concentration during the second semester of their sophomore year and before the sophomore jury.
Sophomore jury results, along with a general aptitude for and interest in dance production, determine a student’s acceptance or denial. Freshmen and sophomores follow the basic curriculum.
Dance Production Concentration Requirements
Students must meet all general degree requirements and conservatory requirements for graduation. Students in the dance production concentration are required to complete 2 credits of repertory before graduation and, as a minimum technique requirement for graduation, a 2000-level course in either ballet or modern for one year.
Any changes in concentration must be approved by the Dance Board of Study.
Conservatory of Music
Immerse yourself in an intensive education within a dynamic and supportive community of musicians, while receiving the direction and training to develop your artistry, span genres, and perform in ensembles of all sizes and styles.
Across both undergraduate and graduate programs, the Conservatory of Music offers a distinctive, comprehensive education that will prepare students for the challenges and rewards of a career in music.
Models is the core music theory curriculum for studio composition and studio production students, consisting of six sequential courses (I–IV only for studio production). Studies in musical structure and syntax. An integrated presentation of melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and timbre. This course begins to explain the universal principles of proportion and beauty in all music. MCO 1010 covers music grammar, fundamental harmony, and multiple musical traditions.
Credits: 3
Department: General Technology
The core music theory curriculum for jazz studies students provides a basic foundation leading to proficiency within jazz harmony. Students gain complete facility in major, minor, and dominant seventh scales in every interval, in all 12 keys. Application includes comprehensive abilities within basic foundational harmony, often referred to as II–7, V7, I. This understanding of harmony is immediately put to practical use in standard song forms, some of which are also learned in all 12 keys. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
Models is the core music theory curriculum for studio composition and studio production students, consisting of six sequential courses (I–IV only for studio production). Studies in musical structure and syntax. An integrated presentation of melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and timbre. This course begins to explain the universal principles of proportion and beauty in all music. MCO 1020 covers harmony, species counterpoint, and phrase structures.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MCO1010 Or
Department: General Technology
The core music theory curriculum for jazz studies students provides a basic foundation leading to proficiency within jazz harmony. Students gain complete facility in major, minor, and dominant seventh scales in every interval, in all 12 keys. Application includes comprehensive abilities within basic foundational harmony, often referred to as II–7, V7, I. This understanding of harmony is immediately put to practical use in standard song forms, some of which are also learned in all 12 keys. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MCO1015
Department: Jazz
An introduction to the recording studio, designed especially for students with no background in music. Students gain an overall understanding of the principles of studio recording and multitrack mixing.
Credits: 2
Department: Production Technology
The fundamental information needed to function as an engineer/producer in today’s digitally driven recording environment. Includes an overview of the recording studio and in-depth technical information on the properties of sound, microphone design, cabling, digital audio converters, the Nyquist theorem, consoles, and signal processors. Students gain the working knowledge needed to be comfortable in the studio, together with skills in troubleshooting, maintenance, and engineering.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
In this technical exploration of the computer, how it is constructed, and its purpose in a modern recording studio, students gain a transparent view and working knowledge of technology, allowing for greater creative potential. Music-production software programs are explored, e.g., Digital Performer, Logic, Ableton Live, Reason, and Native Instruments. Students learn to troubleshoot and be comfortable in front of any modern computer system with multiple production software programs installed.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO1310
Department: General Technology
Group discussions and presentations of student works, together with analysis of music by a range of established composers, encompassing many different styles. Live performances and guest artists enhance class sessions. Required for studio composition majors. Grading is on a pass/no credit basis.
Credits: 1
Department: Composition Technology
Models is the core music theory curriculum for studio composition and studio production students, consisting of six sequential courses (I–IV only for studio production). Studies in musical structure and syntax. An integrated presentation of melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and timbre. This course begins to explain the universal principles of proportion and beauty in all music. MCO 2010 covers acoustics, proportion, harmonic series, monophony, and species counterpoint.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MCO1020 Or
Department: General Technology
Examines the various aspects of jazz harmony and improvisation. Topics include the cycle of fifths; secondary and substitute dominants; key of the moment; cadences, modal interchange, and melodic embellishment; and an in-depth study of improvisational devices, linking scales, advanced reharmonization, and tertian relationships. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Models is the core music theory curriculum for studio composition and studio production students, consisting of six sequential courses (I–IV only for studio production). Studies in musical structure and syntax. An integrated presentation of melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and timbre. This course begins to explain the universal principles of proportion and beauty in all music. MCO 2020 covers tonal counterpoint, chromatic harmony, larger forms, jazz harmony and analysis.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MCO2010 Or
Department: General Technology
Examines the various aspects of jazz harmony and improvisation. Topics include the cycle of fifths; secondary and substitute dominants; key of the moment; cadences, modal interchange, and melodic embellishment; and an in-depth study of improvisational devices, linking scales, advanced reharmonization, and tertian relationships. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO2015
Department: Jazz
Making technology transparent to musical composition. From the foundation of MIDI signal flow, MIDI editing, and sound-programming theory, students learn to translate compositions into a professional MIDI sequence. Emphasis is on synthesis methods, sampling techniques, and an introduction to instrumentation and orchestration within a MIDI performance.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
A continuation of MCO 2310, with emphasis on instrumentation and orchestration. Students learn advanced MIDI sequencing and sampling techniques for the creation of convincing arrangements and compositions within varying musical scenarios. The acoustical properties of various instrument groups are also addressed.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO2310
Department: General Technology
Group discussions and presentations of student works, together with analysis of music by a range of established composers, encompassing many different styles. Live performances and guest artists enhance class sessions.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Composition
Models is the core music theory curriculum for studio composition and studio production students, consisting of six sequential courses (I–IV only for studio production). Studies in musical structure and syntax. An integrated presentation of melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and timbre. This course begins to explain the universal principles of proportion and beauty in all music. MCO 3020 covers pop music, harmonic and rhythmic analysis.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MCO2020 Or
Department: General Technology
Models is the core music theory curriculum for studio composition and studio production students, consisting of six sequential courses (I–IV only for studio production). Studies in musical structure and syntax. An integrated presentation of melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and timbre. This course begins to explain the universal principles of proportion and beauty in all music. MCO 3030 covers impressionism, expressionism, Fauvism, minimalism, and post-tonality.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: MCO3020 Or
Department: General Technology
Advanced recording and production technology, with an emphasis on digital multitracking. Large-format “out of the box” consoles and advanced signal path and gain structures are discussed. Includes acoustics and studio design seminars, with soundproofing and construction considerations; and advanced microphone and electronics selection, technique, theory, and practice. Students track a variety of instruments together. Culminates in a complex overdubbed class project.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO1320 And MCO4360
Department: Production Technology
Advanced mixing and mastering, including plug-in automation, audio restoration, and mixing in 5.1 surround sound, with an emphasis on troubleshooting, professionalism, and meticulous attention to production values. Discussions include analog processing and its relevance to digital workstations; the role of the engineer and producer in a modern studio environment; and ethics, technique, and real-time production constraints.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO3330
Department: Production Technology
A practical study of the craft of writing contemporary melody. Analytical and creative focus on effective melodic practice, plus musical rhyme, dramatic pitch curve, repetition and excursion, bridge, prechorus and chorus writing, melodic psychology and hooks. Studies may include Franz Schubert, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Billie Holiday, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Randy Newman, and others. Prior musical accomplishment as a melodist and ability to read notation are required.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
A practical study of the craft of writing contemporary lyrics. Analytical and creative focus on effective musical structures, plus rhyme forms and schemes, line and unit densities, text and subtexts. Studies may include Langston Hughes, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Chuck D, Tupac Shakur, and others. Prior musical accomplishment as a lyricist and a desire to collaborate are required.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
Writing/producing music for motion pictures. Action/dialogue underscoring, multiple cues, synchronization, editing, and critical budgets of time, equipment, and labor.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO1320 Or MCO2320
Department: Composition Technology
Practical exercises in the technical and creative aspects of production and engineering, with an emphasis on sound for motion pictures. Topics include production sound, automated dialogue replacement (ADR), SFX, Foley, file formats and Sync, stem mixes, spotting and scoring, mixing to picture, and delivery formats. The course includes demonstrations and a group recording project. Collaborative work with Purchase College film students is encouraged.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO3500
Department: Composition Technology
Designed to provide students with the knowledge needed to transform a song from its simplest form to a full-fledged, multidimensional arrangement, ranging from an entire symphony orchestra to exotic percussion and experimental studio effects.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO2020 And MTH2425
Department: Music
A continuation of MCO 3550, with a more in-depth approach to song structure, instrumentation/orchestration, lead sheet writing, the skill of transcription, and the harmonic/melodic/rhythmic relationship. Formulating an album concept, genre-specific characteristics, and arranging preexisting material are also discussed in detail.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO3550
Department: Music
A course in the business of music that focuses on essential legal terms, language, and concepts underlying standard recording artist agreements, U.S. copyright law, and standard music publishing contracts. Sampling legislation, synchronization, and mechanical licenses are also examined in detail. Pending schedule availability, noted music industry professionals present guest lectures on relevant topics.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
Addresses the complexities of booking a tour, artist promotion, and current trends in music distribution, including do-it-yourself (DIY) Web-based distribution. Ethical issues relating to controversial subject matter and images, derogatory lyrics, social politics, and sexual content and its effect on the marketplace are also discussed.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
Weekly study in small groups with master composers. Melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, form, and lyrics are studied within a variety of styles, aesthetics, and technologies. Students present their work at each class.
Credits: 3
Department: Composition Technology
Weekly study in groups of three to five with master producers. Recording techniques and technologies, as well as the psychological, logistical, and entrepreneurial crafts of a producer, are studied. Students present their work at each class.
Credits: 3
Department: Production Technology
Offers performance students the opportunity to create their own works after significant models in solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire. By composing and then performing their own works and those of their colleagues, participants will gain appreciation for composition and the art of interpretation. This course requires a strong understanding of Western music theory/history through the 20th century.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A “Pro Tools 101” course covering digital audio workstation (DAW) essentials, in which intensive digital editing and DAW skills are developed. Includes specific instruction in Pro Tools shortcuts, file types and digital audio formats, edit modes, groups, playlists, session management, and safe data-file management skills, along with background history on tape vs. digital recording techniques.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
How to equip and set up a modern digital recording studio. Topics include equipment, project, and professional studio design and logistics for stereo and multitrack recording; setting up and running a tracking session; microphone techniques and cue mix strategies; an overview of mixing and mastering, including automation, region manipulation, time-division multiplexing (TDM), and AudioSuite and Real-Time AudioSuite (RTAS) plug-in basics; and advanced signal processing.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MCO4350
Department: General Technology
Focuses on unique scenarios and non-mainstream techniques in recording and production. Assignments include recording live to mono analog tape; instrument construction, using scrap materials; and composition and recording. Study of ethnic music, including reggae and blues.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Production Technology
Focuses on unique scenarios and non-mainstream techniques in recording and production. Assignments include recording live to mono analog tape; instrument construction, using scrap materials; and composition and recording. Study of ethnic music, including reggae and blues.
An evaluation of each music major’s progress in the classical programs after one year of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the freshman jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Classical, Classical
An evaluation of each jazz studies major’s progress after one year of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the freshman jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Jazz
An evaluation of each studio composition major’s progress after one year of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the freshman jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Composition Technology
An evaluation of each studio production major’s progress after one year of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the freshman jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Production Technology
An evaluation of each music major’s progress in the classical programs after two years of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the sophomore jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Classical, Classical
An evaluation of each jazz studies major’s progress after two years of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the sophomore jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Jazz
An evaluation of each studio composition major’s progress after two years of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the sophomore jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Composition Technology
An evaluation of each studio production major’s progress after two years of study in the conservatory. Students perform for a faculty jury, and their abilities in their area of concentration are critically evaluated. Successful completion of the sophomore jury is required to continue in the program.
Credits: 0
Department: Production Technology
Designed to promote facility at the keyboard, this is the first course in four-semester sequence of lessons for non-keyboard students, which culminates in a proficiency examination normally taken at the end of the sophomore year. Different sections of this course sequence are designed specifically for classical performance (excluding piano), jazz studies, and studio composition majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Designed to promote facility at the keyboard, this is the second course in a four-semester sequence of lessons for non-keyboard students, which culminates in a proficiency examination normally taken at the end of the sophomore year. Different sections of this course sequence are designed specifically for classical performance (excluding piano), jazz studies, and studio composition majors.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE1010 Or
Department: Music
Focuses on the art of reading and performing music notation written for and by studio musicians. Topics include techniques in reading and performing numeric charts, reading and writing music shorthand, and sight-reading charts. This course recreates real-life studio conditions for ensembles and prepares players to participate in the professional opportunities of the recording studio.
Credits: 1
Department: General Technology
Provides students from other disciplines an opportunity to participate in a small jazz combo. Emphasis is on standard jazz repertoire, understanding of the jazz vernacular, and jazz improvisation. A background in performing in similar ensembles in high school is beneficial. Taught by a faculty member of the jazz studies program.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
The study and performance of works from the chamber music repertoire and/or the sonata literature for piano and instruments. Coaching sessions (up to one and a half hours per week) culminate in performances.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Coached by members of the brass faculty, this ensemble class focuses on group intonation, phrasing, articulation, and blend. Literature is selected from all styles and eras of music, and composition for the ensemble is also encouraged. Rehearses weekly for one and a half hours.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Presents the opportunity to study and perform contemporary works by established composers for diverse instruments, in all styles. Open to all undergraduate music majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Presents the opportunity to study and perform contemporary works by student composers for diverse instruments, in all styles. Open to all undergraduate music majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Interpretation of music of the 17th and 18th centuries from the perspective of historically informed performance. Instructors teach basic principles of interpretation that are evident from early performance manuals, then encourage students to actively engage these principles by forming personal interpretations around them. Students are encouraged to form creative, original approaches to the repertoire, particularly when the historical record may be incomplete, inchoate, or simplistic.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Intense preparation of works, mostly from the standard repertoire, for performance. Study of characteristic styles, performance practice, and acquisition of large ensemble skills and professional etiquette.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
This course is devoted to the study of orchestral excerpts and large-scale chamber music. Instrumental techniques, tuning, and ensemble balance are given careful attention.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Elective performance lab for participants in MPE 1210.
Credits: .5
Department: Classical, Instrumental
The main instrumental ensemble (20–30 players) in the brass program. Conducted by members of the brass faculty, this ensemble performs repertoire from the 16th century to the present. It also performs music from the British “brass band” repertoire, in which students are required to play traditional brass band instruments. Rehearses weekly for one and a half hours.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Elective performance lab for participants in MPE 1112.
Credits: .5
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A forum for percussionists to discuss and examine the many facets of percussion performance. The study of the orchestral repertoire for timpani and percussion is the primary focus.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Study and performance of the percussion ensemble repertoire. Students have the opportunity to perform a range of parts, from basic to virtuosic, in all areas of percussion: timpani, mallets, and multiple percussion.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
An exploration of the ancient musical tradition of hand drumming found in many cultures. Hand drumming techniques from Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, and Asia are learned and practiced in an ensemble setting to energize, build unity, and heighten creativity. Students gain experience with djembe, guiro, conga, shakers, and clavés, as well as other percussive and rhythmic instruments. No prior musical experience is required.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
A weekly gathering of all violinists, violists, violoncellists, and bass students, providing a forum for string players to perform for each other and to discuss and examine the many facets of string playing. Repertoire may include solo, chamber, and orchestral. Audition techniques, performance traditions, and instrument maintenance may also be covered.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A mixed vocal ensemble that explores the music of the African American experience, including spirituals, gospel, soul, rhythm and blues, funk, and jazz. The semester culminates with a public concert on campus. Open to students in all disciplines, including music majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
A comprehensive overview of playing techniques for the common saxophone doubles, especially clarinet and flute. Specifics on embouchures, fingerings, tone production, and performance practice are facilitated by weekly in-class readings of repertoire, études, and technical exercises.
Credits: 1
Department: Jazz
Designed to improve posture, develop physical awareness, and find physical ease in the process of rehearsal to performance. Students learn how to use their bodies efficiently through the lens of the Alexander Technique.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
The first half of a two-semester survey of Italian art songs from the 16th century to modern times; part of the core curriculum for classical voice majors. Presented chronologically, the songs explore the repertoire that forms the core of each linguistic style and historical period. Students learn and perform one song every week in a master-class setting. Integrated with MPE 1380.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Classical, Voice
The second half of a two-semester survey of Italian art songs from the 16th century to modern times; part of the core curriculum for classical voice majors. Presented chronologically, the songs explore the repertoire that forms the core of each linguistic style and historical period. Students learn and perform one song every week in a master-class setting. Integrated with MPE 1390.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MPE1370
Department: Classical, Voice
An exploration of the principles of Italian diction. The international phonetic alphabet is employed to indicate correct pronunciation. Vigorous application of these principles to the repertoire studied in MPE 1370.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Voice
An exploration of the principles of Italian diction. The international phonetic alphabet is employed to indicate correct pronunciation. Vigorous application of these principles to the repertoire studied in MPE 1375.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE1380
Department: Classical, Voice
Covers a full range of solo repertoire and performance. Students actively participate in the analytic and critical process for pedagogical purposes.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A weekly gathering of harpists, providing a forum for performance, discussion, and examination of the many facets of harp technique and interpretation. Repertoire may include solo, chamber, and orchestral works. Audition techniques, performance traditions, and instrument maintenance are also covered.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Designed for classical guitarists who are interested in gaining ensemble, sight-reading, and arranging skills for guitar ensemble. Students are expected to perform repertoire from the 20th and 21st centuries and create their own arrangements for performance by various combinations, such as a guitar orchestra, duos, trios, and quartets. Strong musicianship skills are required.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Covers the full range of solo repertoire for piano. Students perform and actively participate in the analytical and critical process for pedagogical purposes.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
The Jazz Orchestra is a 17-piece big band that performs jazz from every era. From staples like Ellington and Basie to more modern works by today’s leading composers and arrangers, this orchestra swings and is always a pleasure to listen to. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Focuses on the music of the Machito Orchestra, Tito Puente, Chico O’Farrill, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others. The conversion of standard jazz repertoire to what is currently known as Latin jazz is emphasized through an in-depth study of clavé (the rhythmic pulse found in Afro-Caribbean music) and the variety of rhythms incorporated in this genre. Orchestra members are encouraged to contribute original arrangements.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Students develop performance skills in a cross-genre ensemble of popular music styles. While most of the group work takes place in a studio setting, live performance and recording sessions are also included. Students learn the skills of projection, amplification, and audience engagement and have the opportunity to develop their unique performance style and musical voice. Limited to studio composition and studio production majors.
Credits: 2
Department: General Technology
These combos are thematically based and speak directly to the firsthand performing experiences of faculty mentors. Focusing on repertoire derived from the master composer/bandleaders from all eras of jazz, elements of group interaction, group dynamic, improvisation, arranging, and stylistic interpretation are integrated into a professional ensemble experience. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
An exploration of the literature for piano-four hands (duets and two pianos) with the objective of developing skill in sight reading, leading to a performance of material read at sight.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Designed to promote facility at the keyboard, this is the third course in a four-semester sequence of lessons for non-keyboard students, which culminates in a proficiency examination normally taken at the end of the sophomore year. Different sections of this course sequence are designed specifically for classical performance (excluding piano), jazz studies, and studio composition majors.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE1020 Or
Department: Music
Designed to promote facility at the keyboard, this is the fourth course in a four-semester sequence of lessons for non-keyboard students, which culminates in a proficiency examination normally taken at the end of the sophomore year. Different sections of this course sequence are designed specifically for classical performance (excluding piano), jazz studies, and studio composition majors.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE2010 Or
Department: Music
Jazz drumming instruction for students in other disciplines, delivered in a French conservatory style, in a small group setting.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Jazz guitar instruction for students in other disciplines, delivered in a French conservatory style, in a small group setting.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Jazz piano instruction for students in other disciplines, delivered in a French conservatory style, in a small group setting.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A course for the singing performer on how to move within the context of different historical periods. It explores the reason for each movement style by offering training in balance, coordination, flexibility, and strength.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Voice
A performance class designed to develop the language of the stage and its various applications, using pantomime, dance, music, text, character analysis, dramatic readings, meditations, etc. as tools to become comfortable on the stage.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
The first half of a two-semester survey of German art songs; part of the core curriculum for voice majors. Presented chronologically, the songs explore the repertoire that forms the core of each linguistic style and historical period. Students learn and perform one song every week in a master-class setting. Emphasis is on the development of musical skills necessary for the appropriate interpretation of each style. Integrated with MPE 2380.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Classical, Voice
The second half of a two-semester survey of German art songs; part of the core curriculum for voice majors. Presented chronologically, the songs explore the repertoire that forms the core of each linguistic style and historical period. Students learn and perform one song every week in a master-class setting. Emphasis is on the development of musical skills necessary for the appropriate interpretation of each style. Integrated with MPE 2390.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MPE2370
Department: Classical, Voice
An exploration of the principles of German diction. The international phonetic alphabet is employed to indicate correct pronunciation. Vigorous application of these principles to the repertoire studied in MPE 2370.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Voice
An exploration of the principles of German diction. The international phonetic alphabet is employed to indicate correct pronunciation. Vigorous application of these principles to the repertoire studied in MPE 2375.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE2380
Department: Classical, Voice
A historical and practical survey of keyboard music from the pre-Renaissance through the Classical Era. Assignments involve the preparation and in-class performance of works from these periods and exploration of lesser-known literature. Discussions and projects relate to the history and performance practice of the period.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A historical and practical survey of keyboard music from the pre-Renaissance through the Classical Era. Assignments involve the preparation and in-class performance of works from these periods and exploration of lesser-known literature. Discussions and projects relate to the history and performance practice of the period.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A historical and practical survey of keyboard music from the 19th century to the present. Assignments involve the preparation and in-class performance of works from these periods and exploration of lesser-known literature. Discussions and projects relate to the history and performance practice of the period.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A historical and practical survey of keyboard music from the 19th century to the present. Assignments involve the preparation and in-class performance of works from these periods and exploration of lesser-known literature. Discussions and projects relate to the history and performance practice of the period.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Study of the art of accompanying singers and instrumentalists. Members of the class perform regularly.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Private weekly music coaching (for undergraduates, in the junior and senior years) that support the student’s development (technical and artistic) and presentation (linguistic, stylistic, musical, and dramatic). Prepares the student for performance situations throughout the department. The goal is to enable the student to function as an independent professional upon completion of the program.
Credits: .5
Department: Classical, Voice
In a performance lab setting, students prepare and perform in a concert of staged scenes with piano or instrumental ensemble; and/or participate in at least one fully staged opera, given in its original language, with orchestra, sets, and costumes. This course further develops and refines the musical and dramatic skills acquired in previous courses.
Credits: 2
COREQ: MPE3355
Department: Classical, Voice
A practical application of opera rehearsal techniques as studied in MPE 3350.
Credits: 1
COREQ: MPE3350
Department: Classical, Voice
The first half of a two-semester survey of French art songs; part of the core curriculum for classical voice majors. Presented chronologically, the songs explore the repertoire that forms the core of each linguistic style and historical period. Students learn and perform one song every week in a master-class setting. Emphasis is on the development of musical skills necessary for the appropriate interpretation of each style. Integrated with MPE 3380.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Classical, Voice
The second half of a two-semester survey of French art songs; part of the core curriculum for classical voice majors. Presented chronologically, the songs explore the repertoire that forms the core of each linguistic style and historical period. Students learn and perform one song every week in a master-class setting. Emphasis is on the development of musical skills necessary for the appropriate interpretation of each style. Integrated with MPE 3390.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MPE3370
Department: Classical, Voice
An exploration of the principles of French diction. The international phonetic alphabet is employed to indicate correct pronunciation. Vigorous application of these principles to the repertoire studied in MPE 3370.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Voice
An exploration of the principles of French diction. The international phonetic alphabet is employed to indicate correct pronunciation. Vigorous application of these principles to the repertoire studied in MPE 3375.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE3380
Department: Classical, Voice
A practical introduction: simple beat patterns with both hands, cues with the left hand, as well as indications for sforzati, cut offs, and lyric gestures. Works from early Haydn to Brahms.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A seminar that explores how conductors approach musical challenges. Studies and assignments incorporate score analysis, orchestral arranging, and conducting techniques. Students conduct short works that they have arranged or composed for small ensembles formed in the class. Limited to instrumental performance, vocal performance, and composition majors.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MPE3500
Department: Classical, Classical
A 30-minute recital of repertoire or original compositions (minimum 30 minutes for strings). While faculty and private teachers work closely with students in its preparation, the recital largely represents an independent effort demonstrating the student’s mastery of a range of literature, a variety of styles and techniques, and the ability to design and execute a substantial program. String players must include a substantial work (from the mid-20th century through the contemporary era) on either their junior or senior recital.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE0300 Or MPE0301 Or MPE0302
Department: Classical, Classical
A 45-minute recital of repertoire or original compositions. While faculty and private teachers work closely with students in its preparation, the recital largely represents an independent effort demonstrating the student’s mastery of a range of literature, a variety of styles and techniques, and the ability to design and execute a substantial program.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE0300 Or MPE0301 Or MPE0302
Department: Jazz
A 30-minute recital of original compositions. While faculty and private teachers work closely with students in its preparation, the recital largely represents an independent effort demonstrating the student’s mastery of a range of literature, a variety of styles and techniques, and the ability to design and execute a substantial program.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MPE0300 Or MPE0301 Or MPE0302
Department: Composition Technology
Please contact the Conservatory of Music for further information.
Credits: 3
Department: Music
Basics of Russian stage diction, through the basic study of the alphabet, diction use, and study of repertoire
The first course in the core music theory curriculum for classical music students (five sequential semesters). Designed to provide a thorough background in musical structure, the course material is an integrated presentation of concepts and disciplines, including fundamentals, species counterpoint, and traditional harmony. Other important topics are rhythmic organization, analysis and composition of melodies, phrase structure, and harmonic analysis of excerpts from the standard repertoire.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
The second course in the core music theory curriculum for classical music students (five sequential semesters). Designed to provide a thorough background in musical structure, the course material is an integrated presentation of concepts and disciplines, including fundamentals, species counterpoint, and traditional harmony. Other important topics are rhythmic organization, analysis and composition of melodies, phrase structure, and harmonic analysis of excerpts from the standard repertoire.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH1010 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation. The first course in a required six sequential semester sequence.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Classical, Classical
Topics include hearing chord progressions, from simple to complex; singing and analysis of pop, jazz, rock, and symphonic compositions; and rhythmic dictation and playing by ear. More advanced topics include transcribing bass lines and melodies, African rhythm, and simple improvisation.
Credits: 1.5
Department: General Technology
Exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation. The second course in a required six sequential semester sequence.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1410 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Topics include hearing chord progressions, from simple to complex; singing and analysis of pop, jazz, rock, and symphonic compositions; and rhythmic dictation and playing by ear. More advanced topics include transcribing bass lines and melodies, African rhythm, and simple improvisation.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1415 Or
Department: General Technology
Development of the ear specific to the jazz vernacular, focusing on melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic models. The methodology presented in each class is applied in ear training sessions with class partners. Dictation and singing are used to develop aural skills. Students learn to hear and transcribe contextual examples of jazz and to respond accurately while participating in performance settings. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Jazz
An extensive exploration of the elements of sight singing, rhythmic study, and solfège, with progressive practical application throughout four semesters of study (MTH 1436, 1446, 2436, and 2446).
Credits: 1.5
Department: Classical, Voice
Development of the ear specific to the jazz vernacular, focusing on melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic models. The methodology presented in each class is applied in ear training sessions with class partners. Dictation and singing are used to develop aural skills. Students learn to hear and transcribe contextual examples of jazz and to respond accurately while participating in performance settings. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1430
Department: Jazz
An extensive exploration of the elements of sight singing, rhythmic study, and solfège, with progressive practical application throughout four semesters of study (MTH 1436, 1446, 2436, and 2446).
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1436 Or
Department: Classical, Voice
The music of Japan, India, West Africa, Cuba, and Brazil is compared and contrasted. Topics include the use of music in each respective society; musical forms; types of instruments; and the impact of history, religion, and politics on the music.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
The third course in the core music theory curriculum for classical music students (five sequential semesters). Designed to provide a thorough background in musical structure, the course material is an integrated presentation of concepts and disciplines, including fundamentals, species counterpoint, and traditional harmony. Other important topics are rhythmic organization, analysis and composition of melodies, phrase structure, and harmonic analysis of excerpts from the standard repertoire.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH1020 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation. The third course in a required six sequential semester sequence.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1420 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Topics include hearing chord progressions, from simple to complex; singing and analysis of pop, jazz, rock, and symphonic compositions; and rhythmic dictation and playing by ear. More advanced topics include transcribing bass lines and melodies, African rhythm, and simple improvisation.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1425 Or Or
Department: General Technology
Exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation. The fourth course in a required six sequential semester sequence.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH2410 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Topics include hearing chord progressions, from simple to complex; singing and analysis of pop, jazz, rock, and symphonic compositions; and rhythmic dictation and playing by ear. More advanced topics include transcribing bass lines and melodies, African rhythm, and simple improvisation.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH2415 Or
Department: General Technology
Development of the ear specific to the jazz vernacular, focusing on melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic models. The methodology presented in each class is applied in ear training sessions with class partners. Dictation and singing are used to develop aural skills. Students learn to hear and transcribe contextual examples of jazz and to respond accurately while participating in performance settings. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1440
Department: Jazz
An extensive exploration of the elements of sight singing, rhythmic study, and solfège, with progressive practical application throughout four semesters of study (MTH 1436, 1446, 2436, and 2446).
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH1446 Or
Department: Classical, Voice
Development of the ear specific to the jazz vernacular, focusing on melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic models. The methodology presented in each class is applied in ear training sessions with class partners. Dictation and singing are used to develop aural skills. Students learn to hear and transcribe contextual examples of jazz and to respond accurately while participating in performance settings. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH2430
Department: Jazz
An extensive exploration of the elements of sight singing, rhythmic study, and solfège, with progressive practical application throughout four semesters of study (MTH 1436, 1446, 2436, and 2446).
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH2436 Or
Department: Classical, Voice
Traces the history of Western concert music, providing an overview and foundation. The course begins with a focus on world music, placing Western concert music in the greater context of its relationship to other cultures. The musical cultures of India and the Arabic countries of North Africa are examined for their impact on Western concepts. MTH 2510 and 2520 may be taken in either order.
Credits: 3
Department: Music
Traces the history of Western concert music, providing an overview and foundation. The course begins with a focus on world music, placing Western concert music in the greater context of its relationship to other cultures. The musical cultures of India and the Arabic countries of North Africa are examined for their impact on Western concepts. MTH 2510 and 2520 may be taken in either order.
Credits: 3
Department: Music
The fourth course in the core music theory curriculum for classical music students (five sequential semesters). Designed to provide a thorough background in musical structure, the course material is an integrated presentation of concepts and disciplines, including fundamentals, species counterpoint, and traditional harmony. Other important topics are rhythmic organization, analysis and composition of melodies, phrase structure, and harmonic analysis of excerpts from the standard repertoire.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2050 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
A practical introductory study of idiomatic writing for traditional instruments. Instrumental characteristics, timbral balance, dynamics, articulation, and texture. Scoring of fragments of works for ensembles of two to 20 instruments.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH3050 Or MCO2020
Department: Classical, Composition
A continuation of MTH 3070. Scoring for complex traditional ensembles, including string orchestra, winds, full percussion, symphony, operatic, film, and theatre orchestras. Score analysis from Monteverdi to Stockhausen.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH3050 Or MCO2020
Department: Classical, Composition
A historical overview of electroacoustic music, beginning in the late 1940s with the devotees of musique concrète, recorded natural sounds, and synthesized tone construction. Students learn about the gradual evolution of technology and composition and its impact on many music traditions and trends.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
An overview of current creative trends in electroacoustic music. Contemporary digital music systems offer unprecedented dynamic control over timbre. This course reviews aspects of musical acoustics and psychoacoustics and explores electroacoustic simulation through recent experimental examples.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH3180
Department: Music
Demonstrates how analysis of a given work can influence artistic interpretation. Students present their own works alongside research on historical context, the composer’s biography, contemporary style, analysis (formal, harmonic, melodic, contrapuntal), and content. The goal is to understand that complete analysis does not offer a single “correct” interpretation, but rather focuses the creative mind by offering multiple paths towards artistic understanding.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Fosters deep understanding of music theory by returning to 18th-century training methods that employ analysis and synthesis together, in place of the current reliance on analysis alone. On the basis of analysis of theoretical principles of 18th-century models of ornamentation, free fantasias, basso continuo, and cadenzas, students learn to do original work in these genres.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Surveys the history and evolution of jazz from its West African origins and migration to the present. While emphasis is on listening to and analyzing recorded examples, sociopolitical and economic issues are also examined. Students learn to identify stylistic and contextual aspects of jazz based solely on listening and develop a familiarity with the major stylistic innovators from all eras. Readings from scholarly works help provide a comprehensive overview of America’s indigenous music. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
Exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation. The fifth course in a required six sequential semester sequence.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH2420 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation. The sixth course in a required six sequential semester sequence.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH3410 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Surveys the history and evolution of jazz from its West African origins and migration to the present. While emphasis is on listening to and analyzing recorded examples, sociopolitical and economic issues are also examined. Students learn to identify stylistic and contextual aspects of jazz based solely on listening and develop a familiarity with the major stylistic innovators from all eras. Readings from scholarly works help provide a comprehensive overview of America’s indigenous music.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
Examines major developments and trends in 20th-century musical style, including impressionism, primitivism, expressionism, and neoclassicism. Studies include an examination of cultural and social movements as expressed through other art forms.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2520
Department: Music
Explores the role that radical thinking plays in art music. With a special focus on avant-garde artists from John Cage to the present, this course examines the roles that historical figures, such as Charles Ives, have played in establishing art music’s role in contemporary life. Includes a class trip to a multimedia performance in New York City.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A study of repertoire, social history, performance practice, and changing aesthetics of music in the period c. 1750–1880, concentrating on works by C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, von Weber, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky. Students are encouraged to investigate and understand stylistic foundations, analytical workings, reception history, and philosophical implications of important musical works of the period.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520
Department: Music
An in-depth look at the period of musical evolution that occurred between the collapse of a “common practice” in music (the closing decades of the 19th century) and World War II. Styles investigated include primitivism, futurism, extreme chromaticism extending into atonality, bitonality, impressionism, expressionism, decadent symbolism, and neoclassicism.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520
Department: Music
Presents an in-depth look at expansions of serial technique by the Darmstadt group; the rise of the American avant-garde; the emergence of a newly contextualized tonality; minimalism, mostly in the works of such Americans as Reich, Glass, and Adams, with some works by Pärt and Górecki; and expressions of postmodernism by artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Björk.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Bach and his music are engaged from historical, social, generic, analytic, and performance-based perspectives. Students examine Bach’s inventiveness in cross-pollinating genres as well as his contrapuntal genius, fascination with musical instrument building, and expansion of the professional life of musicians. In addition to written assignments, each student gives a lecture-demonstration on a work (or segment of a work) by Bach.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520 And WRI1110
Department: Classical, Classical
A study of the stylistic influences surrounding Beethoven’s music; the history of its reception; its formal, thematic, and harmonic construction; and how it interrogates other works. The tripartite division of Beethoven’s life is scrutinized and evaluated for its applicability (or lack thereof) to various parts of his repertoire. Students give a lecture-demonstration of one work (or one part of a work).
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520 And (LWR1110 Or WRI1110 )
Department: Classical, Classical
A study of the lives, output, and philosophies of the three composers of largely programmatic music who comprised the New German School and were opposed strongly by Brahms and Eduard Hanslick. The rich corpus of prose works (primarily those printed in Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik) left by these composers is used to interrogate their musical scores.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 Or MTH2520 Or WRI1110
Department: Music
The lives, output, and collaborations of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss are explored in the context of the heady atmosphere of the Viennese fin de siècle. Discussions of political and social upheavals (Dr. Karl Luger, the Ringstrasse project, and Klimt and the Secessionist movement) are mixed with examination and analysis of representative works, predominantly orchestral songs and symphonies/tone poems.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH2510 And MTH2520
Department: Classical, Classical
Analysis of selected works from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, with particular attention to tonal design and rhythmic and phraseological structure.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4050
Department: Classical, Classical
The first half of a two-semester comprehensive study of modern recording and mixing. Topics include digital audio workstations (DAWs), fundamental microphone techniques, electronics, MIDI, and running a tracking session in the home or hybrid studio and on location. Students complete this series with a basic knowledge of the theory and skill set required for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering music. Score reading skills and access to Pro Tools are preferred.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4010
Department: Music
A comprehensive study of modern recording and mixing. Topics include; Digital Audio Workstations, fundamental microphone techniques, electronics, MIDI, running a tracking session in the home / hybrid studio and on-location. Students complete this series with a basic knowledge of the theory and skillset required for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering music. Score reading skills, and access to ProTools are preferred.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4035
Department: Music
The fifth, culminating course in the core music theory curriculum for classical music students (five sequential semesters). Designed to provide a thorough background in musical structure, the course material is an integrated presentation of concepts and disciplines, including fundamentals, species counterpoint, and traditional harmony. Other important topics are rhythmic organization, analysis and composition of melodies, phrase structure, and harmonic analysis of excerpts from the standard repertoire.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH3050 Or
Department: Classical, Classical
Students examine and contextualize many of the important works from the Second Viennese School and beyond. Special emphasis is given to the impact of such early 20th-century figures as Schoenberg and Stravinsky, opera, innovations in the work of Oliver Messiaen, and music by living composers. Major political and social changes during the century are factored into the musical discussions.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
American popular music and its recording techniques (to 1950): ragtime, gospel, blues, vaudeville, New Orleans brass band, swing, Tin Pan Alley, bebop, and early rhythm and blues. Analysis and performance.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A continuation of MTH 4120. Cool, mainstream, progressive/free jazz, rhythm and blues, country and western, Broadway, rock ’n’ roll, reggae, soul and Motown, fusion, disco, punk, metal, and hip-hop. Analysis and performance.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
The first half of a two-semester chronological survey of major operas and opera composers from the early 1600s to the present in cultural context. Participants research and write critical analyses based on documentation of early performances and, when available, archival recordings.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
The second half of a two-semester chronological survey of major operas and opera composers from the early 1600s to the present in cultural context. Participants research and write critical analyses based on documentation of early performances and, when available, archival recordings.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MTH4211
Department: Classical, Voice
An integrated companion to MTH 4211, focusing on historic performance styles and their practical application. Participants learn and present excerpts from each major historical operatic period.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Classical, Voice
An integrated companion to MTH 4212, focusing on historic performance styles and their practical application. Participants learn and present excerpts from each major historical operatic period.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH4213
Department: Classical, Voice
Students explore both the commonalities and differences in jazz and classical piano, gaining versatility and familiarity with more than one genre at the keyboard. Theory is a vital topic: jazz studies majors study the counterpoint basic to the music of Bach, and classical pianists study jazz harmony to help them develop idiomatic vocabulary.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Provides training in composing and analyzing fugues based on teaching methods outlined in The Art of the Fugue (1750) by J.S. Bach. Each lecture illuminates one of Bach’s teaching points and is followed by written assignments. The final exam is the composition of a fugue on a given subject.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A survey course introducing students to the major musical traditions of the world. Topics include structures, scales, instruments, and cultural elements of music from Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and the Americas, supplemented by historical and contemporary recordings and films.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4010
Department: Music
Advanced exercises in sight singing and ear training; modal, tonal, chromatic, and atonal melodies in seven clefs; rhythmic exercises to three voices; and melodic, rhythmic, and chordal dictation in multiple parts. For students who have completed the required six-semester sequence of Solfege classes, or passed a placement test.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MTH3420 Or
Department: Music
Offers seniors the opportunity to advance skills in the terminology and application of music theory. Covers musical style and language from the late Renaissance through the end of the Classical period.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4010
Department: Music
Offers seniors the opportunity to advance skills in the terminology and application of music theory. Covers musical style and language from the Romantic period through the 20th century.
Freshman music majors in all areas join together for a common experience. The seminar begins with the “nuts and bolts” of how to access and use essential resources. Through presentations from faculty and staff, students then delve into the capabilities of the conservatory and understanding music-making as a collaborative art form.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Designed with the nonmusician in mind, this course explores the aesthetics of music through time in the Western world. Parallels in the worlds of art, politics, economics, and philosophy are explored with the goal of giving students a better understanding of how the music of today does, and does not, relate to that of previous centuries.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Presents many of the essential American standards (e.g., Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Hammerstein) regularly performed by working jazz musicians. Each week, a tune is studied aurally, learned by ear, analyzed, and memorized. Small combo techniques, transposition, and interaction are included. Sample recordings of all the selections for these courses are made available. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Pianists are introduced to the art of teaching through discussions, lectures, and assignments. Class activities explore teaching techniques, materials, repertoire, and curriculum planning for intermediate and advanced pianists. Students are also given opportunities for practice teaching. Other projects may include conducting a master class, adjudicating a competition, preparing a recital, and researching new technology resources related to pedagogy.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Explores the music of the Purchase College jazz community – the Jazz Studies program and the Performing Arts Center – from the standpoint of music history, cultural context, and rehearsal and performance practice.
Credits: 3
Department: Music
Orchestras are a vital part of America’s musical landscape and civic life. Learn about the orchestra’s social and cultural history; the evolution of symphonic music, and the methods with which musicians approach the work of preparing and performing orchestral scores. Develop methods to critically evaluate the programming, performances, and personalities of the modern symphony orchestra.
Credits: 3
Department: Music
A mixed ensemble of vocal performance with students from all areas of the campus. The chorus performs a varied repertoire of music and presents concerts on campus and in touring venues with orchestra and professional soloists.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Introductory study of the craft of songwriting: analysis of lyrics, rhyme, emotional projection, melodic contour, and formal verse-chorus practice.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
A continuation of MUS 1320. Further study of the craft of songwriting.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MUS1320 Or SOA1700
Department: Composition Technology
In this course, students gain a deeper appreciation of popular music by addressing its origins, from Greek music to Middle Eastern folk traditions, the birth of notation, and the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods of Western music.
Credits: 3
Department: Music
Introductory study in jazz improvisation: blues; pentatonic scales; and ionian, aeolian, and dorian modes. AABA forms. Simple chord positions, substitutions, and turnarounds. Melodic contours, rhythmic studies, transposition, and development. Analysis, accompanying, and improvisation. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
Department: Jazz
A continuation of MUS 2050. Rhythm changes, Latin patterns. Diminished and synthetic scales; chords: super-locrian and lydian-flat 7; and alternative. Modal, linear tunes, binary solos, countermelodies, and background riffs. Analysis, accompanying, and improvisation. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1.5
PREREQ: MUS2050
Department: Jazz
Provides students with fluency in performance-based sight reading of jazz music. The course is designed to enhance each student’s ability to feel, identify, transcribe, and notate rhythm, with a primary focus on the most common time signatures and divisions of the beat. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Jazz
Presents many of the essential American standards (e.g., Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Hammerstein) regularly performed by working jazz musicians. Each week, a tune is studied aurally, learned by ear, analyzed, and memorized. Small combo techniques, transposition, and interaction are included. Sample recordings of all the selections for these courses are made available. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
An introduction to jazz music, from Africa to the southern U.S., the centrality of New Orleans, the northern migration, and the transformation and expansion of styles during the 20th century. The various musical characteristics of jazz—including blues, Dixieland, swing, bebop, and fusion—are analyzed, and the works of renowned musicians are examined.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
An examination of the melodic and rhythmic influence on jazz of the music of the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America with an emphasis on the music of Brazil. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
The bebop era changed not only the manner of playing jazz but the way of composing it as well. This course explores the bebop style of composing alternative melodies over the chords of standard popular songs of the day. In addition to learning standard repertoire of the era, students compose original bebop-style melodies. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Jazz repertoire and styles presented include examples of modal and cool jazz. The material is taught by rote to develop and strengthen the ability to learn by ear. Classes are conducted in an ensemble format and explore improvisational techniques for all course material. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Jazz repertoire and styles presented include examples of contemporary and post-bop jazz. The material is taught by rote to develop and strengthen the ability to learn by ear. Classes are conducted in an ensemble format and explore improvisational techniques for all course material. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
A study of room acoustics and architectural design, along with the underlying math. The objective is for students to gain an understanding of how acoustics work in various venues and the skills to solve problems in their own acoustic environments and to design corrective treatments.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Provides self-directed study in studio technology in areas collaboratively defined by students and their academic mentors. Lab instruction is expected.
Credits: 2
Department: Production Technology
Synthesizes the knowledge acquired in Jazz Repertoire I–VI. Drawing on the base of knowledge developed in the first three years of study, students deepen their strengths and interests, refine areas for further development, and define performance styles, with the goal of becoming more fully prepared for professional appearances. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Synthesizes the knowledge acquired in Jazz Repertoire I–VI. Drawing on the base of knowledge developed in the first three years of study, students deepen their strengths and interests, refine areas for further development, and define performance styles, with the goal of becoming more fully prepared for professional appearances. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
A thorough introduction to arranging for small jazz ensemble. Topics include basic techniques of melodic harmonization, writing for two to five horns and rhythm section, and form and development. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2.5
Department: Jazz
A thorough introduction to arranging for small jazz ensemble. Topics include basic techniques of melodic harmonization, writing for two to five horns and rhythm section, and form and development. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 2.5
PREREQ: MUS4410
Department: Jazz
Offers seniors the opportunity to advance skills in the terminology and application of music theory. Covers musical style and language from the late Renaissance through the end of the Classical period in the fall semester and from the Romantic period through the 20th century in the spring semester.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4010
Department: Music
Offers seniors the opportunity to advance skills in the terminology and application of music theory. Covers musical style and language from the late Renaissance through the end of the Classical period in the fall semester and from the Romantic period through the 20th century in the spring semester.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH4010
Department: Music
Examines the varied career paths open to composers and performers in the changing musical ecosystem. Contemporary, classical, jazz and world, indie rock, electronica, multimedia work, and more are explored. Analysis of different artists, ensembles, presenters, and festivals, trips to New York venues, and interviews with leaders in the field provide unique insights. Students create and present a performance project.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A concert program should be more than a random selection of works. How is a concert program put together? What are the reasons for choosing each piece? Is there an underlying concept or stylistic concern? Are there political issues involved? What are the public-relations ramifications? This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and practical considerations in concert programming today.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Students analyze music professions within a wide arts-and-culture context and within the national and international financial and political landscapes, then posit professional growth opportunities.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Building on MUS 4521 In which professional growth opportunities are identified, students shape and refine their ideas, and build rough business plans.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS4520
Department: Music
Addresses taxes, management of debt, unions, gigging, choice of professional location, professional behavior, and networking.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Many conservatory students form ensembles, which range across all three areas: classical, jazz, and music and technology. Frequently upon graduation, these ensembles attempt to stay together and “make it” in the professional world. Essential skills and knowledge are needed to stand a chance at success. Seasoned professionals who have made this work (and some who have not) teach this course.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS4521 And MUS4600
Department: Music
Covers how to write effective résumés (for different uses) and cover letters, how to interact with a potential or future employer, interview and audition techniques, and uses of social media for professional purposes.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Addresses the complex set of skills needed to successfully produce a concert, including knowing the availability and characteristics of venues, equipment, amplification, programming for different populations, publicity, and audience cultivation.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS4521
Department: Music
Most graduates of music conservatories earn a substantial portion of their income from teaching, yet know very little about associated business practices. This course teaches students how to establish a private teaching studio (financials, insurance, taxes, scheduling, common practices). It also reviews teaching opportunities and risks in community music schools and for-profit teaching businesses.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS4520
Department: Music
Students learn how to research both public and private grants, the uses and risks of crowdsourcing, and how to begin to build an individual giving plan.
Group discussions and presentations of student works, together with analysis of music by arange of established composers, encompassing many different styles. Live performances and guest artists enhance class sessions.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Composition
Students write and perform their own compositions in the jazz vernacular and critically discuss each other’s work. In addition, various compositional models are analyzed, including compositions of Wayne Shorter, Kenny Wheeler, Andy Laverne, Bill Evans, John Abercrombie, and others. Compositions from the Great American Songbook are also analyzed with regard to thematic development and harmonic motion.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Students write and perform for specific instrumental groupings and form ensembles designed to interpret their original work. Composers and performers are encouraged to give input and jointly engage in the creative process by sharing different viewpoints. These collaborations provide insight into the complete process of writing, arranging, and performing an original work from start to end.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Practical collaborations between writers and engineers/producers. Writers and producers are teamed with one another to produce high-quality demo recordings in the digital studios, within realistic professional time and personnel constraints. Emphasis is on the collaborative aspect of musical composition and production.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Practical collaborations between writers and engineers/producers. Writers and producers are teamed with one another to produce high-quality demo recordings in the digital studios, within realistic professional time and personnel constraints. Emphasis is on the collaborative aspect of musical composition and production.
Credits: 2
Department: Production Technology
A project-based study of trends in electronic music, including electronica, ambient, interactive electronics, and sound design. Students explore techniques employed by DJs, instrumentalists, and other musicians with an eye toward their own innovations. Includes both readings and historical studies as well as project-based music making.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
A survey of the orchestration techniques of Debussy, Stravinsky, Webern, Bartok, Hindemith, Ellington, Gil Evans, and Quincy Jones. Brief projects based on each style.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Composition
A hands-on investigation of creative uses of technology in 21st-century music making. Students learn from models of great works and develop innovative applications of the most recent technological developments through music performance.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
Group discussions and presentations of student works, together with analysis of music by a range of established composers, encompassing many different styles. Live performances and guest artists enhance class sessions. Grading is on a pass/no credit basis.
Credits: 1
Department: Composition Technology
A practical study of the craft of writing contemporary melody. Analytical and creative focus on effective melodic practice, plus musical rhyme, dramatic pitch curve, repetition and excursion, bridge, prechorus and chorus writing, melodic psychology and hooks. Studies may include Franz Schubert, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Billie Holiday, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Randy Newman, and others. Prior musical accomplishment as a melodist and ability to read notation are required.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
A practical study of the craft of writing contemporary lyrics. Analytical and creative focus on effective musical structures, plus rhyme forms and schemes, line and unit densities, text and subtexts. Studies may include Langston Hughes, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Chuck D, Tupac Shakur, and others. Prior musical accomplishment as a lyricist and a desire to collaborate are required.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
Advanced analysis of lyrics, rhyme, emotional projection, melodic contour, and formal verse-chorus practice. For experienced composers and lyricists who desire to broaden their understanding of the craft. Students are expected to be highly motivated to learn and to explore high-level collaborations across disciplines.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
An in-depth study of specific compositional devices that enhance the quality of a writer’s output, regardless of style. The course focuses on scale selection, melodic development, nontraditional harmony, dynamic markings, and contrapuntal devices to facilitate well-crafted composition. Projects include integrating classroom assignments into original works. The course objective is to synthesize cognitive and “ear” writing methods into one fluid process.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
An advanced study of digital signal processors in the modern digital studio environment, focusing on their specific uses during the mix-down process. Engineers are immersed in real-world situations to foster technical and creative solutions within a typical engineer/client relationship. Emphasis is on the perception of the mind and the ear, mix techniques, and standard business practices.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A practical exploration of design options for the modern recording studio, including its growing role in video and film postproduction. Construction techniques, space design, acoustic treatments, and facility ergonomics are examined, and changes in studio facilities in the digital age are discussed. Students learn how to spec and budget their own midsize recording facility, accounting for all aspects of equipment, construction, HVAC, electrical, and overhead.
Credits: 2
Department: Production Technology
Advanced arranging skills for transforming music from its simplest rendering into complex orchestral and experimental arrangements. Class time includes projects using Pro Tools and MOTU Digital Performer as compositional/arranging platforms. Students alternately assume the roles of composer, musician, and engineer to develop collaborative communication skills from each of these points of view.
Credits: 2
Department: Composition Technology
An overview of global musical styles with a special focus on African and Latin cultures. Emphasis is placed on understanding the present and historical practices of music making and why this music is relevant in the world-music scene today. Invited guests, together with video and audio recordings, provide additional insight into the sociological and practical relevance of these styles.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A hands-on seminar on advanced digital editing with a focus on the visual image. Studies include film sound and scoring, game sound, television sweetening, and Internet audio. Studies explore frame rates, video latency, troubleshooting, and various technologies and their relationship to working with sound for picture. Students also explore various delivery formats and media.
Credits: 2
Department: Production Technology
A writing-intensive course geared toward meeting client deadlines, with a strong emphasis on the craft involved in creating music scores in the studio. Assignments include writing for television, film, advertising, spoken-word, and Web-based situations. The composer as businessperson and current practices in the music business are also addressed.
The study and performance of works from the chamber music repertoire and/or the sonata literature for piano and instruments. Coaching sessions (up to one and a half hours per week) culminate in performance.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Coached by members of the brass faculty, this ensemble class focuses on group intonation, phrasing, articulation, and blend. Literature is selected from all styles and eras of music, and composition for the ensemble is also encouraged. Rehearses weekly for one and a half hours.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Intense preparation of works, mostly from the standard repertoire, for performance. Study of characteristic styles, performance practice, and acquisition of large ensemble skills and professional etiquette.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Interpretation of music of the 17th and 18th centuries from the perspective of historically informed performance. Instructors teach basic principles of interpretation that are evident from early performance manuals, then encourage students to actively engage these principles by forming personal interpretations around them. Students are encouraged to form creative, original approaches to the repertoire, particularly when the historical record may be incomplete, inchoate, or simplistic.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Companion performance lab for participants in MPE 5450.
Credits: .5
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Companion performance lab for participants in MPE 5142.
Credits: .5
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Study and performance of the percussion ensemble repertoire. Students have the opportunity to perform a range of parts, from basic to virtuosic, in all areas of percussion: timpani, mallets, and multiple percussion.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Designed to provide a preprofessional environment for graduate composition students. Composers are placed “in residence” with an ensemble for which they compose a new work and fully integrate themselves into the workings of the ensemble. Specific duties vary depending on the size and nature of the performing ensemble and the demands of the composition.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Composition
In a performance lab setting, students prepare and perform in a concert of staged scenes with piano or instrumental ensemble; and/or participate in at least one fully staged opera, given in its original language, with orchestra, sets, and costumes. This course further develops and refines the musical and dramatic skills acquired in previous courses.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
A practical application of opera rehearsal techniques as studied in MPE 5250.
Credits: 1
COREQ: MPE5250
Department: Classical, Voice
The first in a three-semester sequence, which is the principal focus of the graduate program in opera studies. Students prepare operatic scenes and arias for presentation in a master-class setting every week. Emphasis is on correct stylistic interpretation and performance practice in each stylistic period of opera history, from Monteverdi to recent works. Repertoire is assigned according to each participant’s needs and abilities.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
The second in a three-semester sequence, which is the principal focus of the graduate program in opera studies. Students prepare operatic scenes and arias for presentation in a master-class setting every week. Emphasis is on correct stylistic interpretation and performance practice in each stylistic period of opera history, from Monteverdi to recent works. Repertoire is assigned according to each participant’s needs and abilities.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
The third in a three-semester sequence, which is the principal focus of the graduate program in opera studies. Students prepare operatic scenes and arias for presentation in a master-class setting every week. Emphasis is on correct stylistic interpretation and performance practice in each stylistic period of opera history, from Monteverdi to recent works. Repertoire is assigned according to each participant’s needs and abilities.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
Private weekly music coachings that support the student’s development (technical and artistic) and presentation (linguistic, stylistic, musical, and dramatic). Prepares the student for performance situations throughout the department. The goal is to enable the student to function as an independent professional upon completion of the program.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Voice
A seminar class in the fundamentals of teaching vocal technique. Students learn the physiological and pedagogical fundamentals of the workings of the voice, followed by practical application (working in a classroom setting to recognize and solve various vocal problems).
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
A seminar class in the fundamentals of stage directing with a practical application of directing opera scenes in MPE 3350/Opera Workshop.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
A comprehensive overview of playing techniques for the common saxophone doubles, especially clarinet and flute. Specifics on embouchures, fingerings, tone production, and performance practice are facilitated by weekly in-class readings of repertoire, études, and technical exercises.
Credits: 1
Department: Jazz
Basics of Russian stage diction, through the basic study of the alphabet, diction use, and study of repertoire
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Covers a full range of solo repertoire and performance. Students actively participate in the analytic and critical process for pedagogical purposes.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A weekly gathering of harpists, providing a forum for performance, discussion, and examination of the many facets of harp technique and interpretation. Repertoire may include solo, chamber, and orchestral works. Audition techniques, performance traditions, and instrument maintenance are also covered.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
A weekly gathering of all violinists, violists, violoncellists, and bass students, providing a forum for string players to perform for each other and to discuss and examine the many facets of string playing. Repertoire may include solo, chamber, and orchestral. Audition techniques, performance traditions, and instrument maintenance may also be covered.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Provides an opportunity for students to perform solo and chamber repertoire for their peers in a master-class environment. Supervised by members of the wind faculty, the class is designed to help students develop quality performances and overcome any issues related to performance anxiety. Meets weekly for one and a half hours.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Designed for classical guitarists who are interested in gaining ensemble, sight-reading, and arranging skills for guitar ensemble. Students are expected to perform repertoire from the 20th and 21st centuries and create their own arrangements for performance by various combinations, such as a guitar orchestra, duos, trios, and quartets. Strong musicianship skills are required.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A forum for percussionists to discuss and examine the many facets of percussion performance. The study of the orchestral repertoire for timpani and percussion is the primary focus.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
The main instrumental ensemble (20–30 players) in the brass program. Conducted by members of the brass faculty, this ensemble performs repertoire from the 16th century to the present. It also performs music from the British “brass band” repertoire, in which students are required to play traditional brass band instruments. Rehearses weekly for one and a half hours.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Examines music for organ, harpsichord, clavichord, and early piano from 1550 to 1770 by Byrd, Sweelinck, L. Couperin, Buxtehude, F. Couperin, J.S. Bach, and the Bach sons W.F. and C.P.E. Primary source materials include ornamentation and early fingering charts, as well as studies of contemporary music instruction. Outside readings of secondary source materials include Apel and Ferguson. Discussion of in-class performance is integral to the course.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A survey of the piano music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, including sonatas, variations, and other shorter works. The Classical style is examined in relation to its emergence from the late Baroque era, with special attention given to keyboard technique, instruments of the period, range, and the continued evolution of musical forms.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A survey of piano literature from Beethoven’s late works through the end of the 19th century. Primary focus on the works of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms, with emphasis on the character piece, new trends in the use of older forms, and developments in timbre and range. Late Romantic composers are examined, focusing on their impact on early 20th-century styles.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A survey of piano literature from 1900 to the present. The works of Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Ives, Janacek, Bartok, and Cage are the primary focus, with emphasis on extended techniques, new trends in the use of older forms, and developments in timbre and range.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Covers the full range of solo repertoire for piano. Students perform and actively participate in the analytical and critical process for pedagogical purposes.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
A practical introduction: simple beat patterns with both hands, cues with the left hand, as well as indications for sforzati, cut offs, and lyric gestures. Works from early Haydn to Brahms.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A seminar that explores how conductors approach musical challenges. Studies and assignments incorporate score analysis, orchestral arranging, and conducting techniques. Students conduct short works that they have arranged or composed for small ensembles formed in the class. Limited to graduate students concentrating in instrumental or vocal performance.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MPE5500
Department: Classical, Classical
The Jazz Orchestra is a 17-piece big band that performs jazz from every era. From staples like Ellington and Basie to more modern works by today’s leading composers and arrangers, this orchestra swings and is always a pleasure to listen to. Limited to graduate jazz studies students.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Presents the opportunity to study and perform contemporary works by established composers for diverse instruments, in all styles.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Presents the opportunity to study and perform contemporary works by student composers for diverse instruments, in all styles.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Study of the art of accompanying singers and instrumentalists. Members of the class perform regularly.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Instrumental
Focuses on the music of the Machito Orchestra, Tito Puente, Chico O’Farrill, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others. The conversion of standard jazz repertoire to what is currently known as Latin jazz is emphasized through an in-depth study of clavé (the rhythmic pulse found in Afro-Caribbean music) and the variety of rhythms incorporated in this genre. Orchestra members are encouraged to contribute original arrangements.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
These combos are thematically based and speak directly to the firsthand performing experiences of faculty mentors. Focusing on repertoire derived from the master composer/bandleaders from all eras of jazz, elements of group interaction, group dynamic, improvisation, arranging, and stylistic interpretation are integrated into a professional ensemble experience. Limited to graduate jazz studies students.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
A 60-minute recital of repertoire or original compositions, demonstrating the ability to design and execute a substantial program at a professional level. String players must include a substantial work (from the mid-20th century through the contemporary era) in one of their recitals.
Credits: 1
Department: Classical, Classical
A 60-minute recital of repertoire or original compositions, demonstrating the ability to design and execute a substantial program at a professional level.
Credits: 1
Department: Jazz
A 60-minute recital and/or recording of original compositions, demonstrating the ability to design and execute a substantial program at a professional level.
Credits: 1
Department: Composition Technology
A 60-minute recital of repertoire demonstrating the ability to design and execute a substantial program at a professional level.
To function creatively in the contemporary music industry, modern musicians need the skills to perform, compose, arrange, record, research, write, and talk about their music. This course helps develop the research, writing, and presenting skills by exploring relevant print and online resources, researching and discussing topics of individual interest, and writing engaging program notes and research papers.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A review of species counterpoint. Exploration of canon, fugue, chorale prelude, and variations. Emphasis is on the music of Bach, especially his Well-Tempered Clavier, and on composers just before Bach. Regular written assignments.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Analysis of the structure and design of melody, tendency tones, and rhythmic stress; relationship of melody to harmony; serialism; tension, rhythmic units; and techniques of minimalism. From Gregorian chant to Nixon in China.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
The first half of a two-semester comprehensive study of modern recording and mixing. Topics include digital audio workstations (DAWs), fundamental microphone techniques, electronics, MIDI, and running a tracking session in the home or hybrid studio and on location. Students complete this series with a basic knowledge of the theory and skill set required for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering music. Score reading skills and access to Pro Tools are preferred.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A comprehensive study of modern recording and mixing. Topics include; Digital Audio Workstations, fundamental microphone techniques, electronics, MIDI, running a tracking session in the home / hybrid studio and on-location. Students complete this series with a basic knowledge of the theory and skillset required for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering music. Score reading skills, and access to ProTools are preferred
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH5035
Department: Music
Illustrates the most important principles of Baroque performance practice, from early monody through Bach. The key concepts and skills discussed include special playing techniques, theories of articulation and accentuation, improvisation (including improvised ornamentation), execution of symbolized ornaments, and basso continuo realization. Lectures are enlivened by occasional hands-on exercises.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH5000
Department: Classical, Classical
Reviews the main issues involved in the attempt to perform music of the past 500 years in ways that acknowledge the historical realities of the works’ periods of origin. Attention is paid to instruments, textual interpretation, contemporary writings, and performing approaches and conditions.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Students examine and contextualize many of the important works from the Second Viennese School and beyond. Special emphasis is given to the impact of such early 20th-century figures as Schoenberg and Stravinsky, opera, innovations in the work of Oliver Messiaen, and music by living composers. Major political and social changes during the century are factored into the musical discussions.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Intensive study of impressionist and expressionist techniques, plus serialism and pandiatonicism. Excerpts from Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartok, Stockhausen, Crumb, Penderecki, and Reich.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Explore the proposition that Byrd, Mahler, Shostakovich, conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, and pianist Edwin Fischer (among others) used music to foster solidarity and strengthen resistance to oppression. Learn to recognize “covert speech” in music and evaluate supporting evidence and arguments in the musical output of these dissidents.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A historical overview of electroacoustic music, beginning in the late 1940s with the devotees of musique concrète, recorded natural sounds, and synthesized tone construction. Students learn about the gradual evolution of technology and composition and its impact on many music traditions and trends.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
An overview of current creative trends in electroacoustic music. Contemporary digital music systems offer unprecedented dynamic control over timbre. This course reviews aspects of musical acoustics and psychoacoustics and explores electroacoustic simulation through recent experimental examples.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: MTH5180
Department: Music
Three of the greatest operas in the history of Western music—Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte—are the product of the collaboration between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte. Students analyze these works and gain an understanding of their historical context and why these works, from this unlikely duo, became watershed contributions to the genre of opera.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Focuses on the War Requiem and operas by Benjamin Britten. Students engage in a close reading of the texts, participate during class in musical renderings of selected sections, and become familiar with Anglican worship and musical traditions. Central themes, including class conflict, desire, and repression, are discussed when relevant. Substantial outside reading required.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Examines secular and sacred cantatas of J.S. Bach, including the four that make up the Christmas Oratorio and the double cantata that was the basis for the now-lost Markuspassion. Topics include symbolism, text painting, neo-Platonism, instrumental concerti and sinfonias in the cantatas, the history of Bach editions, and the light shed on Bach’s attitude towards Judaism in BWV 42.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A study of Stephen Sondheim as a synthesis of American film, opera, and musical theatre traditions. Formal, motivic, harmonic, and structural analysis of Sondheim’s principal works, supplemented by readings in philosophy, music theory and harmony, and American politics from the 1970s through the present. Extensive viewing outside of class.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Over two semesters, students strengthen their functional understanding of music theory through the lens of jazz music. From its inception roughly 100 years ago to the present day, entirely new harmonic paradigms have been introduced, developed, and used in jazz—and fluency in them is essential. This is the first in a two-course sequence.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Over two semesters, students strengthen their functional understanding of music theory through the lens of jazz music. From its inception roughly 100 years ago to the present day, entirely new harmonic paradigms have been introduced, developed, and used in jazz—and fluency in them is essential. This is the second in a two-course sequence.
Credits: 2
Department: Jazz
Students explore both the commonalities and differences in jazz and classical piano, gaining versatility and familiarity with more than one genre at the keyboard. Theory is a vital topic: jazz performers study the counterpoint basic to the music of Bach, and classical pianists study jazz harmony to help them develop idiomatic vocabulary.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Provides training in composing and analyzing fugues based on teaching methods outlined in The Art of the Fugue (1750) by J.S. Bach. Each lecture illuminates one of Bach’s teaching points and is followed by written assignments. The final exam is the composition of a fugue on a given subject.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Demonstrates how analysis of a given work can influence artistic interpretation. Students present their own works alongside research on historical context, the composer’s biography, contemporary style, analysis (formal, harmonic, melodic, contrapuntal), and content. The goal is to understand that complete analysis does not offer a single “correct” interpretation, but rather focuses the creative mind by offering multiple paths towards artistic understanding.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A survey course introducing students to the major musical traditions of the world. Topics include structures, scales, instruments, and cultural elements of music from Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and the Americas, supplemented by historical and contemporary recordings and films.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Chinese music is surveyed through the lens of geography and time. Students learn to sing Chinese folk songs and experience traditional instruments through writing assignments.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A study of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf settings of Heine, Moericke, and Goethe. Includes text setting techniques (both the meaning and mechanics of poetry), the innovative role of the pianist, and the composer’s ability to portray both physical and psychological journey in the Liederkreis (song cycle).
Credits: 2
Department: Music
How does the composer preserve the essential nature of these plays, while conforming to the late 19th-century Italian operatic traditions and (his own) innovations? Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, and Merry Wives of Windsor are examined, comparing them to Verdi’s adaptations of these texts.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Provides a contiguous understanding of music history and prepares students for the comprehensive examination. A stream of guided readings and oral reports is designed to help students broaden and deepen their knowledge of the subject. Study groups work together on areas of common interest.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Students are set on a path of lifelong learning with the goal of being able to improvise in all the genres they perform. Instructors provide a graded series of tasks that begins with rudimentary ornamentation of existing lines and concludes with the improvisation of convincing fantasias, cadenzas, and dance-based pieces. Open to graduate students in the classical instrumental performance, voice/opera studies, and composition concentrations.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Instrumental
An intensive graduate course in the vocal and instrumental music of Berg, examining both his orchestral and previously unpublished early vocal works and his operas Wozzeck and Lulu. Topics include the influence of Freud, Weill’s opera Mahagonny, Berg’s satire of capitalism, the conventions of expressionist cinema, and source study of Wedekind, Brecht, and Pabst. Knowledge of German is helpful.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
In the 1893, the master Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, living and working in New York, predicted that “Negro melodies” would foster a “great and noble” American music. But classical music in America stayed white. This course explores the ways African-American culture infiltrated the American mainstream – and did not.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Film music remains on of the least theorized branches of contemporary music. Building on the work of Royal S. Brown, Claudia Gorbman, and Max Winkler, this course explores diegetic vs. nondiegetic scoring, leitmotivic construction, and the genre’s stylistic debts (particularly to Viennese fin de siècle composers). Students view films both in and outside of class and provide analyses.
A study of room acoustics and architectural design, along with the underlying math. The objective is for students to gain an understanding of how acoustics work in various venues and the skills to solve problems in their own acoustic environments and to design corrective treatments.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Provides students with fluency in performance-based sight reading of jazz music. The course is designed to enhance each student’s ability to feel, identify, transcribe, and notate rhythm, with a primary focus on the most common time signatures and divisions of the beat. Limited to jazz studies majors.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
A mixed ensemble of vocal performance with students from all areas of the campus. The chorus performs a varied repertoire of music and presents concerts on campus and in touring venues with orchestra and professional soloists.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Voice
Covers advanced arranging concepts in both big bands and small groups, centering on the styles of Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans, and Duke Ellington. Students have opportunities for performance and recordings of their work.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
Covers advanced arranging concepts in both big bands and small groups, centering on the styles of Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans, and Duke Ellington. Students have opportunities for performance and recordings of their work.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
Problematic aspects of each student’s playing are remedied through transcription and analysis of solos by master players. Students are assisted in reaching the next level of their playing ability and in developing a passion for life through music.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
This seminar focuses on fostering students’ creativity in their original compositions, arrangements, and related original works. These works prepared and presented for live in-class group evaluation.
Credits: 3
Department: Jazz
Offers incoming graduate students the opportunity to advance skills in the terminology and application of music theory. Covers musical style and language from the late Renaissance through the end of the Classical period.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
Offers incoming graduate students the opportunity to advance skills in the terminology and application of music theory. Covers musical style and language from the Romantic period through the 20th century.
Credits: 2
Department: Music
A moderated series of guest lectures that address practical concerns of the professional musician. Topics may include dealing with injuries and injury prevention, tax strategies and tax-related record keeping, advertising and self-promotion in the age of the Internet, travel and airport security issues for the touring musician, and union protections and benefits.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Examines the varied career paths open to composers and performers in the changing musical ecosystem. Contemporary, classical, jazz and world, indie rock, electronica, multimedia work, and more are explored. Analysis of different artists, ensembles, presenters, and festivals, trips to New York venues, and interviews with leaders in the field provide unique insights. Students create and present a performance project.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
A concert program should be more than a random selection of works. How is a concert program put together? What are the reasons for choosing each piece? Is there an underlying concept or stylistic concern? Are there political issues involved? What are the public-relations ramifications? This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and practical considerations in concert programming today.
Credits: 2
Department: Classical, Classical
Students analyze music professions within a wide arts-and-culture context and within the national and international financial and political landscapes, then posit professional growth opportunities.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Building on MUS 5521 In which professional growth opportunities are identified, students shape and refine their ideas, and build rough business plans.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS5520
Department: Music
Addresses taxes, management of debt, unions, gigging, choice of professional location, professional behavior, and networking.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Many conservatory students form ensembles, which range across all three areas: classical, jazz, and music and technology. Frequently upon graduation, these ensembles attempt to stay together and “make it” in the professional world. Essential skills and knowledge are needed to stand a chance at success. Seasoned professionals who have made this work (and some who have not) teach this course.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS5521 And MUS5600
Department: Music
Covers how to write effective résumés (for different uses) and cover letters, how to interact with a potential or future employer, interview and audition techniques, and uses of social media for professional purposes.
Credits: 1
Department: Music
Addresses the complex set of skills needed to successfully produce a concert, including knowing the availability and characteristics of venues, equipment, amplification, programming for different populations, publicity, and audience cultivation.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS5521
Department: Music
Most graduates of music conservatories earn a substantial portion of their income from teaching, yet know very little about associated business practices. This course teaches students how to establish a private teaching studio (financials, insurance, taxes, scheduling, common practices). It also reviews teaching opportunities and risks in community music schools and for-profit teaching businesses.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: MUS5520
Department: Music
Students learn how to research both public and private grants, the uses and risks of crowdsourcing, and how to begin to build an individual giving plan.
The minor in music requires 21 to 25 credits, depending on the area of study. The course of study includes:
Four semesters of private or master class instruction in the area of specialization
Two semesters of theory or models
Two semesters of solfège or ear training
Two semesters of secondary piano*
*for students in areas other than piano performance
Two semesters of music history (any courses)
Two semesters of ensemble (placement by audition)
Associated Fees
Students minoring in music are charged the course fee to cover private lessons and/or master classes, as well as a performance lab fee. These fees are subject to annual increases. For the most up-to-date information please refer to the “Other Fees” section of our Student Services Fees.
How to Apply
Only a limited number of students can be admitted each year to the minor in music, based on the available spaces in a given area. Students will only be accepted for a minor in music through the Conservatory of Music audition process. Applicants for the minor in music are required to submit the same repertoire as all other undergraduate admission applicants and pay the same application fee.
The composition program is committed to fostering the unique gifts of each composer and providing both the technical and artistic tools needed to best express their unique musical personality.
Central to the program is the weekly individual composition lesson, where, over their time at Purchase, students study with the entire faculty so that they are exposed to different approaches and musical perspectives. The weekly Composition Seminar builds community and provides a forum for in-depth discussions of student work, stylistic and philosophical trends in the field, and professional issues facing composers today. Guest speakers enhance the seminar, illuminating different aspects of the complex world of new music.
Perhaps most important, student composers at Purchase hear their works performed every semester under the auspices of Purchase New Music, a collaborative class that pairs composers and student performers in the creation and performance of original works, coached by the Conservatory’s performance faculty. Projects embracing collaborations with other areas of the campus such as dance, film, and theatre, as well as with the Neuberger Museum of Art and The Performing Arts Center are encouraged and supported.
Courses in theory, orchestration, electroacoustic music and musicology are designed to increase skills, broaden perspectives and generally nurture and strengthen each student’s creative journey.
Page Updated 9-17-20
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate composition majors must complete the following conservatory requirements (94 credits). Of the 94 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
Spring:
13.5 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 3010/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 1020/Keyboard Studies II
1 credit
MTH 1020/Music Theory II
2 credits
MTH 1420/Solfège II
1.5 credits
MTH 2520/Survey of Music History II
3 credits
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
MPE 0200/Freshman Classical Jury
0 credit
Sophomore Year: 27 credits
Fall:
14.5 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 3010/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 2010/Keyboard Studies III
1 credit
MTH 2050/Music Theory III
2 credits
MTH 2410/Solfège III
1.5 credits
MTH 3070/Orchestration I
2 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
Spring:
12.5 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 3010/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 2020/Keyboard Studies IV
1 credit
MTH 2420/Solfège IV
1.5 credits
MTH 3050/Music Theory IV
2 credits
MTH 3080/Orchestration II
2 credits
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
MPE 0300/Sophomore Classical Jury
0 credit
Junior Year: 26 credits
Fall:
12.5 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MTH 3180/Electroacoustic Music I
2 credits
MTH 3410/Solfège V
1.5 credits
MTH 4050/Music Theory V
2 credits
MTH —/Music history* or theory elective
2 credits
Music elective
2 credits
Spring:
13.5 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MTH 3190/Electroacoustic Music II
2 credits
MTH 3420/Solfège VI
1.5 credits
MTH 4010/Seminar in Analysis
2 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
MTH —/Music history* or theory elective
2 credits
MPE 3991/Junior Recital: Classical
1 credit
Senior Year: 13 credits
Fall:
8 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 3010/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MTH —/Music history* or theory elective
2 credits
Music elective
2 credits
Spring:
5 credits
MPE 4110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 3010/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 4991/Senior Recital: Classical
1 credit
*Music History Electives (Effective Fall 2020)
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in composition must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5115/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
MTH 5 —/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5115/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MTH 5 —/Music history elective*
2 credits
MTH 5 —/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
12 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5115/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MTH 5180/Electroacoustic Music I
2 credits
MTH 5 —/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MTH or MUS 5 —/Music elective
2 credits
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5115/Composition Seminar
1 credit
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MTH 5190/Electroacoustic Music II
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
*Music History Electives (Effective Fall 2020)
MTH 5005/Harmonic and Contrapuntal Techniques
MTH 5010/Structure and Analysis
MTH 5060/History and Theory of Baroque Performance Practice
MTH 5060/Overview of Performance Practice
MTH 5270/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 5540/Topics in Music History (fall)
MTH 5710/Music, Culture, and Ideas (spring)
BM, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
MM, Yale University
PhD, Princeton University
Instrumental Performance
For the serious developing musician, the Conservatory of Music in the School of the Arts at Purchase College offers a distinctive educational experience—an intensive education within the context of a lively supportive community.
Our faculty comes from all corners of the music scene, forming a highly diverse and dedicated team of educators and professional musicians. They are members of notable ensembles, including:
Broadway Orchestra Pits
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Cast
New York City Ballet Orchestra
New York Philharmonic
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Chamber Music Program
One of the most intimate ways that our Conservatory students learn to express music is through our chamber music program. In small groups, a single coach guides the students through the process of collaboration. Students learn to breathe, blend, phrase, and color together to create one homogeneous voice. The coach helps the group navigate the score and encourages the development of good interpersonal communication. Approximately twenty chamber groups comprised of mixed instruments perform on two concerts at the end of each semester.
The Purchase Symphony Orchestra is made up of the phenomenally talented students of the Conservatory of Music. Every player is coached individually and jointly toward making each concert a memorable occasion. The PSO is proud to represent the great tradition of Western classical music to the Purchase community and beyond.
In the brass program, students are taught to perform Baroque music on period instruments as well as contemporary or improvisational music on modern instruments.
Each genre is explored in a structured program that emphasizes chamber music to develop good ensemble and aural skills. Solo repertoire is studied in a weekly master class as part of brass performance, where sectional rehearsals for the Symphony Orchestra are also scheduled.
To help develop good ensemble skills, there are also trumpet, horn, trombone, and tuba ensembles, which tackle challenging repertoire, both contemporary and standard. Members of the brass faculty are dedicated teachers and highly visible performing musicians.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in brass must complete the following conservatory requirements (104 credits). Of the 104 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (minimum 30 credits) for the degree.
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in brass must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College. Students must complete at least one semester of MPE 5205 or MPE 5565.
First Year: 20 credits
Fall:
10.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5221/Brass Instrumental Lab
0.5 credit
MPE 5465/Brass Performance and Ensemble
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
11.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5221/Brass Instrumental Lab
0.5 credit
MPE 5465/Brass Performance and Ensemble
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 22 credits
Fall:
10.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5221/Brass Instrumental Lab
0.5 credit
MPE 5465/Brass Performance and Ensemble
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
9.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5221/Brass Instrumental Lab
0.5 credit
MPE 5465/Brass Performance and Ensemble
1 credit
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in brass, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5465/Brass Performance and Ensemble
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5465/Brass Performance and Ensemble
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in brass, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5142/Brass Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
The classical guitar program offers students the very best in guitar pedagogy, with weekly lessons, performance seminars, chamber music coachings, and guest master classes.
The Conservatory of Music also offers a fully equipped recording studio in which students can record their own CDs. Students perform regularly in the conservatory’s Recital Hall, in which several excellent classical guitar CDs have been recorded, and in outreach concerts in the community.
In addition to the Performing Arts Center on campus, opportunities abound in nearby New York City to hear professional recitals. Students can also hear internationally accomplished soloists at the Connecticut Classical Guitar Society concerts in Hartford, Conn., and participate in its master classes.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in classical guitar must complete the following conservatory requirements (104 credits). Of the 104 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
**Ensemble Electives
New courses may be added to this list. Students should check with their faculty advisor to determine if a new course is an appropriate ensemble course.
MPE 1160/Contemporary Ensemble
MPE 1165/Purchase New Music
MPE 1170/Camerata
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra
MPE 1245/Soul Voices Ensemble
MPE 1800/Purchase Symphonic Winds
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in classical guitar must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College. Students must complete at least one semester of MPE 5205 or MPE 5565.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5410/Guitar Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Performance elective
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5410/Guitar Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Performance elective
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5410/Guitar Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Performance elective
1 credit
MCO or MPE 5 —/Music composition or
performance elective
2 credits
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5410/Guitar Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Performance elective
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in classical guitar, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5202/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5410/Guitar Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5451/Guitar Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5202/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5451/Guitar Ensemble
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5202/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5410/Guitar Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5451/Guitar Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5210/Private Study: Guitar
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5202/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5451/Guitar Ensemble
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in classical guitar, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
The harp program at Purchase College is small and highly selective, designed to train, mentor, and prepare harpists for a professional career in music.
The curriculum is built around private weekly lessons, in which students work on solo and ensemble repertoire and harp pedagogy. In harp performance class, students come together to perform for one another, exchange ideas, prepare for orchestral auditions, learn about instrumental maintenance, perform in harp ensemble, and grow as active participants of this artistic community. Additionally, harpists at Purchase participate in comprehensive ensemble coursework in orchestra, opera, and chamber music, as well as a variety of smaller ensembles.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in harp must complete the following conservatory requirements (104 credits). Of the 104 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in harp must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College. Students must complete at least one semester of MPE 5205 or MPE 5565.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5420/Harp Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5420/Harp Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5420/Harp Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5420/Harp Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Music performance elective or
MPH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in harp, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5420/Harp Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5422/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5420/Harp Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in harp, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5190/Private Study: Harp
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
In the percussion program, students have numerous performance opportunities, including the Percussion Ensemble, Contemporary Ensemble, Symphony Orchestra, and Opera Orchestra, as well as collaborative opportunities with the other conservatories and schools at Purchase.
All percussion students are required to perform solo recitals in their junior and senior years, and are encouraged to present their own projects and participate in off-campus performances in New York City and surrounding areas. In addition, students participate in the annual Purchase College Day of Percussion, which features world-class clinicians and many concerts.
The percussion facilities at Purchase are among the most outstanding in the nation, with six private practice rooms exclusively for the use of the percussion program, plus a separate rehearsal room for the Percussion Ensemble. Purchase College owns a vast array of percussion instruments, and the conservatory continually expands and updates the collection.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in percussion must complete the following conservatory requirements (104 credits). Of the 104 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra or
MPE 1800/Purchase Symphonic Winds
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MTH 1010/Music Theory I
2 credits
MTH 1410/Solfège I
1.5 credits
MUS 1040/Music First-Year Seminar
1 credit
Spring:
12.5 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1020/Keyboard Studies II
1 credit
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra or
MPE 1800/Purchase Symphonic Winds
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MTH 1020/Music Theory II
2 credits
MTH 1420/Solfège II
1.5 credits
MPE 0200/Freshman Classical Jury
0 credit
Sophomore Year: 31 credits
Fall:
15.5 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra or
MPE 1800/Purchase Symphonic Winds
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 2010/Keyboard Studies III
1 credit
MTH 2050/Music Theory III
2 credits
MTH 2410/Solfège III
1.5 credits
MTH 2510/Survey of Music History I
3 credits
Spring:
15.5 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra or
MPE 1800/Purchase Symphonic Winds
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 2020/Keyboard Studies IV
1 credit
MTH 2420/Solfège IV
1.5 credits
MTH 2520/Survey of Music History II
3 credits
MTH 3050/Music Theory IV
2 credits
MPE 0300/Sophomore Classical Jury
0 credit
Junior Year: 28 credits
Fall:
13.5 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MTH 3410/Solfège V
1.5 credits
MTH 4050/Music Theory V
2 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
Spring:
14.5 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MTH 3420/Solfège VI
1.5 credits
MTH 4010/Seminar in Analysis
2 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
MPE 3991/Junior Recital: Classical
1 credit
Senior Year: 19 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 4220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 1201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 1230/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 1231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 4991/Senior Recital: Classical
1 credit
*Music History Electives (Effective Fall 2020)
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in percussion must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5460/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5460/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music history or theory elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5460/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music history or theory elective
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5231/Percussion Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5460/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music history/theory elective or
MPE/5565 Purchase New Music or
MPE/5560 Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the two-year Artist Diploma in percussion, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5460/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5460/Percussion Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5994/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the two-year Performers Certificate in percussion, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5220/Private Study: Percussion
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
The piano program is dynamic, ambitious, and rigorous. Purchase is proud to be an all-Steinway school and we provide our students with a first-rate practice situation, with a large number of piano studios, each with its own Steinway B.
The piano program at Purchase College is acclaimed. We offer world-class teaching in a caring environment and attract students from throughout the United States as well as internationally. We award a Bachelors of Music degree, a Performers Certificate, a Masters degree, and an Artist Diploma. Students benefit from a strong emphasis on performance, with abundant performance opportunities in the Conservatory’s Recital Hall, which boasts superb acoustics. Pianists perform in three recitals per semester, each at the Recital Hall. Visiting artists who have given master classes at Purchase include Lang Lang, Vladimir Feltsman, Garrick Ohlsson and Robert McDonald of Juilliard. Pianists also collaborate with instrumentalists and receive chamber music coaching from the piano, strings and wind faculty.
Purchase prides itself on being able to tailor the education it offers to meet the needs of individual students. Pianists at Purchase can pursue interests in a variety of specialties. Pianists interested in contemporary music can participate in Purchase Contemporary Ensemble, which performs significant new music written in the past 50 years, as well as Purchase New Music, in which students collaborate with composition majors in developing and performing new work. Pianists interested in jazz piano are offered the opportunity of classes and lessons with the renowned Purchase jazz faculty. And students who would like to explore an interest in vocal collaboration are given the opportunity to work with singers throughout their time in the program.
Our aim in the piano program is to give each student the opportunity to fully explore and develop their own unique artistic voice. Our students graduate and go on to successful careers as performers, teachers, and musical entrepreneurs. Many students come to Purchase to receive a top conservatory education which will enable them to join the many Purchase graduates who have gone on to both masters and doctoral studies at other first-rate conservatories, earning scholarships and fellowships.
Purchase is located in a beautiful country setting, only 35 minutes away from New York City. At Purchase, students have the ability to breathe, concentrate, and collaborate, and then hop on the train and access one of the most vibrant cultural scenes on the planet.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in piano must complete the following conservatory requirements (99 credits). Of the 99 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in piano must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College. MPE 5565 may be taken in a different semester in consultation with the head of the piano program.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
2 credits
MPE 5472/Romantic Piano Literature
2 credits
MPE 5480/Piano Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5610/Collaborative Piano
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5473/20th-Century Piano Literature
2 credits
MPE 5480/Piano Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5610/Collaborative Piano
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
2 credits
MPE 5470/Baroque Keyboard Literature
2 credits
MPE 5480/Piano Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Music performance elective or
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5471/Classical Sonata Literature
2 credits
MPE 5480/Piano Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in piano, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 38 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music
2 credits
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5480/Piano Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5202/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5610/Collaborative Piano
1 credit
MPE 5—/Graduate performance elective
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music
2 credits
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
MPE 5480/Piano Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5370/Private Study: Piano
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5202/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5610/Collaborative Piano
1 credit
MPE 5—/Graduate performance elective
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in piano, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
The string program is dedicated to teaching instrumental mastery as part of a commitment to exposing each student to all of the traditional string professions—orchestra, chamber music, teaching, and solo playing.
Chamber music is a hallmark of the program, and all of its faculty members have an extensive background performing chamber music. The curriculum of both the undergraduate and graduate programs includes exposure and opportunities in contemporary music, early music, intensive chamber music, collaborative string and piano music, and orchestral training (excerpts and auditions), in addition to solo training and orchestral experience.
The mentoring provided by our Faculty String Quartet also gives our students ideas and inspiration for their own work.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in strings must complete the following conservatory requirements (104 credits). Of the 104 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in strings must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College. Students must complete at least one semester of MPE 5205 or MPE 5565.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5440/String Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5440/String Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5440/String Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5440/String Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5—/Music Performance elective or
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in strings, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5440/String Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5440/String Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5520/Trends in Music in Society or
MUS 5522/Establishing a Professional Musical Life
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in strings, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
The woodwind program accepts a select number of students, providing an intimate environment in which every student is recognized and encouraged.
With four world-renowned faculty members, each devoted to their small, individual, and selective studios, the woodwind program presents a balanced curriculum designed to prepare students for careers and lives in music. Opportunities include:
orchestral studies and performance
opera studies and performance
solo training
wind repertoire class
intensive chamber music
contemporary music
early music
composition
collaborative opportunities between departments
master classes with visiting artists
performances with visiting resident ensembles
faculty-student collaborations
The small student body in the conservatory gives every individual a wealth of opportunities to perform, explore, and grow. Our students have easy access to practice rooms, Steinway pianos, a vast collection of standard woodwinds, and superb performance spaces (find out more under Facilities).
At the college’s Performing Arts Center, located adjacent to the Music Building, an abundance of international artists perform each year, and our students have access to all of these performances. Through the generosity of the Performing Arts Center and in collaboration with the conservatory, many noted artists give master classes and open rehearsals specifically for our students.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate music performance majors who concentrate in woodwinds must complete the following conservatory requirements (104 credits). Of the 104 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in woodwinds must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College.
First Year: 22 credits
Fall:
10.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5211/Woodwind Instrumental Lab
.5 credit
MPE 5450/Woodwind Performance Class
1 credit
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
11.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5211/Woodwind Instrumental Lab
.5 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5450/Woodwind Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Second Year: 20 credits
Fall:
10.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5211/Woodwind Instrumental Lab
.5 credit
MTH 5—/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
MPE 5450/Woodwind Performance Class
1 credit
Spring:
9.5 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5205/Camerata or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5211/Woodwind Instrumental Lab
.5 credit
MPE 5450/Woodwind Performance Class
1 credit
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in woodwinds, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music
2 credits
MPE 5201/Symphony Orchestra
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in woodwinds, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5—/Private Study: Instrument
3 credits
MPE 5140/Chamber Music or
MPE 5565/Purchase New Music or
MPE 5560/Contemporary Ensemble or
MPE 5205/Camerata
The jazz studies program is a dynamic, intensive, professional training experience for the aspiring jazz performer.
The performance-driven curriculum strives to emphasize the practical, bringing “the street into the classroom.” With world-class performance and rehearsal facilities, the program enjoys an acclaimed reputation among today’s leading institutions.
Jazz majors are mentored by some of the leading jazz artists on the scene today, and performance opportunities abound on campus, locally in Westchester County and Connecticut, and in leading New York City venues.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate jazz studies majors must complete the following conservatory requirements (101 credits), as outlined below by semester and year. Of the 101 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MCO 1015/Jazz Theory I
3 credits
MPE 1010/Keyboard Studies I
1 credit
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MTH 1430/Jazz Ear Training I
1.5 credits
MUS 1040/Music First-Year Seminar
1 credit
MUS 1070/Jazz Repertoire I
2 credits
MUS 2050/Jazz Improvisation I
1.5 credits
Spring:
14 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MCO 1025/Jazz Theory II
3 credits
MPE 1020/Keyboard Studies II
1 credit
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MTH 1440/Jazz Ear Training II
1.5 credits
MUS 2060/Jazz Improvisation II
1.5 credits
MUS 2080/Jazz Repertoire II
2 credits
MPE 0201/Freshman Jazz Jury
0 credit
Sophomore Year: 29 credits
Fall:
14.5 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MCO 2015/Jazz Harmony I
2 credits
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MPE 2010/Keyboard Studies III
1 credit
MTH 2430/Jazz Ear Training III
1.5 credits
MTH 2510/Survey of Music History I
3 credits
MUS 3070/Jazz Repertoire III
2 credits
Spring:
14.5 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MCO 2025/Jazz Harmony II
2 credits
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MPE 2020/Keyboard Studies IV
1 credit
MTH 2440/Jazz Ear Training IV
1.5 credits
MTH 2520/Survey of Music History II
3 credits
MUS 3080/Jazz Repertoire IV
2 credits
MPE 0301/Sophomore Jazz Jury
0 credit
Junior Year: 26 credits
Fall:
13.5 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MTH 3400/Jazz History I
3 credits
MUS 3090/Jazz Repertoire V
2 credits
MUS 4410/Jazz Arranging I
2.5 credits
MPE 3992/Junior Recital: Jazz
1 credit
Spring:
12.5 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MTH 3450/Jazz History II
3 credits
MUS 3100/Jazz Repertoire VI
2 credits
MUS 4420/Jazz Arranging II
2.5 credits
Senior Year: 17 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 4070/Jazz Repertoire VII
2 credits
Music elective
2 credits
Spring:
8 credits
MPE 4 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 4880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 1700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 4080/Jazz Repertoire VIII
2 credits
MPE 4992/Senior Recital: Jazz
1 credit
Master of Music requirements:
Graduate music majors who concentrate in jazz studies must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MCO 5180/Contemporary Trends in Jazz Composition
2 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5350/Topics in Jazz Seminar
3 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MCO 5190/Jazz Composition Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5360/Seminar in Jazz Styles
3 credits
MPE 5992/Master’s Recital: Jazz
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
10 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
MUS 5310/Advanced Jazz Arranging I
3 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5320/Advanced Jazz Arranging II
3 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
MPE 5992/Master’s Recital: Jazz
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in jazz studies, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5310/Advanced Jazz Arranging I or
MUS 5350/Topics in Jazz Seminar
3 credits
MUS 5900/Independent Study
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5310/Advanced Jazz Arranging I or
MUS 5350/Topics in Jazz Seminar
3 credits
MUS 5900/Independent Study
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in jazz, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5310/Advanced Jazz Arranging I or
MUS 5350/Topics in Jazz Seminar
3 credits
MUS 5900/Independent Study
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5994/Performers Certificate Recital
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
3 credits
MPE 5700/Jazz Combos
2 credits
MUS 5310/Advanced Jazz Arranging I or
MUS 5350/Topics in Jazz Seminar
3 credits
MUS 5900/Independent Study
1 credit
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5 —/Private Study: Instrument
or MPE 5880/Private Study: Jazz Voice
Studio composition at Purchase College began in 1986, on the 100th anniversary of the first viable sound recording.
The studio composition program provides talented and ambitious writers with intensive preparation in the craft of musical composition, especially in the recorded media. The hallmarks of this program are:
hands-on studio experience
thorough training in conventional and unconventional music
small-group study with acclaimed professional writers
a working community of artistic peers
a tradition of alumni success
In sum, the studio composition program offers a friendly, artistic community whose tradition of excellence produces hundreds of new musical compositions every year.
All studio composers write and produce two significant original projects (undergraduate) or two master’s recitals (graduate). These can be either recorded, reviewed in score form, or performed live. Many studio composition recitals feature multimedia collaboration with students in the other arts conservatories at Purchase College. Other recitals may occur at clubs and concert venues in New York City, as well as in professional recording studios. The program also functions closely with the studio production program, and collaborative accomplishment between these two programs is typical in classes, concerts, and recording sessions.
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate studio composition majors must complete the following conservatory requirements (97 credits). Of the 97 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
Spring:
14.5 credits
MCO 1410/Studio Composition Seminar
1 credit
MCO 2020/Models IV
3 credits
MCO 4120/Studio Composition Master Class
3 credits
MPE 2020/Keyboard Studies IV
1 credit
MTH 2425/Studio Ear Training IV
1.5 credits
MTH 2520/Survey of Music History II
3 credits
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
MPE 0302/Sophomore Studio Composition Jury
0 credit
Junior Year: 25 credits
Fall:
12 credits
MCO 3020/Models V
3 credits
MCO 3550/Studio Arranging I
2 credits
MCO 4120/Studio Composition Master Class
3 credits
MTH 3180/Electroacoustic Music I
2 credits
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
2 credits
Spring:
13 credits
MCO 3030/Models VI
3 credits
MCO 3555/Studio Arranging II
2 credits
MCO 4120/Studio Composition Master Class
3 credits
MTH 3190/Electroacoustic Music II
2 credits
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
2 credits
MPE 3993/Junior Recital: Studio Composition
1 credit
Senior Year: 15 credits
Fall:
7 credits
MCO 4120/Studio Composition Master Class
3 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
Music elective
2 credits
Spring:
8 credits
MCO 4120/Studio Composition Master Class
3 credits
Music electives
4 credits
MPE 4993/Senior Recital: Studio Composition
1 credit
*Music History Electives (Effective Fall 2020)
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Master of Music requirements:
Applicants to the conservatory’s MM concentration in studio composition are expected to demonstrate significant professional accomplishment upon entry into the program.
Graduate music majors in this concentration must meet the following conservatory requirements (42 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College.
First Year: 21 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5450/Seminar in Mixing and Engineering
2 credits
MCO, MTH, or MUS 5 —/Graduate seminar electives (two)
4 credits
MTH 5180/Electroacoustic Music I
2 credits
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO, MTH, or MUS 5 —/Graduate seminar electives (two)
4 credits
MTH 5190/Electroacoustic Music II
2 credits
MPE 5993/Master’s Recital: Studio Composition
1 credit
Second Year: 21 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5200/Writing and Production Seminar I
2 credits
MCO 5430/Advanced Songwriting
2 credits
MCO 5455/Seminar in Studio Design
2 credits
MCO 5460/Seminar in Studio Arranging
2 credits
Spring:
10 credits
MPE 5110/Private Study: Composition
3 credits
MCO 5210/Writing and Production Seminar II
2 credits
MCO 5445/Practical Techniques in Studio Composition
The undergraduate major in studio production is among the leading programs of its kind in the United States.
The program seeks a limited number of experienced producers and engineers who display advanced skills in recording, production, and associated technology. It is the quest of the studio production program and its faculty to develop producers who can ultimately work within a wide spectrum of musical genres with expertise, awareness, and understanding of each genre’s subtleties and traditions and with sharply honed technological, musical, and business skills. The faculty and alumni alike are established artists and producers, and many studio production students are professionals before they graduate.
The hallmarks of the studio production program include:
hands-on studio experience
thorough training in most musical genres, from hip-hop to Mozart
small-group study with professional producers
music theory and musicianship for producers
The curriculum offers hands-on lessons in each of the state-of-the-art recording facilities housed in the Conservatory of Music, plus a thorough grounding in the business of music. Additionally, studio production students engineer dozens of recitals for their fellow students in the conservatory, creating a synergy that is virtually exclusive to Purchase College. The program also functions closely with the studio composition program, and collaborative accomplishment between these two programs is typical in classes, concerts, and recording sessions.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate studio production majors must complete the following conservatory requirements (98 credits). Of the 98 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
MPE 0303/Sophomore Studio Production Jury
0 credit
Junior Year: 20 credits
Fall:
10.5 credits
MCO 2310/MIDI Composition I
2 credits
MCO 4125/Studio Production Master Class
3 credits
MCO 4711/Creative Production Techniques I
1.5 credits
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
2 credits
MUS 1250/Chorus or
MPE —/Instrumental ensemble elective
2 credits
Spring:
9.5 credits
MCO 2320/MIDI Composition II
2 credits
MCO 4125/Studio Production Master Class
3 credits
MCO 4721/Creative Production Techniques II
1.5 credits
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
2 credits
MPE 3995/Junior Production
1 credit
Senior Year: 23 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MCO 3500/Film Scoring I
2 credits
MCO 3712/Contracts, Copyrights, and Publishing
2 credits
MCO 4125/Studio Production Master Class
3 credits
MTH —/Music history elective*
2 credits
MUS 3770/Studio Apprenticeship
2 credits
Spring:
12 credits
MCO 3510/Film Scoring II
2 credits
MCO 3722/Touring, Promotion, and Distribution
2 credits
MCO 4125/Studio Production Master Class
3 credits
MUS 3770/Studio Apprenticeship
2 credits
Music elective
2 credits
MPE 4950/Senior Production
1 credit
*Music History Electives (Effective Fall 2020)
MUS 1060/Reflections Western Music
MTH 1560/Introduction to World Music
MTH 2130/Music and Politics, 1800-1950
MTH 3170/Techniques of Composition for Performers
MTH 3400/History of Jazz I
MTH 3450/History of Jazz II
MTH 3520/Disruption and Art Music
MTH 3575/Music from Antiquity
MTH 3576/Music of the Common Practice Era
MTH 3577/Expansion of Chromaticism
MTH 3578/Music Since 1945
MTH 3600/The Music of J. S. Bach
MTH 3620/Music of Beethoven
MTH 3630/Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt
MTH 3670/Mahler and Strauss
MTH 3680/Shostakovich and The Soviet Era
MTH 4075/Post-Tonal Theory & Analysis
MTH 4120/History of Recorded Music I
MTH 4130/History of Recorded Music II
MTH 4340/World Traditions in Music
MUS 4520/Trends in Music in Society
Vocal performance at Purchase College is a small, highly selective program designed to train and mentor serious students in their pursuit of a career in professional classical singing and opera.
This is achieved through a highly disciplined and completely integrated curriculum taught by a talented, committed, and caring faculty, all of whom were or are active, first-class performing artists.
Our working mantra is “learning to perform requires performing to learn.” To that end, every class has a performing component whenever possible. In particular, the program is noted for its excellent instruction of vocal technique, stage technique, movement, language studies, and musical styles.
The program’s operas, which are performed primarily by undergraduates, are routinely praised for their inventiveness and professionalism and have won several annual National Opera Association awards.
Bachelor of Music Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, undergraduate vocal performance majors must complete the following conservatory requirements (116 credits).
Of the 116 credits, up to 8 credits of music history may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree. Language courses (FRE, GER, ITA) may also be applied toward this requirement.
Graduate music majors who concentrate in voice and opera studies must meet the following conservatory requirements (45 credits) and earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA at Purchase College.
First Year: 22 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5253/Opera Workshop Lab
1 credit
MPE 5260/Opera Coaching
1 credit
MPE 5275/Teaching Techniques for Voice or
MUS 5250/Chorus
2 credits
MTH 5000/Research and Writing for the Modern Musician
2 credits
Spring:
11 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5253/Opera Workshop Lab
1 credit
MPE 5255/Operatic Styles I
2 credits
MPE 5260/Opera Coaching
1 credit
MUS 5250/Chorus
2 credits
Second Year: 23 credits
Fall:
11 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5253/Opera Workshop Lab
1 credit
MPE 5256/Operatic Styles II
2 credits
MPE 5260/Opera Coaching
1 credit
MPE 5275/Teaching Techniques for Voice or
MUS 5250/Chorus
2 credits
Spring:
12 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5253/Opera Workshop Lab
1 credit
MPE 5257/Operatic Styles III
2 credits
MPE 5260/Opera Coaching
1 credit
MPE 5276/Teaching Techniques for the Stage
2 credits
MPE 5991/Master’s Recital: Classical
1 credit
Music Artist Diploma Requirements:
To earn the Artist Diploma in opera studies, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
First Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MTH 5 —/Music theory/analysis elective
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5255/Operatic Styles I
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital
1 credit
Second Year: 18 credits
Fall:
9 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5256/Operatic Styles II
2 credits
Graduate music elective
2 credits
Spring:
9 credits
MPE 5300/Private Study: Voice
3 credits
MPE 5250/Opera Workshop
2 credits
MPE 5257/Operatic Styles III
2 credits
MUS 5455/Topics in Professional Development
1 credit
MPE 5995/Artist Diploma Recital
1 credit
Music Performers Certificate Requirements:
To earn the Performers Certificate in opera studies, students must meet the following conservatory requirements (18 credits for the one-year program; 36 credits for the two-year program):
The professional actor training program is a four-year sequential course of study in acting—voice, speech, movement for actors, dramatic structure, and history of the theatre, supplemented by offerings in stage combat, performance improvisation, mask work, acting for camera, makeup, and audition technique.
The schedule is rigorous; in a typical week, a student works directly with faculty members for 27 to 40 hours and spends a comparable amount of time in preparation.
The first two years of training focus on the development of the actor’s imagination and an exploration of his or her inner resources as they relate to the external demands and skills of the craft.
During the third and fourth years, classroom work continues, and the principles learned in the first two years are applied rigorously in rehearsal and performance. Purchase Repertory Theatre productions provide a wide range of experience, from the contemporary to the classic, and are directed by visiting professionals as well as experienced resident faculty.
The acting BFA program is one of five in the nation that meets the standards of the Consortium of Conservatory Theatre Training Programs. In the fourth year, graduating seniors are presented to an invited audience of agents, producers, and casting directors in New York City and Los Angeles.
Please note: The acting BFA program does not offer training in musical theatre.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all acting majors must successfully complete the following requirements (110 credits).
Of the 110 credits, up to 8 credits of theatre history (ACT 1250 and 2100) may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
ACT 2700/Introduction to Rehearsal and Performance
1 credit
*Part Two
Junior Year: 29 credits
Fall:
16 credits
ACT 3010/Acting III
3 credits
ACT 3160/Speech III
2 credits
ACT 3210/Voice III
2 credits
ACT 3310/Movement III
2 credits
ACT 3365/Stage Combat II
1 credit
ACT 3700/Rehearsal and Performance I
3 credits
ACT 3710/Rehearsal and Performance I*
3 credits
*Part Two
Spring:
13 credits
ACT 3020/Acting III*
3 credits
ACT 3170/Speech III*
2 credits
ACT 3220/Voice III*
2 credits
ACT 3320/Movement III*
2 credits
ACT 3670/Improvisation II
1 credit
ACT 3720/Rehearsal and Performance I (Part Three)
3 credits
*Part Two
Senior Year: 28 credits
Fall:
14 credits
ACT 4010/Acting IV
3 credits
ACT 4250/Voice and Speech IV
2 credits
ACT 4310/Movement IV
2 credits
ACT 4550/Acting for Camera
1 credit
ACT 4700/Rehearsal and Performance II
3 credits
ACT 4710/Rehearsal and Performance II*
3 credits
*Part Two
Spring:
14 credits
ACT 4020/Acting IV*
3 credits
ACT 4255/Voice and Speech IV*
2 credits
ACT 4320/Movement IV*
2 credits
ACT 4500/The Business of Acting
1 credit
ACT 4720/Rehearsal and Performance II (Part Three)
3 credits
ACT 4730/Rehearsal and Performance II (Part Four)
3 credits
*Part Two
Policy on Casting and Production
All students work in productions as cast. Because of the rigorous nature of the acting program, all coursework and extracurricular work or projects must be approved in advance by the student’s faculty advisor. If a student becomes involved with such a project or work without the knowledge and consent of the student’s faculty advisor, the student may be subject to probation and/or dismissal.
Development of the basic acting instrument through exercises that promote relaxation, sensory awareness, expressiveness, logical stage behavior, and creative interaction with fellow performers. Beginning character and scene work emphasize various intellectual and instinctive approaches, such as script analysis and improvisation.
Credits: 3
Department: Acting
Development of the basic acting instrument through exercises that promote relaxation, sensory awareness, expressiveness, logical stage behavior, and creative interaction with fellow performers. Beginning character and scene work emphasize various intellectual and instinctive approaches, such as script analysis and improvisation.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT1010 Or TAC1010
Department: Acting
In-depth analysis of selected dramatic texts to identify elements of structure, character, and language and to understand their function in creating the dynamics of dramatic action. Explores the active purposes of analytic terminology for the actor to gain awareness of action as a basic creative process for theatre. Selected plays are used.
Credits: 2
Department: Acting
Students work on basic acting skills, e.g., developing the ability to produce free, imaginative, and purposeful behavior in relation to environments, objects, and other persons; individual silent exercises; and group exercises. This work leads to in-class performances of selected scenes from a variety of American contemporary plays, with special focus on the sensory requirements in the text. No previous experience required.
Credits: 3
Department: Acting
An enlightening approach to learning the sounds of Standard American speech for clear articulation, without emphasis on “correct” speech. Students become fluent in their use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, as a means of “training the ear” in preparation for dialects.
Credits: 2
Department: Acting
An enlightening approach to learning the sounds of Standard American speech for clear articulation, without emphasis on “correct” speech. Students become fluent in their use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, as a means of “training the ear” in preparation for dialects.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT1160 Or TAC1160
Department: Acting
Basic work on freeing the actor’s natural voice. Alignment, relaxation, breathing, production of vibration, and exercises in recognizing habits and beginning to free the voice from physical and psychological tension. Exploration of vocal expression and emotion. Fundamentals of voice/text work.
Credits: 2
Department: Acting
Basic work on freeing the actor’s natural voice. Alignment, relaxation, breathing, production of vibration, and exercises in recognizing habits and beginning to free the voice from physical and psychological tension. Exploration of vocal expression and emotion. Fundamentals of voice/text work.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT1210 Or TAC1210
Department: Acting
A study of Aristotle’s Poetics, plus an in-depth analysis of dramatic structures (form, theme, style, genre, and characterization) as applied to selected plays and films.
Credits: 4
Department: Acting
Teaches the actor how to actualize essential information and awareness through exercises that explore relaxation, breathing, muscular stretching, and alignment work. The practice of kinesthetic sense development and spatial relationships, along with awareness of body language and the sharpening of the senses, helps support the development of other skills (e.g., voice, speech, alternate movement styles).
Credits: 2
Department: Acting
Teaches the actor how to actualize essential information and awareness through exercises that explore relaxation, breathing, muscular stretching, and alignment work. The practice of kinesthetic sense development and spatial relationships, along with awareness of body language and the sharpening of the senses, helps support the development of other skills (e.g., voice, speech, alternate movement styles).
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT1310 Or TAC1310
Department: Acting
Beginning with basic, unarmed stage combat, students are drilled in use of the sword. An emphasis on fencing with foil épée and saber helps students attain better coordination and focus, as well as the practical applications thereof. In the latter part of the class, which is dedicated to the quarterstaff and its use, students explore this weapon through exercises and choreography.
Credits: 1
Department: Acting
Actors learn the art and language of images, imagination, physical creativity, and physical comedy. Such techniques as neutral and character mask work, improvisation, and storytelling free the actors’ bodies of excessive thinking while strengthening and honing their imagination, allowing them to create potent performances and deep character work.
Credits: 1
Department: Acting
An intensive workshop focused on building an understanding of the techniques and applications of improvisatory practice.
Credits: 1
Department: Acting
A continuation and extension of first-year work, with particular emphasis on characterization, text analysis, and techniques of various stylistic demands.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT1020 Or TAC1020
Department: Acting
A continuation and extension of first-year work, with particular emphasis on characterization, text analysis, and techniques of various stylistic demands. Leads to performance in a full stage production.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT2010 Or TAC2010
Department: Acting
A study of the history of world theatres from their origins through the present.
Credits: 4
Department: Acting
A progression of first-year work, brought to classical texts with strong emphasis on Shakespeare. Includes awareness of the devices of language and poetry necessary for speaking verse. Continued use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, followed by beginning dialect work.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT1170 Or TAC1170
Department: Acting
A progression of first-year work, brought to classical texts with strong emphasis on Shakespeare. Includes awareness of the devices of language and poetry necessary for speaking verse. Continued use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, followed by beginning dialect work.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT2160 Or TAC2160
Department: Acting
Continued work on freeing the actor’s natural voice, developing a voice in contact with emotional impulse, and strengthening this connection. Work on extending the voice.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT1220 Or TAC1220
Department: Acting
Continued work on freeing the actor’s natural voice, developing a voice in contact with emotional impulse, and strengthening this connection. Work on extending the voice.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT2210 Or TAC2210
Department: Acting
An introduction to modern dance technique, emphasizing kinesthetic and anatomical awareness of the body. Concepts include strength emulating from the center, skeletal alignment, mobility in the torso, turn out, use of breath, connection to the floor, gravity, dynamic quality, musicality, and the body’s relationship to the proscenium space and to other performers. Includes exercises to warm up the body and develop muscle tone, agility, and fluidity of movement.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT1320 Or TAC1320
Department: Acting
An introduction to modern dance technique, emphasizing kinesthetic and anatomical awareness of the body. Concepts include strength emulating from the center, skeletal alignment, mobility in the torso, turn out, use of breath, connection to the floor, gravity, dynamic quality, musicality, and the body’s relationship to the proscenium space and to other performers. Includes exercises to warm up the body and develop muscle tone, agility, and fluidity of movement.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT2310 Or TAC2310
Department: Acting
In the second semester of this pedagogy, actors continue to deepen their experience with the first semester’s work, moving from exploring new freedom and power into intentional direction, specificity, and control. Actors learn how to use form, image, and technique to create and perform from pure inspiration.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: ACT1410 Or TAC1410
Department: Acting
Makeup begins with basic corrective work on the student’s own facial structure and progresses to characterization work with hair, putty, and beards, aiming throughout to learn the makeup requirements of the major style periods and specialties like fantasy characters, animals, and clowns.
Credits: 1
Department: Acting
Makeup begins with basic corrective work on the student’s own facial structure and progresses to characterization work with hair, putty, and beards, aiming throughout to learn the makeup requirements of the major style periods and specialties like fantasy characters, animals, and clowns.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: ACT2610 Or TAC2610
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and added performance of selected plays produced before the public.
Credits: 1
Department: Acting
Students create original stories from various sources of inspiration and gain the theatrical tools to tell them. The course focuses on ensemble creation and covers such areas as mime, heightened character, tréteaux, soundscapes, and object manipulation. Requirements include performing, directing, writing, and making props. Designed to help students get in touch with their creative side in a supportive group atmosphere. A background in performance/high school theatre is beneficial but not required.
Credits: 3
Department: Acting
Acting techniques applied to more complex dramatic forms, including genres in which language and characterization are particularly demanding. Theatre periods and special authors for whom style skills are developed may include some or all of the following: Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration, Molière.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT2020 Or TAC2020
Department: Acting
Acting techniques applied to more complex dramatic forms, including genres in which language and characterization are particularly demanding. Theatre periods and special authors for whom style skills are developed may include some or all of the following: Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration, Molière.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT3010 Or TAC3010
Department: Acting
After the first two years of study, students are able to speak in a standard contemporary American accent and to meet the additional demands of classic texts. In the third year, actors use their newfound skills to learn various American and international dialects. The spring semester includes more advanced work on dialects.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT2170 Or TAC2170
Department: Acting
After the first two years of study, students are able to speak in a standard contemporary American accent and to meet the additional demands of classic texts. In the third year, actors use their newfound skills to learn various American and international dialects. The spring semester includes more advanced work on dialects.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT3160 Or TAC3160
Department: Acting
Developing the actor’s natural voice. Emphasis is on developing vocal strength, range, variety, texture, coloration, and the connection with thought and feeling. Sound and movement exercises enlarge the voice and develop vocal stamina and sensitivity through detailed work on contemporary and classical texts.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT2220 Or TAC2220
Department: Acting
Developing the actor’s natural voice. Emphasis is on developing vocal strength, range, variety, texture, coloration, and the connection with thought and feeling. Sound and movement exercises enlarge the voice and develop vocal stamina and sensitivity through detailed work on contemporary and classical texts.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT3210 Or TAC3210
Department: Acting
Third-year, intermediate-level modern dance technique. Students are given combinations that are lengthier, with more intricate floor patterns and spatial relationships between dancers, gesture articulation at a more advanced level, richer musical and dynamic choices, a deeper vocabulary of movement, and an introduction to partnering techniques.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT2320 Or TAC2320
Department: Acting
Third-year, intermediate-level modern dance technique. Students are given combinations that are lengthier, with more intricate floor patterns and spatial relationships between dancers, gesture articulation at a more advanced level, richer musical and dynamic choices, a deeper vocabulary of movement, and an introduction to partnering techniques.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT3310 Or TAC3310
Department: Acting
Covers the rapier and dagger, traditional weapons of Shakespeare’s day, and the broadsword, a classic medieval weapon. Rapier and dagger training picks up from single sword technique, with the second weapon added to the nondominant hand. Students practice this double-fence style until they can use both weapons with facility. Broadsword basics include rudimentary footwork and guards of the weapon, cut and parry drills, and exploration of styles and choreography.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: ACT1355 Or TAC1355
Department: Acting
Continued exploration of improvisatory technique for advanced acting students.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: ACT1670 Or TAC1670
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This three-course sequence (ACT 3700, 3710, and 3720) is required of all acting majors in their junior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT2020 Or TAC2020
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This three-course sequence (ACT 3700, 3710, and 3720) is required of all acting majors in their junior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT2020 Or TAC2020
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This three-course sequence (ACT 3700, 3710, and 3720) is required of all acting majors in their junior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT2020 Or TAC2020
Department: Acting
Advanced acting, which may include one or more areas of special studies, like in-depth work on a role, audition techniques, or preparation for rehearsal. Career development is emphasized.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT3020 Or TAC3020
Department: Acting
Advanced acting, which may include one or more areas of special studies, like in-depth work on a role, audition techniques, or preparation for rehearsal. Career development is emphasized.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT4010 Or TAC4010
Department: Acting
Every actor has a unique vocal instrument. This course focuses on methods used to develop the speaking voice and integrate it with good speech while staying true to one’s self. Emphasis is placed on deepening the connection between voice, body, and mind through exercises, warmups, and focused work on both classical and contemporary texts.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: (ACT3220 Or TAC3220 ) And (TAC3170 Or ACT3170 )
Department: Acting
Every actor has a unique vocal instrument. This course focuses on methods used to develop the speaking voice and integrate it with good speech while staying true to one’s self. Emphasis is placed on deepening the connection between voice, body, and mind through exercises, warmups, and focused work on both classical and contemporary texts.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT4250 Or TAC4250
Department: Acting
The culmination of all previous movement classes, plus an introduction of basic yoga techniques that include meditation and the ability to focus.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT3320 Or TAC3320
Department: Acting
The culmination of all previous movement classes, plus an introduction of basic yoga techniques that include meditation and the ability to focus.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: ACT4310 Or TAC4310
Department: Acting
Prepares students to make the transition into the professional acting world. Topics include how to attract and keep an agent, headshot and résumé requirements, auditioning, making and using a business plan, writing cover letters, unions, contracts, and marketing techniques. Sessions with a New York casting director are included.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: ACT3020 Or TAC3020
Department: Acting
Students apply the tools and vocabularies developed in studio work to acting in front of the camera. The physical freedoms and limitations of particular shots, from handheld to extreme close-up, are examined. The professional audition is replicated, and techniques for working on location are developed. Throughout the course, students view footage from features and rough cuts, independent films, television, actor’s reels, and audition tapes.
Credits: 1
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This four-course sequence (ACT 4700, 4710, 4720, and 4730) is required of all acting majors in their senior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT3720 Or TAC3720
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This four-course sequence (ACT 4700, 4710, 4720, and 4730) is required of all acting majors in their senior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT3720 Or TAC3720
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This four-course sequence (ACT 4700, 4710, 4720, and 4730) is required of all acting majors in their senior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT3720 Or TAC3720
Department: Acting
Rehearsal and performance of selected plays produced before the public. This four-course sequence (ACT 4700, 4710, 4720, and 4730) is required of all acting majors in their senior year. It covers separate conservatory productions, which are presented across a two-semester period.
The professional BFA training program in theatre design/technology places major emphasis on studio/classroom training under the guidance of established working professionals. Students learn every aspect of theatre design and technology.
Professional training requires a logical and sequential conservatory program. The freshman year is an exploratory common program that stresses fundamental coursework and assigned tasks on actual productions. After the freshman year, the following concentrations are available:
Advanced study and practice in one or more of these areas occupies the second, third, and fourth years. Concurrent with these studies, a balance of liberal arts courses is also available to equip the candidate to function as a mature theatre professional.
Professional Training Facilities
The unparalleled technical and design resources of the Performing Arts Center—and its busy schedule of dance, musical, and dramatic productions—provide students with professional experiences few commercial theatres can match. Classes are conducted in modern design studios, where students have their own workspace and personal drawing tables. Private and semiprivate design studios are often provided for juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Opportunities for apprenticeships in professional studios and shops in New York City and throughout the country provide valuable career-related experience and contacts.
About Our Alumni
More than 86 percent of theatre design/technology graduates are working in their chosen profession. Many alumni are now members of USA local 829, IATSE, and AEA and have received Tony, Emmy, Obie, and Drama Desk Awards, among other honors. Their extensive design credits include Broadway, Off Broadway, dance, film, television, industrials, and Las Vegas.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors must complete the following requirements. Up to 8 credits of theatre history (ACT 1250 and 2100) may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the degree.
Freshman Year (all students): 25 credits
Fall:
13 credits
ACT 1250/Dramatic Structure
4 credits
TDT 1100/Stagecraft*
3 credits
TDT 1120/Production I*
3 credits
TDT 1200/Design Fundamentals*
3 credits
*Prerequisite for all courses above the 1000 level
Spring:
12 credits
TDT 1080/Drafting
3 credits
TDT 1110/Stagecraft*
3 credits
TDT 1130/Production I*
3 credits
TDT 1210/Design Fundamentals*
3 credits
*Part Two
Sophomore through Senior Year: Academic Requirements by Concentration
First-year acting majors are given crew assignments on conservatory productions.
Credits: 1
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Basic drafting skills for professional theatrical applications. Lettering, line weight, measuring, drawing with accuracy and clarity, drafting conventions, dimensioning, and drafting simple units and theatre plans and sections. Ground plans and elevations of each flat with details of door and panel moldings, all with descriptive cross-sections showing dimensions. Students must purchase their own supplies.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the basic materials and techniques used in scene, costume, and lighting production, presented in lecture and studio situations. Intended to equip the student with the skills required to work on productions.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the basic materials and techniques used in scene, costume, and lighting production, presented in lecture and studio situations. Intended to equip the student with the skills required to work on productions.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A studio course in which freshmen are assigned to the scene, prop, costume, electric, and paint crews on a rotating basis. Intended as a reinforcement of the methodologies taught in TDT 1100 and 1110.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A studio course in which freshmen are assigned to the scene, prop, costume, electric, and paint crews on a rotating basis. Intended as a reinforcement of the methodologies taught in TDT 1100 and 1110.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the process of theatrical design in which a broad spectrum of plays is assigned. Includes script and character analysis, the development of visual concepts, sketches, and renderings, and the use of color and motif.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the process of theatrical design in which a broad spectrum of plays is assigned. Includes script and character analysis, the development of visual concepts, sketches, and renderings, and the use of color and motif.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A practical introduction to score reading for theatrical stage managers and designers. Existing musical scores of varying levels of difficulty are used to teach musical vocabulary, tempo, and dynamic markings, and instrumental names and notation in their traditional Italian, French, and German languages. Required for and limited to theatre design/technology majors concentrating in stage management.
Credits: 1
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to theories of technical production, methods, and planning, with emphasis on advanced technical drafting of scenery and safety practices.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1110
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to theories of technical production, methods, and planning, with emphasis on advanced technical drafting of scenery and safety practices.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1110
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which sophomores are assigned to crew head or other crew positions. Intended as a reinforcement of methodologies taught in TDT 1100, 1110, 1120, and 1130.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which sophomores are assigned to crew head or other crew positions. Intended as a reinforcement of methodologies taught in TDT 1100, 1110, 1120, and 1130.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An exploration of the techniques of large-scale, realistic painting through a series of critiqued exercises in the rendering of various materials and textures.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An exploration of the techniques of large-scale, realistic painting through a series of critiqued exercises in the rendering of various materials and textures.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Training in costume construction: hand-sewing techniques, machine operations, pattern layout, and fabric identifications.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Training in costume construction: hand-sewing techniques, machine operations, pattern layout, and fabric identifications.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Craft training in the construction of stage properties: learning basic approaches to upholstery and drapery, learning different sculpturing techniques, and creating prop lists with an emphasis on research, both historical and pictorial. Visual resources are used to push students out of their comfort zone in the ways they approach projects (both independently and in groups, depending on the project). (This is not a two-semester sequence: TDT 2180, offered in the fall, is the same course as TDT 2190, offered in the spring.)
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Craft training in the construction of stage properties: learning basic approaches to upholstery and drapery, learning different sculpturing techniques, and creating prop lists with an emphasis on research, both historical and pictorial. Visual resources are used to push students out of their comfort zone in the ways they approach projects (both independently and in groups, depending on the project). (This is not a two-semester sequence: TDT 2180, offered in the fall, is the same course as TDT 2190, offered in the spring.)
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Basic principles and practice of scene design, including script analysis. Composition and focus in scene design, developing acting areas, entrances, exits, and movement patterns. Research period architecture, art, and dress while refining drafting skills: complete ground plans and sections with masking, fully drafted elevations, color sketches, and a white model. All of these areas have preliminary, refined, and finished stages. Fall: Greek play with classical elements in period and Molière play with limitations of period style. Spring: Modern plays, one with exterior and one with period interior box set with ceiling.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1080 And TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Basic principles and practice of scene design, including script analysis. Composition and focus in scene design, developing acting areas, entrances, exits, and movement patterns. Research period architecture, art, and dress while refining drafting skills: complete ground plans and sections with masking, fully drafted elevations, color sketches, and a white model. All of these areas have preliminary, refined, and finished stages. Fall: Greek play with classical elements in period and Molière play with limitations of period style. Spring: Modern plays, one with exterior and one with period interior box set with ceiling.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1080 And TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An expansion of the theories and practices of stagecraft in a studio setting. Includes standard practices involved in stagecraft and accepted construction techniques.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: TDT1110
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to concept, costume rendering, character extension, and historical research.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to concept, costume rendering, character extension, and historical research.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to concept-based lighting design in the theatre. Through play analysis and practical lab exercises, students begin to comprehend the connections between color, equipment, angles of light, etc. and how these are used to support their ideas and feelings on stage. Students also obtain a basic knowledge of lighting rendering, equipment, history, theory, drafting, etc., and have the opportunity to observe working professionals during technical and dress rehearsals of outside productions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to concept-based lighting design in the theatre. Through play analysis and practical lab exercises, students begin to comprehend the connections between color, equipment, angles of light, etc. and how these are used to support their ideas and feelings on stage. Students also obtain a basic knowledge of lighting rendering, equipment, history, theory, drafting, etc., and have the opportunity to observe working professionals during technical and dress rehearsals of outside productions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on the development of painting and sketching techniques in all categories of theatre design. The primary goal is to assist student designers and technicians in pictorial explanations of their ideas.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: TDT1080 And TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on the development of painting and sketching techniques in all categories of theatre design. The primary goal is to assist student designers and technicians in pictorial explanations of their ideas.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: TDT1080 And TDT1210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to audio for the theatre, covering the basic principles of sound design, reinforcement, equipment and technology, live recording, editing, and show control.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Lectures and research assignments in historical modes of decorative art and ornamentation (Greek through 18th century).
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the fundamental skills of stage management through each phase of the production process: preproduction, first rehearsal, rehearsal period, preparing for the tech, technical rehearsals, previews, opening, running of the show, and closing.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the fundamental skills of stage management through each phase of the production process: preproduction, first rehearsal, rehearsal period, preparing for the tech, technical rehearsals, previews, opening, running of the show, and closing.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A survey of costume design that covers the creation of icons and myths as well as attempts to reinvent history by exploring self-definitions as individuals and groups, and by looking at people’s need to express their subconscious and define themselves in historical context. R-rated films may contain some adult material (hard language, intense or persistent violence, sexually oriented nudity, drug abuse or other elements).
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
The study of professionals, shops, and organizations that have played an important role in realizing productions, events, and other live entertainment presentations. The histories of prominent individuals and companies are explored to help piece together an understanding of how the modern production process works. Assignments include research papers and presentations on individuals, organizations, and/or production shops.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on the advanced technologies needed to understand and build complete structures. Topics include live load and structural computations, wood vs. steel structures, and rigging practices for large loads. An intensive research/drafting project is required.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2090
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on the advanced technologies needed to understand and build complete structures. Topics include live load and structural computations, wood vs. steel structures, and rigging practices for large loads. An intensive research/drafting project is required.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2090
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which juniors are assigned to designer/technical director, crew head, and/or other crew positions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which juniors are assigned to designer/technical director, crew head, and/or other crew positions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Familiarizes students who are interested in a career in costume construction and/or design with the basics of textiles and related crafts. Focuses on textile identification, fiber classifications and painting, distressing/aging, and other related textile crafts.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Familiarizes students who are interested in a career in costume construction and/or design with the basics of textiles and related crafts. Focuses on textile identification, fiber classifications and painting, distressing/aging, and other related textile crafts.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Students learn to develop a cohesive, unified design for a multiset show. Topics include finding design elements that flow through each set to give the sense of style and unity, working out ground plans and scene changes to assure speed and practicality, and using historical plays from several periods to evoke a sense for period style. Full drafting and model building with intensive work on sketching and rendering techniques to develop presentation-quality sketches.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Students learn to develop a cohesive, unified design for a multiset show. Topics include finding design elements that flow through each set to give the sense of style and unity, working out ground plans and scene changes to assure speed and practicality, and using historical plays from several periods to evoke a sense for period style. Full drafting and model building with intensive work on sketching and rendering techniques to develop presentation-quality sketches.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A continuation of TDT 2310, with emphasis on character and script analysis and on developing skills in color, line, proportion, scale, movement, and rhythm. Study involves historical reality and stylization with projects that address design theory and practical problems, research and chart making, as well as conceptualizing designs for dance, drama, and opera. Rendering technique workshops are included.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2310
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A continuation of TDT 2310, with emphasis on character and script analysis and on developing skills in color, line, proportion, scale, movement, and rhythm. Study involves historical reality and stylization with projects that address design theory and practical problems, research and chart making, as well as conceptualizing designs for dance, drama, and opera. Rendering technique workshops are included.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2310
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A course in the foundation skills necessary for safe and dramatically effective techniques of staged combat.
Credits: 1
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A course in the foundation skills necessary for safe and dramatically effective techniques of staged combat.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2410
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Continued study of lighting design principles, with emphasis on drafting and design of full-scale, concept-based light plots for the theatre.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2410
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on the materials and methods used to construct scenic models for the designer. Students learn techniques that allow them to build accurate presentation models and work safely with various materials.
Credits: 1
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Covers the computer-aided drafting and graphic standards for lighting design used in the industry. Extensive out-of-class work is required. Required for design/technology majors who are concentrating in lighting design.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1080
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
The problems, requirements, and relationship of the stage manager to the director. This seminar deals with script analysis and technique of the designer, as well as the position of the actor as an instrument of the director and the play.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Thinking like a stage manager; the psychology of management; critical thinking, collaboration, conflict resolution, problem solving, principled negotiation, and leadership tools. Advanced stage management skills, e.g., calling a show, public speaking, scheduling, theatrical unions and contracts, preparing a Broadway musical, and the ins and outs of working as a professional freelance stage manager.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2610
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Thinking like a stage manager; the psychology of management; critical thinking, collaboration, conflict resolution, problem solving, principled negotiation, and leadership tools. Advanced stage management skills, e.g., calling a show, public speaking, scheduling, theatrical unions and contracts, preparing a Broadway musical, and the ins and outs of working as a professional freelance stage manager.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT2610
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Examines the fundamental techniques and information needed for managing commercial and nonprofit theatrical productions. Students gain a working knowledge of union contracts, pricing, human resources, new media, publicity, and the rise of demand pricing, as well as contract negotiation and conflict resolution. The working relationships between the stage manager and producer(s) are also explored.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
This detailed look at the position of a production manager on Broadway takes students from the design process to the load-out of a show and introduces them to the inner workings of a Broadway musical and play.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the theories and practices of computer-aided drafting for theatrical productions, including how to draw and organize DWG files so that a designer can express his or her designs to anyone working in the field. Emphasis is also placed on communication skills to help students become comfortable discussing projects with directors, other designers, and future employers. Includes in-class participation, lectures, practical exercises, and critiques. (This is not a two-semester sequence: TDT 3700, offered in the fall, is the same course as TDT 3710, offered in the spring.)
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1080
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An introduction to the theories and practices of computer-aided drafting for theatrical productions, including how to draw and organize DWG files so that a designer can express his or her designs to anyone working in the field. Emphasis is also placed on communication skills to help students become comfortable discussing projects with directors, other designers, and future employers. Includes in-class participation, lectures, practical exercises, and critiques. (This is not a two-semester sequence: TDT 3700, offered in the fall, is the same course as TDT 3710, offered in the spring.)
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT1080
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on creating the skill sets necessary to adapt students’ existing manual drawing and painting talents to the realm of computer-assisted media.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A seminar covering a mixture of advanced scenery construction techniques and the set of managerial skills required to be a working professional in the industry. Typically includes field trips to production venues in New York City, including shops, theatres, and studios, together with mock interviews and production/shop scenarios.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3090
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
A seminar covering a mixture of advanced scenery construction techniques and the set of managerial skills required to be a working professional in the industry. Typically includes field trips to production venues in New York City, including shops, theatres, and studios, together with mock interviews and production/shop scenarios.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3090
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which seniors are assigned to design, technical direct, assist, and hold crew head and/or crew positions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which seniors are assigned to design, technical direct, assist, and hold crew head and/or crew positions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which senior stage management and tech students staff conservatory productions on a supervisory level.
Credits: 6
PREREQ: TDT3130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An intensive studio course in which senior stage management and tech students staff conservatory productions on a supervisory level.
Credits: 6
PREREQ: TDT3130
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Fall: Construction techniques for dance costumes using stretch fabrics, including patterning, cutting, sewing, and fitting techniques. Also basic principles and construction of tutus and other classical dance costumes. Spring: Tailoring with an overview of the development of the three-piece suit (style details and construction). Basic techniques used in traditional tailoring and an exploration of theatrical methods of tailoring. Alteration techniques and some pattern making are included.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3170
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Fall: Construction techniques for dance costumes using stretch fabrics, including patterning, cutting, sewing, and fitting techniques. Also basic principles and construction of tutus and other classical dance costumes. Spring: Tailoring with an overview of the development of the three-piece suit (style details and construction). Basic techniques used in traditional tailoring and an exploration of theatrical methods of tailoring. Alteration techniques and some pattern making are included.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3170
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Design projects developed to meet the needs of each student. Furthers the skill sets needed to become a working professional in the many mediums of scenic design.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Design projects developed to meet the needs of each student. Furthers the skill sets needed to become a working professional in the many mediums of scenic design.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3210
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An advanced seminar in design techniques and practices of leading industry professionals.
Credits: 1
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Advanced design projects developed to meet the needs of each student. Furthers the skill sets needed to become a working professional in the many mediums of costume design.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3310
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Advanced design projects developed to meet the needs of each student. Furthers the skill sets needed to become a working professional in the many mediums of costume design.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3310
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Advanced work in concept-based lighting design, preparing students to enter the professional community. Through class projects, lab exercises, guest lectures, and field trips, students master a wide range of lighting design mediums (e.g., theatre, opera, dance, television, video, corporate theatre, architectural). Students are exposed to automated and advanced lighting equipment, control consoles, channel assignment theory, the business of lighting, and industry leaders.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3410
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Advanced work in concept-based lighting design, preparing students to enter the professional community. Through class projects, lab exercises, guest lectures, and field trips, students master a wide range of lighting design mediums (e.g., theatre, opera, dance, television, video, corporate theatre, architectural). Students are exposed to automated and advanced lighting equipment, control consoles, channel assignment theory, the business of lighting, and industry leaders.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3410
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
An analysis of current theatrical practices and the interaction of designer, technician, stage manager, actor, and director. Guest lecturers include leading industry figures who stress the various methods of collaboration.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on methods, practices, theory, and organizational structures specific to Broadway and other commercial production environments.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3610
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Focuses on methods, practices, theory, and organizational structures specific to Broadway and other commercial production environments.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: TDT3610
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Advanced studies in the art of scenery for film and television. Explores similarities to and differences from the theatrical model involved in the creation of the changing frame with varying camera angles.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre Design/Technology
Discussion of the skill sets, techniques, and requirements needed to enter the professional community.
The costume designers’ primary responsibility is to be part of the design team that transforms the words of a play into visual imageries.
They are involved in developing conceptual and artistic ideas that will be used to guide the imageries for a production. The conservatory encourages its students to discover their own processes of formulating design ideas and to develop a discriminating standard for their own endeavors. Above all, it prepares them for creative and meaningful professional lives in the broad range of theatre activities.
Designers learn to visualize the world of plays through the garments and clothing the actors wear while collaborating with directors, actors, other designers and technicians, and the professional staff and students in the costume shop. Students learn from a distinguished faculty of professional designers and artists, both in the classroom and through individual guidance and advising during production work.
Students receive formal and informal feedback from faculty through portfolio presentations of their work each year. In addition, classes in costume technology are also available—the costume technology artisan takes the costume designer’s vision and physically creates them. The four-year curriculum in many ways simulates a costume designer’s and a costume technician’s professional experience and process.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors concentrating in costume design must complete the following requirements (101 credits). ACT 1250 (freshman year) and ACT 2100 may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
The costume technician’s primary responsibility is to take the costume designer’s vision and physically create it.
They are involved in developing conceptual and artistic ideas that will be used to guide the imageries for a production. The conservatory encourages its students to discover their own processes of formulating design ideas and to develop a discriminating standard for their own endeavors. Above all, it prepares them for creative and meaningful professional lives in the broad range of theatre activities.
Designers learn to visualize the world of plays through the garments and clothing the actors wear while collaborating with directors, actors, other designers and technicians, and the professional staff and students in the costume shop. Students learn from a distinguished faculty of professional designers and artists, both in the classroom and through individual guidance and advising during production work.
Students receive formal and informal feedback from faculty through portfolio presentations of their work each year. The four-year curriculum in many ways simulates a costume designer’s and a costume technician’s professional experience and process.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors concentrating in costume technology must complete the following requirements (99 credits). ACT 1250 (freshman year) and ACT 2100 may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
The lighting designer’s primary responsibility is to develop conceptual and artistic ideas that will be used to guide the design of the lighting for a production.
As a member of the design team, the lighting designer has a significant impact on the visual unity of a production and is responsible for producing the light plot and all related paperwork. Working with the director, the other designers, and other members of the production staff, the lighting designer develops a cohesive design that supports the other aspects of design for the production and helps to create and define the environment of the production.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors concentrating in lighting design must complete the following requirements (98 credits). ACT 1250 (freshman year) and ACT 2100 may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
It is the responsibility of the scenic designer to collaborate with the director and develop the conceptual ideas that will inform the look and functionality of the scenic design.
The scenic designer must work closely with other members of the design team and communicate clearly—through technical drawings, color elevations, scale models, color renderings, and research—all the information necessary to realize the scenic design. Working with the director, the other designers, the technical director, and other members of the production staff, the scenic designer must develop a cohesive design that provides an effective setting for the production.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors concentrating in scenic design must complete the following requirements (99 credits). ACT 1250 (freshman year) and ACT 2100 may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
The stage manager is responsible for managing the rehearsal process of a production and acting as the liaison between the rehearsal process and the members of the production team.
In many cases, the stage manager is the one person working on a production who is responsible for coordination between all areas of a production. The stage manager is responsible for scheduling rehearsals and production meetings; tracking of blocking, props, scenic, and lighting changes; and a lengthy list of other duties. Working with the director, designers, and other members of the production, the stage manager plays a significant role in bringing a production together as a whole.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors concentrating in stage management must complete the following requirements (96.5 credits). ACT 1250 (freshman year) and ACT 2100 may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
The technical director, working collaboratively with the scenic designer and others, is responsible for the execution of the scenic elements of a production.
This process includes bidding, scheduling, developing technical elevations, supervising crews, budget management, and coordinating with the other departments that are working on the production. Additionally, the technical director is responsible for supervising and coordinating the load-in of scenery and other physical elements of the production into the theatre, helping to organize scene changes that involve moving scenery, and supervising the load-out of the production when the run is over.
The production manager does for the entire production much of what the technical director does for the scenic elements. Collaborating and working with the director, stage managers, designers, shop heads, and others, the production manager helps to ensure that the production as a whole is realized in the best possible way.
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all undergraduate theatre design/technology majors concentrating in technical direction/production management must complete the following requirements (103 credits). ACT 1250 (freshman year) and ACT 2100 may be counted toward the liberal arts requirement (30 credits minimum) for the BFA.
The BA major in theatre and performance is designed for the intellectually curious and creative student whose interests, while including traditional theatre, extend into making new and cutting-edge theatrical and interdisciplinary work.
The program combines academic scholarship and artistic practice, with particular emphasis on theatre as a forum for collaboration, experimentation, and social engagement.
In the foundation courses of the major, students gain a strong base in theatre history and dramatic literature, together with a production practicum. Courses in performance practice range from Fundamentals of Acting and Scene Study to Solo Performance and Ensemble Creation. Other elective courses include Directing, Dramaturgy, Playwriting, and Stage Management, as well as seminars on such topics as Asian theatre, avant-garde theatre, black American drama, documentary theatre, gameplay and performance, LGBTQ theatre, medieval and Renaissance drama, theories of theatre and performance, transmedia, and women in performance.
The BA major in theatre and performance provides a solid liberal arts education in the theatre, which can prepare students for further professional training, internships in the professional theatre, graduate studies, or other careers that require critical and creative thinking.
Working Onstage and Backstage
Students are encouraged to experience many aspects of theatrical production, and this BA program provides many opportunities to audition for roles and to work in a variety of capacities backstage in student- and faculty-directed productions. Enterprising students who have taken the necessary courses may write, design, direct, or perform in their own original productions, often as part of a senior project. Students receive academic credit for fulfilling the mandatory production crew requirement, as well as for participating as actors, designers, or stage managers in faculty-directed productions. Outstanding students may have the opportunity to assist on a BFA or BA production as a dramaturg or assistant director.
Studying Abroad and Across the Disciplines
Students are encouraged to take advantage of study abroad opportunities, since being socially conscious and globally aware is vitally important in today’s interconnected world. To broaden their knowledge, students are also encouraged to pursue relevant courses in other disciplines, such as anthropology, art history, arts management, cinema studies, dance, gender studies, literature, media, sociology, and the visual arts. Through a broad range of courses and experiences, students will develop unique perspectives on the relationship between theatre, performance, and society.
Across and Beyond the Conservatory of Theatre Arts
While the theatre and performance BA program has its own goals and curriculum, it regularly works with other programs in both the conservatory and the School of Film and Media Studies. Theatre and performance students collaborate with theatre design/technology students on senior projects and with playwriting and screenwriting students on the development of new plays. Members of the BFA acting faculty teach several courses offered to theatre and performance students, and there are also opportunities for advanced theatre and performance students to work as dramaturgs and assistant directors on productions of the Purchase Repertory Theatre.
Admission to the theatre and performance BA program is separate from and has no bearing on admission to the acting BFA program.
Performance Venues and Opportunities
The recently-built Center for Media, Film, and Theatre (CMFT) is the principle venue for faculty- and student-directed productions in the BA major in theatre and performance, including the BA Mainstage and THP Senior Project productions. In addition to the Humanities Theatre, students in the major have used alternative and nontraditional theatre spaces, particularly when developing independent projects with students clubs and organizations that present extracurricular performances. Students are also encouraged to see a wide range of performances by professional companies and other Conservatory of Theatre Arts productions at the Performing Arts Center.
Page updated 9-2-20
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all theatre and performance majors must meet the following requirements (45–49 credits).
Students who declare this major must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses required for the major, excluding the senior project. To progress in the major, students who do not meet this minimum grade standard must repeat the course(s).
Six foundation courses: 18 credits
THP 2020/Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies: 3 credits
THP 2200/Theatre and Performance Production: 2 credits*
THP 2205/Shakespeare Then and Now: 3 credits
THP 2885/Theatre Histories I: 3 credits
THP 2890/Theatre Histories II: 3 credits
THP 2895/Production Practicum: 4 credits
*THP 2200 is a 1-credit course that must be taken twice (2 credits total). Transfer students need to take it only one time (1 credit).
Five elective courses: 16–20 credits
Students choose five electives in consultation with their faculty advisor. Independent studies and internships cannot be used to satisfy this requirement. At least three of these electives must be upper level (3000 or 4000), including at least one in dramatic literature or theory. In most cases, courses taken to fulfill this upper-level electives requirement also fulfill the senior project prerequisites.
Synthesis courses: 11 credits
THP 3890/Junior Seminar: 3 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Internships and study abroad are highly recommended. Courses in other disciplines (outside the major) may count toward requirements for the major if approved in advance by the department chair.
Transfer students may meet some requirements for the major with courses taken elsewhere, subject to approval by the department chair and the registrar.
Junior Seminar and Senior Project
Students normally take the junior seminar (THP 3890) in the spring of their junior year, during which they develop and submit their senior project proposal for approval. The senior project is normally completed during the fall and spring of the senior year in one of the following areas (or a combination of these areas):
Directing
Writing for the stage or performance composition
Production (including stage managing or designing and executing the design for a production)
Performance practice (including acting a major role in a faculty-supervised student production or a faculty-directed production)
Alternative performance practices (e.g., solo or devised performance)
Theatre history, theory, or criticism (an academic essay)
Dramaturgy
All creative senior projects (in acting, directing, solo performance, design and writing for the stage) require a statement of artistic aims, a contextual research essay, and technical essay evaluating the process and results of the creative project.
Specific elective courses are prerequisites for each of these types of senior projects, as listed below. Students should consult closely with their faculty advisor to ensure that these courses have been completed by the end of the junior year.
In most cases, students must receive formal approval of their senior project proposal by the end of the junior seminar. Acceptance of proposals is not automatic—it is dependent on adequate student preparation and fulfillment of required courses, as well as faculty availability and expertise. Students may be asked to submit an alternate proposal or take additional courses before proceeding. The number of students pursuing a particular type of senior project may be limited, subject to approval by the theatre and performance faculty.
Advanced students who plan to explore the intersections of two or more areas in their senior project should consult with their faculty advisor well in advance to shape an acceptable course of study and senior project.
The following elective courses are prerequisites for (or strongly recommended prior to) the senior project. In most cases, courses taken to fulfill the upper-level electives requirement for the major also fulfill these senior project prerequisites.
Prerequisites (12 credits):
THP 3680/Directing I (4 credits)
THP 3681/Directing II (4 credits)
Choose (1) of the following
THP 3610/Contemporary Theatre (4 credits)
THP 3640/Theatre Design for Directors (4 credits)
THP 3730/Collaborative Directing and Devising (3 credits)
THP 3735/Embodied Images: Directing as Composition (4 credits)
THP 4150/Directing Chekhov (4 credits)
Recommended:
Internship, dramaturge, or assistant director experience with productions in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts (junior or senior year)
Prerequisites (8 credits):
PSW 1000/Playwriting I (4 credits)
PSW 2010/Playwriting II (4 credits)
or an alternative, approved course in performance composition
Prerequisites (10 credits):
THP 2800/Managing the Production (3 credits)
THP 3640/Theatre Design for Directors (4 credits)
An additional design or management course (3 credits) †
† Students who successfully complete THP 2895 and 3640 may be allowed to enroll in one or more of the following theatre design/technology courses:
TDT 2080/Theatre Technology I
TDT 2200/Scene Design I
TDT 2300/Costume Design I
TDT 2400/Lighting Design I
† Students who successfully complete THP 2800 may be allowed to enroll in the following theatre design/technology course:
TDT 2600/Introduction to Stage Management
Prerequisites (15 credits):
ACT 1055/Fundamentals of Acting (3 credits)
THP 2500/Movement for Performers I (2 credits)
THP 3050/Voice and Speech Essentials (3 credits)
THP 3070/Acting Scene Study (3 credits)
One course in performance composition, directing, or writing for the stage (4 credits)
Prerequisites (11–12 credits):
ACT 1055/Fundamentals of Acting (3 credits)
THP 2500/Movement for Performers I (2 credits)
THP 3050/Voice and Speech Essentials (3 credits)
THP —/One alternative performance-practices course in performance composition; for example:
THP 3510/Solo Performance: Performing the Self in Society (4 credits) or
THP 3685/Ensemble Creation (3 credits)
Prerequisites (8 credits):
THP 3250/Theories of Drama and Performance (4 credits)
An upper-level course in dramatic literature (4 credits)
Students who are planning a senior project in performance studies should consult with their faculty advisor about additional course options.
Prerequisites (8 credits):
THP 3000/Dramaturgy (4 credits)
THP 3500/Documentary Theatre: Performing Real Life (4 credits) or
PSW 1000/Playwriting I (4 credits) or THP 3680/Directing I (4 credits)
The minor in theatre and performance provides students with the opportunity to pursue an interest in the discipline without committing to the full array of requirements for the major.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Theatre and Performance
Five courses, to include:
Three of the following lower-level foundation courses:
THP 2020/Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies (3 credits)
THP 2205/Shakespeare Then and Now (3 credits)
THP 2885/Theatre Histories I (3 credits)
THP 2890/Theatre Histories II (3 credits)
THP 2895/Production Practicum (4 credits)
Plus two upper-level (3000–4000) electives in theatre and performance
How have myth, ritual, and performance functioned as ways to comprehend, organize, and even generate the world around us? What are the values and constraints of symbolic structures as they shape and influence bodies and environments? Students consider both structural and poststructural approaches to performance as a medium for exploring, but also transgressing, structures of everyday life.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: ANT1500 Or THP2020 Or MSA1050 Or MSA1050
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to styles of criticism and a practical course in writing short, critical essays (reviews) on the performing and visual arts. On-campus plays and films are assigned; students write about theatre, film, music, dance, painting, and other art forms.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: JOU2515
Department: Theatre and Performance
Critics agree that the world of the concentration camps and ghettoes is impossible to duplicate on stage. Despite serious aesthetic and practical constraints, playwrights in Europe, Israel, and America have, for the last five decades, created a diverse group of plays dealing with this unprecedented 20th-century event. Works examined in class include documentary dramas, realistic reenactments, absurdist plays, a comedy, and a standup routine.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
How does embodiment reveal shifting notions of race, gender, sexuality, and ability? Students read performance theory and explore contemporary representations of bodies as sites of display, resistance, and re-construction in literature, performance, and everyday practices in transnational and intersectional contexts. Authors include Ntozake Shange, NourbeSe Philip, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and David Henry Hwang.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores what the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas might have meant when he wrote that “all of philosophy may be found in the plays of Shakespeare.” The focus is on a close study of selected works, together with commentary by such thinkers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Derrida, Cavell, and Critchley. Plays include Hamlet, Richard II, Coriolanus, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, and King Lear.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2205 Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110
Department: Theatre and Performance
An exploration of revision techniques and strategies in a workshop environment. Students revise existing material through examinations of character, dialogue, and structure; text analysis; and other tools. First drafts and production drafts of contemporary American plays are also studied and discussed.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines the history and craft of storytelling in musical theatre. Students consider song topic and placement to structure a short original musical. The ability to read and write music is not required.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSW1000 And PSW1010
Department: Theatre and Performance
Exploring techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, this course uses the arsenal of Theatre of the Oppressed exercises as a process to further understand self, each other, and surrounding social systems. Individual project forms may vary (sculpture, writing, etc.). In addition, the class makes a forum theatre piece to be performed with the campus community.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
In this examination of the modern theatre of Spain and Latin America, students read and analyze plays from Spanish-speaking countries in their aesthetic and cultural contexts. When possible, students perform scenes from some of the plays.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explore improvisation and performance techniques through the practical study of theatre games as developed by Viola Spolin in her seminal book, “Improvization for the Theater.” Students study this text and practice Spolin’s games and those in her lineage as an introduction to improvisation, leading to longer-form exercises which culminate in an improvised performance at the end of the semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Studies the relationship of dramatic texts and performance from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present, using readings and performances on or near the campus, as well as film and video.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Integrates discussions, readings, presentations, viewings, and exercises to teach students an appreciation of the elements of both classical and contemporary theatre and performing arts. The acting techniques of Stanislavsky and Uta Hagen, among others, are used to analyze and understand classic modern drama. Students develop dramatic tools for creating new realities via acting and directing in both solo and group performances. Readings include works by Chekhov, Ibsen, Lorca, and Havel.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to dramatic literature and theory and to seeing, writing about, and participating in theatre and performance.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to the methods and goals of Applied Theatre, which generates theatre as a participatory community practice, often in non-traditional settings and with marginalized groups, focusing on issues of social justice, education, and human rights.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students work in a variety of capacities in productions within the theatre and performance program. Graded on a pass/fail basis.
Credits: 1
Department: Theatre and Performance
Selected plays spanning Shakespeare’s entire career. In addition to close reading and textual interpretation, students address questions and problems of performing, directing, lighting, costuming, and set designing Shakespeare’s plays. The course examines past and current trends in Shakespearean criticism, as well as the social and theatrical contexts in which the plays were first produced.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Learning from west African dancers, musicians, religious practitioners, and theater performers, students will dance daily, explore traditional/ritual based movement/music of indigenous religions/customs, and create sketches of daily life to explore and reflect on the customs and traditions of Beninese culture. Service learning will extend civic engagement for the same purposes.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students learn to transform poetry and personal stories into short plays and performance pieces. Poetry and movement are used to create choreopoems. Students also develop interview theatre pieces. Readings and/or video viewings include works by Ntozake Shange, Eve Ensler, and Anna Deavere Smith.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to dramatic movement for the stage. Technique, improvisation, repertoire, and composition are explored, using physical language. Students work on solos, duets, and in groups with text, objects, and music. Assignments include classroom presentations, readings, and papers. Videotapes are reviewed and discussed.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students learn skills involving unarmed staged fighting for theater and film, incorporating spatial awareness, body language and expression, and working with a partner in a physical capacity, with an emphasis on safety protocols and body autonomy.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
American drama considered primarily as a critique of American society, values, and life. Covers the period from 1916 to 1964, including plays by Susan Glaspell, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, and Edward Albee.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to stage management, production, and company management. Students who successfully complete this course may be allowed to take TDT 2600.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Western and world theatre from ancient Greece to 1642, when the theatres of Shakespeare’s time were finally closed. What would now be called actors, playwrights, producers, directors, designers, and theatre architects are all considered.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Western and world theatre from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Playwrights, actors, directors, producers, and designers; neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, expressionism. This course begins where THP 2885 leaves off, but either can be taken independently.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students receive training in lighting (hanging, focusing, and maintaining), the use of power tools, and basic set construction. Elements of lighting and set design are also discussed. Requirements include work on a minimum of two productions in the Humanities Theatre as crew and board operators.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Focuses on the relationships among text, social context, production history, and directorial concept in staging a production. Includes play analysis, theoretical readings, research, student presentations, and analysis and discussion of campus productions. Research, writing, and oral presentations required.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2885 Or THP2890
Department: Theatre and Performance
Offers film and television directors and actors the opportunity to develop their skills in communicating with each other. In a workshop environment, students rehearse short scenes, working alternately as actors and directors, and learn to communicate, give and take direction, and integrate feedback.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre and Performance
Offers film/television directors, actors and directors of photography the opportunity to develop their skills in communicating with each other in a workshop environment. Students rehearse short scenes, working alternately as actors and directors, learning to communicate, give and take direction, and integrate feedback. DP’s will become competent in building, operating and troubleshooting industry standard HD camera packages and accessories.
Credits: 2
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores the fundamental connection between voice and text, based on Linklater technique. Using technical and imagistic exercises, students find a free connection to breath, develop resonance and range, release jaw, tongue, and throat tensions, and build vocal strength.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Focuses on characterization and motivation, with emphasis on interpretation, finding interesting choices for the actor, and the “truth of the moment.” Different contemporary plays and screenplays are used by students. Scenes are used to deepen the actor’s ability to execute honest and purposeful stage acting and communication.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT1055 Or SOA1750 Or TAC1055
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to the history and contemporary practice of physical theatre and to the traditions of commedia and pantomime. Includes lectures, mask making, scenario creation, and instruction in and physical practice of the form.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: AOA1400 Or SOA1750 Or ACT1055 Or ACT%
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores the genre of alternate reality or pervasive gaming currently used as an alternative to traditional performance by contemporary theatrical and visual artists, dancers, and musicians. The blurring distinctions between game and narrative are examined, opening new possibilities for performance. Students design and stage their own live alternate-reality game as a means of storytelling or extend an existing narrative through transmedia.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explore the unique aesthetics of Black Theatre via analysis and performance of plays by such writers as Baraka, Cleage, Nottage, and Morisseau. Participants direct and perform scenes with attention to the impact of social and historical contexts on our understanding of genre, style, and language in performance.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Transmedia narrative can be described as storytelling across multiple forms of media, with each element making distinctive contributions to a user’s understanding of the story world. The course combines this with a study of immersive performance environments that wrap around viewers and production practices that blend video, photography, games, and music to extend the project’s meaning and theatricality.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
A study of the mystery plays, morality plays, interludes, masques, and entertainments of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Analysis of texts is combined with consideration of theatrical production in light of the ideological, religious, and historical contexts of the plays.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to the Lecoq method of performance, focusing on physical approach to character, the notion of actor as creator, and the importance of mask work.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: SOA1750 Or AOA1400 Or ACT1055 Or TAC1055
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines the means by which leading, contemporary American playwrights have tackled many burning social issues, including racial discrimination, gender bias, corporate abuse, and violence against gays and lesbians. Kushner’s Angels in America is used as a model for discussion of several important writers whose dramas have had an impact on American culture and effected change.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines works, practice, theories, and training methods of influential theatre artists who found inspiration outside their inherited theatrical cultures, subsequently enriching theatrical practice worldwide. Students gain awareness of possibilities for intercultural exploration and cultural exchange and investigate and debate how and why intercultural experiments are sites of intense creativity while simultaneously subject to misunderstandings and accusations of appropriation.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2020
Department: Theatre and Performance
Satire uses humor and ridicule to address fundamental moral, social and political questions. Students will analyze satirical works and practice techniques of “creative criticism” by making satire of their own. We’ll investigate how laughter gets people to let their guard down in order to challenge closed minds, provoke discussion where there was none, and plant the seeds of social change.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Theories of African diaspora are analyzed and applied to plays and performance traditions from the Caribbean and Africa. Students study Black Nationalist and pan-Africanist movements in different locations, as well as more contemporary theories of African diaspora like Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic. Students also conduct research projects on a play, playwright, or performance tradition within a theoretical framework studied in class.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
The performance traditions of Africa, specifically South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, are examined through the lens of the impact of colonialism on African performance traditions and on major playwrights from the region. Students read dramatic texts and learn about ritual performance, contemporary film, music, and dance.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores 20th-century world drama from an end-of-the-millennium perspective. Plays are chosen from North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe for cross-cultural thematic investigations. Close reading of the plays, along with class discussions, encourages students to theorize on the inter- and intra-textual nuances dramatized in the plays. The emphasis is on students’ response to the works, although they are expected to become familiar with various postmodernist theories, including feminist and postcolonial studies.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Focuses on postmodern theory and performance. Historical and cross-cultural study of how theatre artists and critical thinkers have addressed issues of aesthetics, representation, style, space, and time.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2020 And (THP2885 Or THP2890 )
Department: Theatre and Performance
Introduces Asian theatre within a global context and explores the social, religious, historical, aesthetic, and political circumstances of traditional performance genres, including ritual, masked/painted face and puppetry, and contemporary intercultural drama and theatre. Training, audience involvement, transformation, authenticity, and theory are highlighted. Field trips are taken when possible.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Truth Commissions responding to genocides and other conflicts have often involved theatre, in formal collaboration, as in Peru’s Yuyachkani, or informally, as with Serbia’s DAH Teatret. Examining case studies, students write critical and artistic responses, culminating in the creation of an original theatrical piece that fosters truth and reconciliation for a contemporary conflict.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
This course considers 20th- and 21st-century performance work by women in dance, theatre, and the visual art world (performance art) from a historical and theoretical perspective. Critical and theoretical feminist essays and other writings are assigned. Students read original texts, view documentation, and analyze contemporary works by women writers, choreographers, performance artists, and theatre directors.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores the neutral mask and commedia dell’arte, as informed by Lecoq technique. The neutral mask focuses on finding a bodily sense of calm and openness, helps build the actor’s presence on stage, and highlights physical habits that can hinder expression. Commedia dell’arte calls on the actor’s timing, ability to improvise, and humor, and requires big physical choices and delving into the idiosyncrasies of type.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to the fundamentals of designing costumes for theatre and dance productions. As they examine the design process, students explore how and why a designer makes certain choices. Emphasis is placed on how ideas are generated and communicated within the flux of the production process.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Continued sensory-actualization technique to increase the physical awareness needed to create authentic theatre and characters. Classes include warm-up, technical exercises, improvisations, and monologues.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: THP2760
Department: Theatre and Performance
Come taste the finest sampling of the great Broadway songwriters. Each class examines a particular songwriter (Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim), idea (the subversives: Weill and Bernstein), or era (contemporary voices on Broadway). Students savor recordings, investigate the dramatic qualities of the songs, and analyze lyrics, melody, and song form.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Designed to assist the actor in interpreting William Shakespeare’s stage directions and in reading clues within his verse in order to make informed performance choices. Classroom exercises assist in developing techniques of Shakespearean performance and enhanced understanding of Shakespeare’s sometimes daunting speeches.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: THP2205 And THP3315
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines contemporary activist performance and documentary film in the Middle East, from the Arab Spring to the ongoing strife in Syria.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to adaptation and ensemble creation, using texts by major authors of Italian literature (Pirandello, Fo, and Calvino.) Students explore non-naturalistic acting, mask, and puppet work as they devise a culminating performance in a medieval piazza. This course also introduces the genre of street theatre, including Bread and Puppet Theatre–style pageants, placing performance in the context of community and public space.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Using physical theatre techniques, students work in ensembles‹with each student functioning as actor, director, writer, and designer‹to develop performances that address issues relevant to contemporary society. Coursework includes readings in pertinent genres (e.g., tragedy, melodrama, and documentary theatre), research into dramatically resonant current events, and a culminating performance of ensemble-devised work.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT1055 Or TAC1055
Department: Theatre and Performance
Meeting at the Academy of Drama in Prague, students study and perform plays by Václav Havel, the dissident playwright imprisoned during the Communist era who became president of the Czech Republic. Students explore political and cultural contexts of theatrical performance, enhanced by meetings with theatre professionals and visits to sites relevant to the intersection of artistic creation and political revolution.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Virginia Woolf captures sensory detail and internal thought like few other writers. This dramatization of perception makes her work ripe for adaptation. Students will read selections of Woolf’s essays, short stories, and novels, and study theatrical adaptations of her work. Students will explore translating Woolf’s iconic vision into theatrical shape by creating immersive stage adaptations of her work
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An in-depth exploration of fundamental stage-management skills in each phase of the production process: preproduction, first rehearsal, rehearsal period, preparing for the tech, technical rehearsals, previews, opening, running of the show, and closing.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
In 1956, a play called Look Back in Anger began a revolution in British drama. The class focuses primarily on the plays of the last 50 years, studying how British playwrights expressed the concerns of their changing society. Dramatists considered include Osborne, Pinter, Orton, Bond, Churchill, and Kane.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines the history of 20th-century black American theatre. Major representative plays are read as literature; playwrights include Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy, August Wilson, Robert O’Hara, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, Kia Corthron, and Lorraine Hansberry.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students collect, assemble, and perform scripts based on “lore” (oral history, personal narratives). History is seen as a performative way to construct identity. Includes readings by documentary playwrights like Brecht, Emily Mann, and Caryl Churchill.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Considers the history of performance art and offers a creative process for developing solo and group performances from memory, personal material, and issues in contemporary society. Requirements include both academic and creative projects.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores how LGBTQ identities and issues are represented in diverse dramatic forms, performance styles, and cultural venues. Through discussions, presentations, and writing assignments, students analyze queer theatre in relation to production history, theories of sexuality, and cultural and political contexts (both past and present).
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Continued sensory-actualization technique to increase the physical awareness needed to create authentic theatre and characters. Classes include warm-up, technical exercises, improvisations, and monologues.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: THP2500 Or THP2760
Department: Theatre and Performance
The historical importance of Michael Chekhov lay in bringing revised Stanislavsky acting methods to America, emphasizing responses to psychological impulses via movement in harmony with the character’s thoughts, emotions, and desires. Students infuse tangible actions of body and voice with intangible feelings, sensations, and images from the actor’s imagination, using techniques such as archetypal/psychological gestures and “centers” in character development.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ACT1055
Department: Theatre and Performance
Collaborate on creating site-specific work culminating in a performance. Students maintain journals of discoveries and observations and participate in writing exercises and structured improvisations. Readings, excursions, experiences, and individuals encountered in Benin will inform the performance. A goal is to discover how setting and surroundings can help shape and enrich expression and imagination.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores female characters in plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, and contemporary women playwrights (Mann, Fornes, Churchill, Shange). Theories of gender, language, and performance are addressed.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students study, attend, and create contemporary performance works.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2020
Department: Theatre and Performance
Shakespeare goes to celluloid, Hollywood, Japan, TV, and elsewhere. On the one hand, this is a Shakespeare seminar, with emphasis on discussions of the plays themselves. On the other, it becomes a film course, focusing on analyses of screen adaptations.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2205 Or LIT2205
Department: Theatre and Performance
Contemporary theatre encompasses a wide range of approaches, from the collective experiments in the 1960s (e.g., Living Theatre, Open Theatre) to Robert Wilson’s “operas” and the mixed-media performances of Ping Chong, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, and the Wooster Group. Students study the works of several contemporary theatre artists, attend performances, and meet selected artists working with new forms in New York theatre.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An introduction to scenic, costume, and lighting design aimed at stage directors and stage managers. Students review the basics of designing for the stage and learn how directors and designers communicate fruitfully in realizing a given theatrical production.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP2895
Department: Theatre and Performance
Engaging with a wide variety of plays and performances, students explore U.S. Latino theatre as a site of personal, cultural, and political intervention. Readings reflect the aesthetics, narratives, historical contexts, and systems of theatrical production pertinent to Latino culture in the U.S.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Introduction to staging. After a brief overview of directing history, students are introduced to elements of directing (including the Viewpoints) and strategies for working with actors, staging short scenes, and using a minimum of technical elements in a final scene. Required for students with a directing concentration; open to other majors with junior standing.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Theory and practice of directing, with lectures and practical focus on exercises. Required for theatre and performance majors who are considering production senior projects.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP3680
Department: Theatre and Performance
In this introduction to strategies of collective creation, students are engaged in a process that culminates in an end-of-semester performance.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
American theatre and society during the last 50 years. Plays by Jones (Baraka), Mamet, Shepard, Hwang, Kushner, Fornes, Marsha Norman, Sarah Ruhl, and August Wilson. Some knowledge of the American drama of O’Neill, Williams, and Miller is required.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
A study of revolutions in theatre, and theatre at the time of historic revolutions. Students study plays (Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro, Buchner’s Danton’s Death, Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade), and movements (guerrilla street theatre, Chicano theatre, Bread and Puppet, Living Theatre), focusing on theatre as an active, participatory art and on drama as a literary form.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
By scripting and performing oral traditions, short stories, and 19th- and 20th-century novels, students explore how narratives establish gender, ethnicity, region, and nation as indexes of identity. Solo and group work.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
A writing workshop on how to develop performance scripts from poetry, prose fiction, and nonfiction. Requires a background in literature, interest in theatrical form, and commitment to the scripting process.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
For the ensemble director and actor/creator, a course in creating devised theatre. Using a range of source materials, including short stories, news articles, and interviews, students learn tools and strategies for company-created works. This is a rigorous immersion in building a collaborative vision through structured improvisation, space, character, narrative arc, and mise-en-scène.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: THP3680 Or THP3685
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines major artists who work visually, experientially, and sonically across multiple performance platforms of theatre, opera, dance and installation, including William Kentridge, Ariane Mnouchkine, Simon McBurney, Bill T. Jones, Janet Cardiff, Kara Walker among others. Students create their own projects inspired by these artists’ experiments in order to explore new compositional approaches to theatrical form as directors and creators.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP3680
Department: Theatre and Performance
Malaise, futility, despair, and, sometimes, hope in the plays of Pirandello, Brecht, Giraudoux, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Osborne, Pinter, Churchill, and others, from World War I to somewhere short of tomorrow.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Study and dramatic interpretation of 20th-century lyric poetry, including Eliot, Roethke, Sexton, Plath, Olds, Ginsberg, Rich, Stafford, and Giovanni. Workshop atmosphere; solo and group techniques of performance and script making; written analyses.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Focuses on the relation between text and production in the theatre through play analysis, theoretical readings, research, student presentations, and discussion of campus productions. A substantial research paper and senior project proposal with annotated bibliography are required. Required for all junior theatre and performance majors, and normally open only to them.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: THP2020 And THP2205 And THP2885 And THP2890
Department: Theatre and Performance
Students rehearse and perform a role or work on the production of a main-stage show directed by a faculty member or other professional director. Students may enroll only after they have been cast or assigned to the production.
Credits: 3
Department: Theatre and Performance
Rather than focusing on the critically acclaimed plays that make up the canon of American drama, this course examines plays that were the most popular and commercially successful of their time. Combining historical research, textual analysis, and cultural theory, students discuss the long-running Broadway hit plays of the past 100 years from artistic, commercial, and ideological perspectives.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (THP2600 Or LIT2600 ) Or THP2890
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines and develops skills in theatrical production including stage management, fundraising, marketing, and artistic producing. Studies production models in the recent history of the field and applies acquired knowledge and skills to the production of the cohort’s individual senior projects.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: THP3890
Department: Theatre and Performance
An advanced course focused on accessing, articulating, and deepening one’s voice as a director. Using works by Anton Chekhov, students investigate all aspects of the director’s craft, including research, translations, and collaboration in the rehearsal and design process. Designers are paired with directors to develop production approaches.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: THP3680 And (THP3681 Or THP3730 )
Department: Theatre and Performance
Examines multiple modes of queer performance beyond traditional drama and theatre, including performance art, dance, drag shows, stand-up comedy, poetry slams, political protests, and live music. Using queer theory and performance methodologies to support aesthetic analyses, students explore the ways in which queer performance engages with current struggles surrounding issues of queer identity, community, and representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
Explores the variety of ways in which readers, critics, actors, and directors have interpreted, and can interpret, Shakespeare’s plays and poetry. While written work and some research are required, there are also opportunities for oral presentations and performance.
Credits: 4
Department: Theatre and Performance
An advanced course that deepens the performer’s work with voice and introduces Fitzmaurice Voicework, along with the work of other leaders in the field. Students continue building on previous vocal work to achieve expanded release, vocal range, resonance, and strength in their voices and bodies.
The graphic design area offers a distinctive program in the art and practice of print- and digitally based graphic design and experimental publishing.
The program approaches graphic design as a vital field of professional art practice that gives shape to culture through a variety of media, including:
print and digital books, magazines, brochures, posters, billboards
motion graphics
web and interactive design
type design
exhibition design
packaging
other two-, three-, and four-dimensional manifestations
While graphic design usually solves visual communication problems through words, symbols, and images, its applications can be commercial, political, educational, literary, subversive, personal, and experimental.
To prepare for the range of options in the graphic design field, the program provides a hands-on studio environment with emphasis on the marriage of formal and conceptual skills. After the freshman foundation studies, a three-year sequence of courses begins with training in fundamental principles, skills, theory, and history and progresses toward more advanced and applied applications. Experienced, professional faculty members help students find their own voice and approach to design in a facility that encompasses a broad array of print and digital technologies. The program challenges students to consider the role of the artist/designer as creative collaborator, if not the originator of project ideas.
In collaboration with the printmaking program, courses in the art of the book and experimental publishing are offered in the facilities of the School of Art+Design’s Center for Editions. The graphic design major is rigorous yet flexible and encourages overlaps with other areas in the school.
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in graphic design must complete the following requirements (85–86 credits):
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 12 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art before 1800 (lower-level)
ARH 3405/Design History and Theory: 1750–Today: 4 credits or
DES 3300/History of Graphic Design Survey: 4 credits
Graphic Design Studio Courses: 27 credits
DES 2450/Digital Media for Designers I: 3 credits
DES 2460/Digital Media for Designers II: 3 credits
DES 2500/Word and Image I: 3 credits
DES 2600/Word and Image II: 3 credits
DES 3200/Advanced Typography: 3 credits
DES 3510/Word and Image III: 3 credits
DES 3610/Word and Image IV: 3 credits
DES 4100/Community Design: 3 credits
DES —/Graphic design elective: 3 credits
Visual Arts Studio Electives: 17-18 credits
Graphic Design Theory Elective: 3–4 credits
One of the following courses:
ARH 3285/Design and Culture: 4 credits
DES 3240/Design Issues: 3 credits
NME 3265/Social Design: 3 credits
Synthesis Courses: 9 credits
DES 3550/Junior Seminar: 3 credits
DES 4990/Senior Project I: 3 credits
DES 4991/Senior Project II: 3 credits
Mid-Program Review
Students who choose to major in graphic design are required to complete a mid-program review. Students will be notified by the department with specific guidelines on the review process and timeline. Students who do not successfully pass the review are encouraged to work with the School of Art+Design administration and faculty to find another major that will better fit their educational goals.
Internship Credits
Students majoring in graphic design may count a maximum of 4 hours of internship credit toward graduation.
Students are also expected to abide by the policies and procedures laid out in the A+D Student Handbook.
Associate Professor of New Media and Graphic Design
BS, MS, Middle East Technical University (Turkey)
MA, PhD, New School for Social Research
Courses
Students become familiar with hot-type technology and relief printing, together with their contemporary aesthetic possibilities in both the applied and fine arts. Hands-on experience with handset, moveable type is provided, and traditional and experimental techniques are explored. No previous typographic experience is required.
Credits: 3
Department: Graphic Design
Focuses on developing technical and practical skills in digital typesetting, image making, composition, and layout. Students are introduced to software applications (InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator), digital fonts, and techniques for creating print output. Topics include digital literacy and the influence of digital tools on contemporary graphic design. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
COREQ: DES2500
Department: Graphic Design
This continuation of DES 2450 introduces students to digitally delivered, time-based, and interactive media. Software applications (Adobe Dreamweaver, After Effects) are used to expand upon the work of DES 2450. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
COREQ: DES2600
PREREQ: DES2450 Or VDE2450
Department: Graphic Design
An introduction to the professional program in graphic design and visual communications. Emphasis is on skill development in controlling the performance of elements within a field; generation, refinement, and analysis of graphic forms and representations through a variety of drawing techniques; development of symbols and icons; and composition, variation, and discovery of word/image relationships through experimentation and play. Historical typographic distinctions are also explored. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
COREQ: DES2450
Department: Graphic Design
This continuation of DES 2500 examines the representation of ideas through typography and images, with intensive explorations of typographic and type/image hierarchy (through placement, scale, weight, juxtaposition), theme and variation, and problem-solving techniques. Students also explore a range of image-making techniques as a means of expressing ideas. Projects evolve from theory-based exercises to applied campaigns (brochures, posters, on-screen messaging). Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
COREQ: DES2460
PREREQ: DES2500 Or VDE2500
Department: Graphic Design
This hands-on intensive bookbinding workshop investigates the relationship between content and book structures. Students follow the development of the book from scrolls to case-bound sewn books from the perspective that the way a book is made structures what it communicates.
Credits: 3
Department: Graphic Design
A focused inquiry into the process of designing for, and the creation of, interactive platforms for the purposes of entertainment, persuasion, recreation, and/or human enrichment where the viewer is an active participant. This course is an intensive investigation into considerations surrounding interactive, or experience-oriented, design spaces, and samples supplemental readings from sociology, anthropology, and game theory. You will be required to work collaboratively to pursue concepts through a series of physical and digital investigations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (DES2460 And DES3510 ) And DES3200
Department: Graphic Design
Builds on the principles and skills of time-based and interactive design introduced in DES 2460. Technique, theory, and practice are further explored through projects using time, on-screen spatiality, transition, kinetic typography, narrative, and sound. Projects address linear and nonlinear environments such as film and television titling, DVD menus, web splash pages, and graphics for mobile devices.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES2460 Or VDE2460
Department: Graphic Design
Students are encouraged to further explore and develop individualized approaches to typographic problems, with emphasis on experimentation, communication, and advanced application of typography. Projects focus on letterforms as image, typographic metaphor, and text typography. Areas of investigation include the shape, texture, and division of text; typographic grid, layout, and systems; book design and advanced problems of word/image relationships. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES2600 Or VDE2600
Department: Graphic Design
Current issues of theory, methodology, and practice confronting graphic designers are explored through readings, discussions, and designed responses. Topics include modernist and postmodernist manifestos; semiotics, deconstructionism, and feminism; the role of the graphic designer in society; branding and visualizing data; copyright law; sustainability; and designing for a digital world and local and global economies. Students produce a final research project. Open to students interested in design; highly recommended for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Graphic Design
A combined lecture/studio course that examines ethical and social issues in contemporary artistic production and design. The goal is to develop active research about such urgent issues as ecology, body politics and gender, race and urban justice, and human rights, with respect to new futures. Projects incorporate art installations, visualizations, websites, performances, and public campaigns by focusing on creative public engagement.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: NME2100 Or (DES2600 And DES2460 )
Department: Graphic Design
Focuses on print communication, primarily graphic design, in the Western world from the late 19th century to the present. A brief summary of important historical precedents launches a chronological series of lectures on significant movements and individuals and the economic, political, and technological developments that have influenced modern and contemporary print communication.
Credits: 4
Department: Graphic Design
An introduction to type design. Topics include manipulation of pre-existing letterforms, proportional systems, legibility, critical theory, information design, and developments in technology. Participants learn about decisions inherent in developing typefaces for print and screen and analyze historical and contemporary examples of typographic innovation. Software includes Fontlab.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES3200 Or VDE3200
Department: Graphic Design
Emphasizes the development and evaluation of word and image through advanced studies and pragmatic applications. Development of an identity system, applied printed and electronic matter, issues of imagery, relationship to audience, ethics, information theory, and research methods are explored. Students are encouraged to explore the balance between individualized approaches, vision, and appropriateness. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES2600 Or VDE2600
Department: Graphic Design
Explores the possibilities and realities of design practice. Students develop a portfolio and a personalized identity package, including a website, modular digital portfolio, letterhead, cover letter, and résumé. Discussions revolve around current issues in the field, professional options, the business of design, and freelancing. Includes guest speakers and field trips to design studios, museums, and related events. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES3510
Department: Graphic Design
Focusing on applications of 3-D visual communications (e.g., packaging, exhibition, signage design), students explore problems of human and environmental scale, display typography, interactivity, object containment and reflection, visual systems, and color through a variety of applied projects. Construction techniques, model making, and familiarity with materials are balanced with concerns for relationship of form, function, and idea. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES3510 Or VDE3510
Department: Graphic Design
An introduction to the considerations surrounding screen-mediated design spaces. This course includes industry standard research methodologies, as well as an introduction to the conceptual and technical issues involved in the design and production of dynamic documents and environments. This course focuses on how to research, map, visualize, share, and play with self-generated content, while investigating how current technology, software, and hardware can assist (and hinder) the way in which this self-generated content is communicated.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: DES2460 And DES3510 And DES3200
Department: Graphic Design
Students gain technical professional experience by helping provide a safe and well-functioning studio environment for their fellow students. Studio assistants are expected to have advanced standing in their media area and a thorough understanding of current professional practices. Duties include basic maintenance and demonstrations of equipment, independent or group tutorials and workshops, weekly meetings, and other responsibilities assigned by the sponsoring instructional technician. A maximum of 4 credits in DES 3950 (or a combined maximum of 6 credits in VIS 3998 and DES 3950) may be applied toward the BFA.
Credits: 2
Department: Graphic Design
Brings senior graphic design students together in a collaborative design studio, simulating a “real world” professional studio situation. Students work directly with on-campus and nonprofit off-campus clients. Under the supervision of the faculty member, the students assume complete responsibility for the concept and development of multiple design solutions, production, printing, scheduling, maintaining client relationships, billing, etc. Required for graphic design majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (DES3200 Or VDE3200 ) And (DES3510 Or VDE3510 )
Department: Graphic Design
Students are encouraged to reconsider what a book is and expand the boundaries of the traditional codex book through workshops in experimental formats, integration of word and image, form and content, sequencing, and physical structure. This may include a variety of projects and the study of video and film structure, historical and contemporary artists’ books, and innovative trade books.
Students in painting and drawing benefit from the variety of views of faculty members who are all practicing and exhibiting artists.
Studio work is complemented by trips to New York City to visit galleries, museums, and artists’ studios. Students pursuing the BFA major in painting/drawing take part in sophomore, junior, and senior reviews; all students participate in critique and review sessions conducted by the resident faculty, as well as by visiting artists and critics.
Students have access to nine studio classrooms specifically designed for painting and drawing, with large north-facing windows that provide excellent natural light. In the junior and senior years, selected students are assigned semiprivate studios.
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in painting/drawing must complete the following requirements (82 credits):
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 12 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art before 1800 (lower-level)
ARH —/Art history elective (modern/contemporary)
Painting/Drawing Studio Courses: 27 credits
PAD 1000/Painting I: 3 credits
PAD 2000/Painting II: 3 credits
PAD 2050/Painting III: 3 credits
or PAD 2350/Intermediate Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 2100/Color or VIS 2110/Color Seminar: 3 credits
PAD 3000/Junior Studio I or PAD 3001/Junior Studio II: 3 credits
PAD 3500/Materials and Techniques: 3 credits
VIS 4470/Field Trips: 3 credits
PAD —/Drawing elective: 3 credits
PAD —/Painting or drawing elective: 3 credits
Visual Arts Studio Electives: 9-10 credits
Synthesis Courses: 17 credits
PAD 2010/Sophomore Seminar: 3 credits
PAD 3010/Junior Seminar: 3 credits
PAD 4010/Senior Seminar and Critique: 3 credits
PAD 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
PAD 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Mid-Program Review
Students who choose to major in painting/drawing are required to participate in a mid-program review, conducted in the semester prior to taking Junior Studio. This allows students to be reviewed by full-time faculty and to present their work in a group critique format. Students should contact the board-of-study coordinator for specific information on the review process and timeline. Students who do not successfully pass sophomore-level coursework are encouraged to work with the School of Art+Design administration and faculty to find a path to successful study or another major that will better fit their educational goals.
Students are also expected to abide by the policies and procedures laid out in the A+D Student Handbook.
Updates to the 2019–21 Purchase College Catalogs
Effective Fall 2020:
PAD 2350/Intermediate Drawing may be taken instead of PAD 2050/Painting III
In this introduction to oil painting, students are presented with a variety of attitudes toward making paintings, with emphasis on composition and color. Some assignments involve painting from direct observation while others involve transforming and abstracting from a given motif. Students develop color equivalents for observed relationships by translating their experience into color choices of hue, value, intensity, and temperature.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
A basic introduction to drawing for students from other disciplines. Focus is placed on becoming familiar with the elements of 2-D design and on strengthening observational skills. A variety of drawing techniques and materials are used to explore both representational and nonrepresentational image making.
Credits: 2
Department: Painting and Drawing
A basic introduction to painting for students from other disciplines. Focus is placed on becoming familiar with the materials and methods of painting. A variety of techniques and materials are used to explore both representational and nonrepresentational image making.
Credits: 2
Department: Painting and Drawing
A continuation of PAD 1000. Emphasis is on the role of technique, style, color, and composition in painting. Students’ work is based on art historical models, concepts, and direct observation. Students develop a range of skills, including alla prima, underpainting, transparency, divided color, and various approaches to color mixing.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (PAD1000 Or VPA1010 Or VPD1000 )
Department: Painting and Drawing
A survey of contemporary artists, ideas, and texts in which basic research skills are taught. A combination of slide lectures, discussions of readings, and museum/gallery visits familiarize students with contemporary art discourse and many of its important figures. Contemporary issues are understood to originate in modernist traditions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060 Or VDR1010
Department: Painting and Drawing
A continuation of PAD 2000, with emphasis on choices of color, scale, size, composition, and subject. Projects may include interiors and figures in the environment, as well as narrative, conceptual, and thematic approaches.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PAD2000 Or VPD2000
Department: Painting and Drawing
Observational drawing of the figure is a vehicle to comprehend drawing as visual language. Drawing fundamentals are employed as tools in intense observation of the human form. Such elements as gesture, contour, line, mass, and movement are introduced in critiques and slide presentations. Materials include pencil, charcoal, wash, and various wet and dry media.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Observational drawing of the figure is a vehicle to comprehend drawing as visual language. Drawing fundamentals are employed as tools in intense observation of the human form. Such elements as gesture, contour, line, mass, and movement are introduced in critiques and slide presentations. Materials include pencil, charcoal, wash, and various wet and dry media.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060 Or VDR1010
Department: Painting and Drawing
A 2-credit workshop version of PAD 2100. Drawing fundamentals are employed in the study of the human figure. Materials include wet and dry drawing media.
Credits: 2
Department: Painting and Drawing
A 2-credit workshop version of PAD 2105. Drawing fundamentals are employed in the study of the human figure. Materials include wet and dry drawing media.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students work outside the studio from direct observation and experience. Invention and unique responses are encouraged. Sites have included the Museum of the City of New York, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the World Trade Center, the Museum of Natural History, and various locations on campus.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Explores themes and a variety of approaches to style, form, and content. Themes are subject to change; examples include science and art; ornament, pattern, and decoration; and politics and cultural identity. Classroom work, lectures, critiques, readings, and illustrated discussions augment the thematic research. A range of drawing materials and approaches are encouraged.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
How do people recount events in the silent and still realm of visual art, specifically the painted image? Students explore issues of conception, construction, and reception of narrative, and formal strategies for its visual conveyance. The primary media are watercolor and acrylic, and final projects may range from paintings to books and beyond.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060 Or VDR1010
Department: Painting and Drawing
Focuses on the synthesis of observational skills, a visual vocabulary, and individual vision. Students identify their sensibilities and interests through increasingly self-directed assignments and further their visual, technical, conceptual, and verbal abilities.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PAD2000 Or VPD2000
Department: Painting and Drawing
Focuses on the synthesis of observational skills, a visual vocabulary, and individual vision. Students identify their sensibilities and interests through increasingly self-directed assignments and further their visual, technical, conceptual, and verbal abilities.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students explore two-dimensional, handmade processes in order to make digital animations. Stop-motion methods are covered with a focus on using analog means to create four-dimensional effects. Through screenings, lectures, and independent research, students become familiar with the history of hand processes in animation. They also learn many methods, including narrative sequencing, still photography, and digital editing, used in transforming handmade work into digital animations.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
Helps expand students’ knowledge of art and theory. Students learn new ideas and perspectives through research, presentations, and discussion of modernist and contemporary art. They also research artists and identify their individual affinities with contemporary and modernist traditions. This seminar is tailored to junior-level painting/drawing majors who are beginning a self-motivated course of study.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students work independently, choosing their subjects and approach to painting under the guidance of a faculty member. Critical thinking is promoted in critiques and discussion of readings. Students’ work is considered in the context of contemporary painting as they attempt to define their individual sensibility and concerns in preparation for (or in complement to) the senior project.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (PAD2050 Or VPD2050 ) Or VPA2010
Department: Painting and Drawing
The limits of scale, material, and the concept of drawing as an art form are pushed in these courses. Students are expected to already be directed in their primary medium(s) of interest (painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, or photography) and to be able to pursue drawing in relation to those or as an independent discipline.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
This course encourages nontraditional approaches to drawing. Students explore a more innovative and interpretive response to their visual and intellectual experiences, both through a wide-ranging use of tools and materials and through complex and unconventional concepts, ideas, and subject matter. Assumptions about technique, subject, author, environment, audience, and historical classifications are interrogated.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
This course encourages nontraditional approaches to painting. Students explore a more innovative and interpretive response to their visual and intellectual experiences, both through a wide-ranging use of tools and materials and through complex and unconventional concepts, ideas, and subject matter. Assumptions about technique, subject, author, environment, audience, and historical classifications are interrogated.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PAD1000 Or VPA1010 Or VPD1000
Department: Painting and Drawing
This course involves drawing the figure on a large scale from direct observation of the model and various sculptural, two-dimensional, or digitally based sources. Form, gesture, and composition are stressed in large-scale, fast-to-slow drawing. Assignments in anatomy, photography, narrative, memory, and art history are used to develop concepts for representation of the figure. Analysis, critique, and experimentation are components of the course.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students experiment with ideas for making a series of work that is extreme in content, scale, color, and visual impact, and may choose to work independently or collaboratively.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students work outside the studio from direct observation. Invention and unique responses are encouraged. Sites have included Grand Central Station, the Rockefeller Estate, the Westchester County Airport, and various locations on campus.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
The collections of New York’s museums are used as sources for drawing studies. Particular focus is on sculptural forms and their representation in painting and drawing, as well as the development of students’ relationship to art history.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students make paintings and drawings based on generated images. Various strategies, including appropriating imagery from cultural media (print, photography, the Web) and manipulating imagery through mechanical and electronic processes (photocopy, Photoshop), are explored. Other approaches (e.g., layering, de/constructing, morphing) may also be used to generate imagery for narrative, ironic, or abstract works.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PAD1000 Or VPA1010 Or VPD1000
Department: Painting and Drawing
Issues are figure/ground, identity/context, and the diverse roles of the figure in art. Using varied methods and approaches, students explore the wide-ranging possibilities of figuration, drawing from the model and other sources. The history and traditions of figurative art are examined in slide presentations and gallery visits.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Contemporary and more traditional approaches to painting materials and techniques are examined. Topics include pigments, solvents, supports, media, and their technical applications.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060 Or VDR1010
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students gain technical professional experience by helping provide a safe and well-functioning studio environment for their fellow students. Studio assistants are expected to have advanced standing in their media area and a thorough understanding of current professional practices. Duties include basic maintenance and demonstrations of equipment, independent or group tutorials and workshops, weekly meetings, and other responsibilities assigned by the sponsoring instructional technician. A maximum of 4 credits in PAD 3950 (or a combined maximum of 6 credits in VIS 3998 and PAD 3950) may be applied toward the BFA.
Credits: 2
Department: Painting and Drawing
Visiting artists work with advanced students to further develop their painting and drawing skills and abilities. Students work independently and meet for group discussions and critiques. Readings and field trips may supplement the visiting artists’ discussions.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1060
Department: Painting and Drawing
Commitment and professional practice are the focus of this seminar. Students are encouraged to articulate and clarify the intentions of their work through lectures, critiques, discussions, and readings. Required for all painting/drawing majors who are undertaking a senior project.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (PAD3000 Or VPD3000 Or VDR3500 ) Or (PAD3001 Or VPD3001 Or VDR3510 )
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students work independently, choosing their subjects and approach to painting under the guidance of a faculty member. Critical thinking is promoted in critiques and discussion of readings. Students’ work is considered in the context of contemporary painting as they attempt to define their individual sensibility and concerns in preparation for (or in complement to) the senior project.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PAD3020 Or VPA3010
Department: Painting and Drawing
The limits of scale, material, and the concept of drawing as an art form are pushed in these courses. Students are expected to already be directed in their primary medium(s) of interest (painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, or photography) and to be able to pursue drawing in relation to those or as an independent discipline.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
An extensive study of a particular topic or technique in painting. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
A 2-credit workshop version of PAD 4040 on a particular topic or technique in painting. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 2
Department: Painting and Drawing
An extensive study of a particular topic or technique in drawing. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
A 2-credit workshop version of PAD 4050 on a particular topic or technique in drawing. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 2
Department: Painting and Drawing
Students work independently, choosing their subjects and approach to painting under the guidance of a faculty member. Critical thinking is promoted in critiques and discussion of readings. Students’ work is considered in the context of contemporary painting as they attempt to define their individual sensibility and concerns in preparation for (or in complement to) the MFA graduate project.
The photography program provides an in-depth curriculum that is focused specifically on fine art photography through the study of traditional film, nonsilver, and new digital processes. Despite this focus, many graduates work successfully in applied photography fields.
Students begin with courses in darkroom printing and continue with practical courses selected from an array of technical and conceptual electives. Formats range from 35mm to 8x10, and advanced technical courses are offered in silver, color, view camera, nonsilver, and digital scanning, editing, and printing techniques; and in video. Various thematic courses, offered on a rotating basis, encourage the integration of conceptual thinking with the materials and technical processes.
Facilities
The facilities include group darkrooms with more than 50 4x5 enlargers, an 8x10 enlarger, 20 private darkrooms, a nonsilver darkroom, and a digital facility capable of high-end scanning and file preparation for inkjet and digital C-printing, and enlarged negative creation for nonsilver printing.
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in photography must complete the following requirements (82 credits):
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 12 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art before 1800 (lower-level)
ARH —/Art history elective (modern/contemporary)
Photography Studio Courses: 21 credits
PHO 1010/Photography I: 3 credits
PHO 2030/Photography II: 3 credits
PHO 2320/Looking at Photographs: 3 credits or
PHO 2510/A Social History of Photography: 4 credits
PHO 2660/Digital Photography I: 3 credits
PHO —/Photography electives: 9 credits
This introduction to the basic techniques and concepts of analog black-and-white photography covers the mechanics of light and exposure, film development, silver printing, and critique.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
A continuation of PHO 1010, with a continued emphasis on the basic concepts of photography, the mechanics of light, silver darkroom printing, black-and-white scanning and printing, basic theory, practice, and critique. Assignments alternate between technical and creative concerns.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO1010 Or VPH1010 Or NME1010 Or SOA1110
Department: Photography
An introduction to the creative use of color in digital photography, beginning with image capture using a digital camera and ending with the production of inkjet prints using Adobe Photoshop. Students create original work with a digital camera in response to a series of lectures and assignments. Includes hands-on work and an introduction to the history of color photography. Students must own a digital camera.
Credits: 2
Department: Photography
A critical and historical approach to photography is developed in this lecture/discussion. Emphasis is given to a vocabulary of photographic viewing, as well as to the interactions of photography, painting, and documentation. The needs of chronology and historical interpretation are also considered. Written papers required.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
Explores the nature of photography’s capacity to look so precisely and to view not just the object but also the act of looking itself. Students examine how belief systems inform what is seen. This course uses photography and the practice of meditation to understand how and why the world is seen through the lens of one’s own narrative.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
Examines the multiple uses and histories of the photographic image across various geographies, focusing on its links to cultural life in the broad sense. Locates elements of photography’s art history within the socio-political context of its various uses. Consists of lectures, screenings and field trips. Students will be evaluated in discussion, as well as via essays and in an exam.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PHO1010
Department: Photography
An exploration of color and the digital photographic image. Students are introduced to digital RAW capture, color film scanning, and inkjet printing. Adobe software is used for image editing. Includes hands-on work, theory, and the history of both color photography and photo-image manipulation. Students must own a digital SLR camera; please contact the School of Art+Design for specifications.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2030 Or VPH2030
Department: Photography
A survey of contemporary artists, ideas, and texts in which basic research skills are taught. A combination of slide lectures, discussions of readings, and museum/gallery visits familiarize students with contemporary art discourse and many of its important figures.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2030 Or VPH2030
Department: Photography
In this “think tank,” art is developed that deals with the variety of the constructed environment. Diverse approaches are used to shape a concept of urban space. Using photo-related media, students explore and create provocative work; images are made, taken, stolen, borrowed, defaced, and ultimately transformed.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
Nonsilver photo processes involve the use of alternatives to traditional photographic paper. Students work with collotype, a continuous-tone printing process that is one of the earliest photographic processes. Other nonsilver photographic processes (e.g., cyanotype, platinum/palladium printing, photogravure, Iris prints, Polaroid transfer) are also studied.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
A seminar and critique in which visual and conceptual notions of photographic imagery are filtered through philosophical, psychological, and cultural interpretations of dream and reality. The seminar includes readings, discussion, visual exercises, and group critique.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
In this visual and conceptual investigation of photographic imagery, visual narrative strategies and literary methods like memoir, diary, confession, and autobiography are used.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
The basic concepts and techniques concerning field and view cameras, including the use of swings, tilts, shifts, and rises, are covered. Assignments deal with portraits, still life, architecture, and landscapes and the particular problems and opportunities each presents.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
Technical and creative photographic experiences are put to practical use. Assignments explore artificial and natural lighting, their diverse properties, and uses of tungsten and electronic flash lamps. Technical skills developed also include use of 4x5 cameras, the Zone System of exposure and development for black and white film, understanding of bellows extension factor and reciprocity failure; color temperature, and filtering and exposure of color transparency film.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
Photographs and the moving image have been deeply intertwined since the advent of the photography. In order to understand what photographs really are we must look at what they are not. With an emphasis on contemporary art practices students explore the space between the photograph and the moving image. Class will be a combination screenings, lectures and critiques looking at how the moving image changes our understanding of photography.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2030
Department: Photography
Students explore the effect of landscapes and surroundings in Pisciotta, Italy, and develop their personal vision by observing and leveraging those landscapes and translating their experiences into powerful images. Working with digital cameras (a simple one is fine), students create a personal photographic essay, depicting what they see through the lens of their surroundings.
Credits: 4
Department: Photography
A practical investigation of narrative strategies as a predominant aspect of still photography and photo-related imagery. Sequence, series, the grid, linear and nonlinear approaches, and literary models are explored as the deep structure of subject. In addition to assigned readings and visual exercises, students complete a self-directed project in consultation with the instructor, resulting in a portfolio of images, a book, and/or a photographic installation.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or PHO2880
Department: Photography
tudents learn to embrace the potential of the black-and-white silver print as a unique and richly expressive vehicle for their visual ideas. Advanced exposure and development controls for a variety of film types and papers are explored, including push and pull processing, the Zone System, bleaching and toning, and mural printing.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (PHO2030 Or VPH2030 ) And (PHO2320 Or VPH2320 )
Department: Photography
A studio/critique course that investigates the meaning and application of “photographic intervention.” The style, form, and content of documentary, landscape, portrait, street, and snapshot photography, as well as the differences between objective and subjective approaches to the medium, are focused on throughout the course. In assignments, students apply and discuss methods of photographic intervention (e.g., lighting, perspective, framing, narrative, contrast, tone, color palette).
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
An overview of contemporary photography and the major trends that shape it. Through a series of lectures, gallery visits, and critiques, students follow the developments of photographic art through history in order to place their own work within a global context.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
In this continuation of PHO 2660, larger work as well as more complex editing and printing methods are explored. Techniques covered include advanced film scanning and sharpening, noise reduction, compositing, and masks. Students are challenged to find ways in which their technical decisions can clarify their artistic intentions. Includes hands-on work, theory, and the history of conceptual photography. Students must own a digital SLR camera; contact the School of Art+Design for specifications.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2660 Or VPH2660
Department: Photography
A special preparatory course required for juniors who intend to complete a senior project in photography. Coursework includes intensive critiques, weekly written exercises, and both assigned and self-directed projects—all directed toward making, knowing, and judging each individual’s work.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
Technical and professional information is provided to help students in their transition to the world of professional photography and related fields. Students concentrate on developing a portfolio, artist statement, résumé, and publicity materials, and on learning how to present and exhibit their work.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
Students gain technical professional experience by helping provide a safe and well-functioning studio environment for their fellow students. Studio assistants are expected to have advanced standing in their media area and a thorough understanding of current professional practices. Duties include basic maintenance and demonstrations of equipment, independent or group tutorials and workshops, weekly meetings, and other responsibilities assigned by the sponsoring instructional technician. A maximum of 4 credits in PAD 3950 (or a combined maximum of 6 credits in VIS 3998 and PAD 3950) may be applied toward the BFA.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: (PHO1010 Or VPH1010 ) Or (NME1010 Or SOA1110 )
Department: Photography
Students investigate the history and practical construction of the photo book. Numerous narrative strategies are explored as predominant vehicles for still photography and photo-related imagery. Students work toward self-publishing their own book over the semester. This course is best suited for students who have a body of images that they would like to explore in book form.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2660
Department: Photography
Examines representations of violence, as well as the inherent violence(s) of representation. Consists of close readings and discussions of photographs, photobooks, moving image media, and key texts from a variety of fields including theory, criticism and poetry. Involves regular viewing of controversial and emotive imagery, and is thus well suited to students willing to engage in frank and principled debate.
Credits: 3
Department: Photography
In this continuation of PHO 3160, both new processes (salt print, gum bichromate) and advanced procedures and practices (cyanotype, combination printing, platinum/palladium, printing-out paper) are introduced. An in-depth study of the digital negative process constitutes a significant portion of the course. Each student is expected to define a long-term project that results in a finished body of work by the end of the semester.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO3160 Or VPH3160
Department: Photography
An intensive seminar and critique required for students during their senior year. Students work on self-directed projects and make an oral presentation on their work, attempting to place it within a context of cultural factors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO3690 Or VPH3690
Department: Photography
A practical course for working photographers that meets regularly in New York City and beyond to view photographic exhibitions and collections. Emphasis is placed on the complex nature of influence, with special consideration given to translating viewing experiences into practice.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PHO2880 Or VPH2880
Department: Photography
Extensive study of a particular topic or technique in photography; topics vary each semester. May be taken a second time for credit.
The printmaking program provides scope and flexibility through both its faculty and one of the finest and most comprehensive facilities in the country.
Students gain mastery in traditional printmaking processes while pursuing their interdisciplinary interests, including painting, drawing, photography, mixed media, digital media, and book arts. The studio is equipped for work in all of the major media: lithography, silkscreen, intaglio, woodcut, paper making, and fiber casting.
The extraordinary facilities of the school’s Center for Editions and computer labs provide students with an unusually wide array of technologies for both print and electronic media, ranging from traditional hand tools, letterpress, offset lithography, photomechanical processes, and bookbinding to computer graphics and multimedia. It is the expectation of the printmaking faculty that the rigorous interaction of ideas and tools will promote experimentation and invention among students.
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in printmaking must complete the following requirements (81 credits):
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 14 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art before 1800 (lower-level)
PRT 2500/The History of Printmaking: 3 credits
PRT 3330/Printmaking Now: 3 credits
Students contextualize Beninese contemporary art and culture into the larger context of West African history. Readings in African history and post-colonial theory accompany hands-on workshops on how to make and write about art while visiting Benin. Students will write response papers, participate in class discussions, and make work using the methods presented in the course.
Credits: 4
Department: Printmaking
An introductory course in printmaking for students from other disciplines. Focus is placed on becoming familiar with basic processes like intaglio, lithography, silkscreen, and woodcut.
Credits: 2
Department: Printmaking
Students learn to draw iconographic symbols and how to make and maintain their set of tools. Carved objects may include a plain altar, small folding tables, photo frames, small plain boxes, and blocks for printing.
Credits: 2
Department: Printmaking
Using metal or plastic plates, students explore intaglio printmaking. A variety of techniques are taught, such as engraving, etching, aquatint, drypoint, spit bite, sugar lift, soft ground, and photo transfer. Students are expected to produce a body of work engaging these processes. Individual and group critiques occur on a regular basis.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Lithography is the closest printmaking technique to direct drawing. Students are taught how to create images on both lithographic stones and aluminum plates. The goal is for students to develop a series of personal images that emphasize the graphic potential inherent in lithography. Individual and group critiques challenge students’ methods and ideas while aiming to improve their skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Through demonstrations, discussions, and critiques, students learn to use a variety of silkscreen techniques to create multilayered images on paper or other surfaces. The immediacy, versatility, and photographic possibilities that are unique attributes of this medium challenge students to visualize their expressive works in new ways and bring their imagery to an increasing level complexity, depth, and refinement.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Woodcutting is the oldest printmaking technique and the most practiced method of creating prints throughout the world. In this course, wood or medium density fibreboard (MDF), a composite material, is engraved and cut to incise images into the wood surface. The emphasis is on creating prints with graphic power, complex patterning, and variety of mark making. Other unorthodox techniques, such as reduction printing, multiblock prints, and puzzle prints, are also explored
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Lithography is the closest printmaking technique to direct drawing. Students are taught how to create images on lithographic stones, aluminum plates, and photolithography plates. The goal is for students to develop a series of personal images that emphasize the graphic potential inherent in lithography. Individual and group critiques challenge students’ methods and ideas while aiming to improve their skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Woodcutting is the oldest printmaking technique and considered the most direct of the printmaking processes. Using wood and linoleum, students learn the varied techniques of relief printmaking. They explore a variety of carving methods, print by hand and on press, and register multiple-layer prints. Reduction, multiblock techniques, color, and digital techniques are covered. Experimentation and combining approaches are encouraged.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Screen printing, also known as serigraphy, is valued for its versatility, ease of working on a large scale, quality of color, and ability to integrate hand-drawn, photographic, and digital imagery. In this course, students learn a variety of techniques for creating layered images on paper, fabric, and other surfaces. They are challenged to create expressive works in new ways, bringing complexity, depth, and refinement to their imagery.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Papermaking is a particularly flexible and adaptable medium that blends aspects of printmaking, painting, and sculpture. In this course, paper is explored in both its flat, two-dimensional aspect and as a three-dimensional sculptural object. Students learn how paper is made by viewing demonstrations of pulping, dying, pressing, pouring, casting, and spraying paper pulp.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Explores the use of printmaking and drawing techniques to create unique works while allowing experimentation and a more open adaptation of printmaking. Students are introduced to such techniques as monotype, stencil, photo transfer, collage, collograph, chine collé, and embossing. Assignments help students develop the ability to use drawing and printmaking as tools for inquiry and studio experimentation.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
From Rembrandt to Kiki Smith, artists have used intaglio processes to generate marks ranging from the precise and detailed to the physical and expressive. Students explore such techniques as engraving, etching, aquatint, drypoint, and photo transfer. Independent projects, demonstrations, and critiques guide students toward creating a body of prints that deploy these various media to shape their creative ideas.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
In this survey of the historical significance of printmaking, the focus is on understanding the history of print media and its influence on culture in Europe, Asia, and the New World. Students explore both the history of printmaking and its intertwined relationship to the history of art. Of prime concern are the unique and distinct characteristics of each printmaking process.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Students explore ways in which print media can be integrated with time-based (4-D) media and animation. Using the cross-disciplinary potential of printmaking and its inclination toward variation, alteration, and seriality as a starting point, students learn methods of analog and digital animation to make works that move their ideas to the dynamic, temporal space that 4-D media occupies.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1070
Department: Printmaking
An intensive, weeklong off-campus course that takes place on the occasion of a professional conference or residency offered at different national or international locales each year. With the goal of providing professional opportunities and meaningful connections to the broader printmaking/art community, students participate in the full scope of events available: demonstrations, lectures, panel discussions, portfolio exchanges, and exhibitions.
Credits: 1
Department: Printmaking
Digital tools offer ways of making between image and object, lens and plate, screen and paper. Expanding their skills, students translate work into digital print forms. Technical skills include wide-format printing and hybrid printmaking techniques employing laser engraver, vinyl cutter, CNC router, and 3-D printers to produce works or matrices for traditional relief, intaglio, and screen printing.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
The field of printmaking is an ongoing negotiation between artists and historic processes, commercial technologies, and social structures. Weekly topics—the multiple, the copy, aura, simulacra, repetition, mechanical reproduction, the human touch, technical or historical determinism, chance operations, process art, the image, appropriation, and sampling—are coupled with studio research to explore how concepts from contemporary art intersect with printmaking.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
In this continuation of PRT 2250, students are required to produce a body of work using a variety of papermaking techniques, in consultation with the instructor.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: PRT2250 Or VPR2250
Department: Printmaking
In preparation for the professional world, students are exposed to contemporary practices in printmaking and to the New York art world through visits to museum study rooms, artists’ studios, print workshops, publishers, artists’ collectives, and other venues. Topics include portfolio development, résumé writing, artists’ statements, applying for grants, project proposals, and looking at ways that one’s work overlaps and intersects with the larger context of printmaking and contemporary art. Student-funded travel required.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Printmaking, interdisciplinary, and BS visual arts majors engage in advanced study of print media. They work independently and cooperatively on projects with the goal of making discoveries, refining skills, and sharpening their expressive voice using printmaking processes. Through the framework of a selected theme, each student produces a body of print-based work, conducts research, gives presentations, and participates in discussions and critiques.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Explores large-scale and monumental works that expand the definition of printmaking. Such projects as installations, interventions, and site-specific works are made within the framework of print-based concepts and methods. Students are introduced to oversize printing techniques, repeat imagery for large-scale works, and unconventional printing surfaces.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1070 And (PRT2100 Or VPR2100 ) Or (PRT2110 Or VPR2110 ) Or (PRT2120 Or VPR2120 ) Or (PRT2130 Or VPR2130 )
Department: Printmaking
Covers the traditional methods of Japanese water-based woodblock prints, known for their subtle tonal variations, blending of colors, and color intensity. All aspects of the process are covered, including proper care and use of the carving tools, preparing and carving wood blocks, hand-printing using the baren, Japanese papers, water-based pigments, and the kento registration system.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
An extensive study of a particular topic or technique in printmaking. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Monotype is a bridge between painting and printmaking. Students use brushes, paints, inks, rollers, and drawing implements to create unique prints from a Plexiglas or metal plate. The nature of the process allows students the freedom to work in a direct, spontaneous manner leading to gestural images and textured surfaces.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
An exploration of the numerous processes that form a bridge between painting and printmaking. This course begins with the basic monotype on paper through brushes, rollers, plates, and basic ink chemistry. The toolkit is then expanded to include stencil, collage, inkjet, and mixed media techniques on paper, panel, and canvas.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
In this first half of a two-course sequence, all aspects of the limited-edition artist’s book are explored. Students are taught that, by the act of turning pages, they can express the continuity of an idea flowing through a near-cinematic continuum. Students realize the potential of narrative, sequence, and pacing, together with the importance of combining word and image. Discussions include letterpress, binding, other bookmaking techniques, and printmaking media.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (PRT2100 Or VPR2100 ) And (PRT2110 Or VPR2110 ) And (PRT2120 Or VPR2120 ) And (PRT2130 Or VPR2130 )
Department: Printmaking
In this second half of a two-course sequence, all aspects of the limited-edition artist’s book are explored. Students are taught that, by the act of turning pages, they can express the continuity of an idea flowing through a near-cinematic continuum. Students realize the potential of narrative, sequence, and pacing, together with the importance of combining word and image. Discussions include letterpress, binding, other bookmaking techniques, and printmaking media.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PRT3670 Or VPR3670
Department: Printmaking
Focuses on the development of the student’s narrative voice through word and image. Students learn basic bookbinding with an emphasis on development of a subject matter and ways of storytelling. Rhythm and timing are examined as components of narrative structure. Unique works, small editions, and collaborative projects are made, using media chosen by each student.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
With the dual goal of developing content while pushing to the boundary of the medium, students learn to use experimental structures and a variety of media in the making of their own artist’s book. Experience is gained in book forms ranging in scale from intimate to grand, and with making sculptural books and books as installation.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
The artist’s book is a time-based medium that occupies three-dimensional space. In this course, students learn how to approach the structured use of time in the book form and incorporate book structures and image-making techniques in their own content for artists’ books. Bookbinding demonstrations, critiques, readings, and field trips are important components of the course.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Students gain technical professional experience by helping provide a safe and well-functioning studio environment for their fellow students. Studio assistants are expected to have advanced standing in their media area and a thorough understanding of current professional practices. Duties include basic maintenance and demonstrations of equipment, independent or group tutorials and workshops, weekly meetings, and other responsibilities assigned by the sponsoring instructional technician. A maximum of 4 credits in PRT 3950 (or a combined maximum of 6 credits in VIS 3998 and PRT 3950) may be applied toward the BFA.
Credits: 2
Department: Printmaking
Students are challenged to contextualize their printmaking skills within contemporary conceptual practices. A series of weekly critical theory readings, seminars, and slide lectures introduces how printmaking today functions as an artistic strategy beyond the traditional boundaries of the medium. Studio assignments requiring advanced research follow in tandem with the critical issues explored.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (PRT2100 And PRT2110 ) Or (PRT2100 And PRT2120 ) Or (PRT2100 And PRT2130 ) Or (PRT2110 And PRT2120 ) Or (PRT2120 And PRT2130 ) Or (PRT2110 And PRT2130 )
Department: Printmaking
Covers practical knowledge to prepare students for a professional career in printmaking and the fine arts. Different aspects of a studio career are covered, including résumés, artists’ statements, documenting work, grants, residencies, artists’ taxes, exhibition planning, graduate school applications, and creating a Web presence. Students create a professional file, apply for grants and/or residencies, and conduct research on artistic opportunities.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
An intensive, weeklong off-campus course that takes place on the occasion of a professional conference or residency offered at different national or international locales each year. With the goal of providing professional opportunities and meaningful connections to the broader printmaking/art community, students participate in the full scope of events available: demonstrations, lectures, panel discussions, portfolio exchanges, and exhibitions.
Credits: 1
Department: Printmaking
Digital tools offer ways of making between image and object, lens and plate, screen and paper. Expanding their skills, students translate work into digital print forms. Technical skills include wide-format printing and hybrid printmaking techniques employing laser engraver, vinyl cutter, CNC router, and 3-D printers to produce works or matrices for traditional relief, intaglio, and screen printing.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Lithography is the closest printmaking technique to direct drawing. Students are taught how to create images on lithographic stones, aluminum plates, and photolithography plates. The goal is for students to develop a series of personal images that emphasize the graphic potential inherent in lithography. Individual and group critiques challenge students’ methods and ideas while aiming to improve their skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Woodcutting is the oldest printmaking technique and considered the most direct of the printmaking processes. Using wood and linoleum, students learn the varied techniques of relief printmaking. They explore a variety of carving methods, print by hand and on press, and register multiple-layer prints. Reduction, multiblock techniques, color, and digital techniques are covered. Experimentation and combining approaches are encouraged.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Screen printing, also known as serigraphy, is valued for its versatility, ease of working on a large scale, quality of color, and ability to integrate hand-drawn, photographic, and digital imagery. In this course, students learn a variety of techniques for creating layered images on paper, fabric, and other surfaces. They are challenged to create expressive works in new ways, bringing complexity, depth, and refinement to their imagery.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
From Rembrandt to Kiki Smith, artists have used intaglio processes to generate marks ranging from the precise and detailed to the physical and expressive. Students explore such techniques as engraving, etching, aquatint, drypoint, and photo transfer. Independent projects, demonstrations, and critiques guide students toward creating a body of prints that deploy these various media to shape their creative ideas.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Covers the traditional methods of Japanese water-based woodblock prints, known for their subtle tonal variations, blending of colors, and color intensity. All aspects of the process are covered, including proper care and use of the carving tools, preparing and carving wood blocks, hand-printing using the baren, Japanese papers, water-based pigments, and the kento registration system.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
In this survey of the historical significance of printmaking, the focus is on understanding the history of print media and its influence on culture in Europe, Asia, and the New World. Students explore both the history of printmaking and its intertwined relationship to the history of art. Of prime concern are the unique and distinct characteristics of each printmaking process.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
An exploration of the numerous processes that form a bridge between painting and printmaking. This course begins with the basic monotype on paper through brushes, rollers, plates, and basic ink chemistry. The toolkit is then expanded to include stencil, collage, inkjet, and mixed media techniques on paper, panel, and canvas.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Covers practical knowledge to prepare students for a professional career in printmaking and the fine arts. Different aspects of a studio career are covered, including résumés, artists’ statements, documenting work, grants, residencies, artists’ taxes, exhibition planning, graduate school applications, and creating a Web presence. Students create a professional file, apply for grants and/or residencies, and conduct research on artistic opportunities.
An inclusive ever changing discipline, Sculpture engages traditional and new genre practices. Our wood, metal, ceramic and bronze casting facilities are state of the art and support studies in performance, digital technology and social practice. We seek to produce artists who are socially engaged global citizens.
Updated 10-2-20
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in sculpture must complete the following requirements (81 credits):
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 12 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art before 1800 (lower-level)
ARH —/Art history elective (modern/contemporary)
Sculpture Studio Courses: 18 credits
SCP 2110/Thinking in Three Dimensions: 3 credits
SCP 2280/Digital Tools for Sculptors OR SCP 3310/Digital Dimensions: 3 credits
SCP —/Sculpture electives: 12 credits
Students must choose 6 credits from below:
SCP 2150/Intro to Wood
SCP 2080/Direct Metal
SCP 2270/Ceramics
SCP 3480/Multiples
SCP 3070/Bronze
Students must choose 6 credits from below:
SCP 3155/Performance
NME 2420/Video OR NME 3630/Sound
SCP 3356/Theater of Oppressed
VIS 3500/Arts for Social Change
An introductory course in sculpture for students from other disciplines. Focus is placed on the development of 3-D design (form, space, object, composition) and on strengthening observational skills. A variety of materials and form-making processes are explored.
Credits: 2
Department: Sculpture
Instruction in acetylene gas welding and all the tools required for direct metal fabrication of sculpture. The focus varies each semester (within the parameters of contemporary, nonfigurative sculpture) and includes the refining of technical form-making and welding skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Emphasizes the conceptual aspects of sculpture while continuing the development of technical skills in various processes and materials. The course is structured around assignments that develop individual industry, research skills, creative expressiveness, and class participation.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1260 Or VSC1010
Department: Sculpture
The specific visual and structural properties of wood are discussed with application to both functional and nonfunctional sculpture. Basic construction and forming techniques are introduced.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Students are introduced to the specific visual and structural properties of wood, as well as techniques for working with wood from a sculptor’s perspective. Open to all visual arts majors.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: SCP2120 Or VSC2120
Department: Sculpture
Projects investigate collage from a variety of approaches, then move to assemblage sculpture and finally diorama boxes and object transformation. This exploration of the unique possibilities of collage/assemblage may include work with found objects and fabricated forms.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: SCP2120 Or VSC2120
Department: Sculpture
Clay modeling from the human figure. Drawing and 2-D media are used for support and insight into issues of figuration. Armature construction and relief sculpture are explored.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Focuses on clay as a sculptural medium with emphasis on process and the development of sculptural ideas. Various techniques are taught, including slab building, modeling, and some mold making for clay.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Provides students with a digital toolset for creating interactive sculpture today. Students explore the role of 2-D drawing tools and 3-D modeling software in the creation of sculptures and installations. The focus is on the potential of using virtual and physical tools together in the production of art works.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1260 Or VSC1010
Department: Sculpture
An introduction to video as a creative visual, auditory, and spatial medium. Students learn the fundamentals of video production with the goal of making original work in the genres of single-channel tape, performance, and installation. At the same time, students are introduced to key works in the history of time-based arts in a weekly thematic program of viewing, listening, reading, and critique.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
A survey of contemporary artists and movements, ideas, and texts pertinent to current sculptural practice. A combination of lectures, reading-based discussions, workshops, and museum/gallery visits familiarize students with contemporary art discourse. Emphasis is on the evolving and expanding field of sculpture, including installation, performance, time-based media, and other object-making, material-based practices.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1260 Or VSC1010
Department: Sculpture
In this introduction to the discipline of video art, students expand their knowledge of nonlinear editing as it pertains to the exhibition of video. Conceptual approaches may include non-narrative structures, installation art, and performance art as they relate to the moving image. Note: Students must have access to and be able to use a DV camcorder, webcam, camera phone, or other video-recording device that can capture moving images of decent quality and upload them to a computer for editing.
Credits: 2
Department: Sculpture
A continuation of Ceramic Sculpture, further explorations in building large sculptures and making glazes. Designed for students focusing on clay as a medium for sculpture.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: SCP2270
Department: Sculpture
Students produce forms in clay or wax and cast them in bronze. The traditional methods of lost-wax casting are explored, and students participate in all aspects of bronze foundry work.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
An introduction to performance art as a creative, visual, experiential, and time-based medium. Through structured projects, students learn ways to create and document performance pieces. Projects may include live performances, video and photo documentation of private actions, interactive pieces, and sculpture/installation works. Through presentation and lectures, students are introduced to significant historical and contemporary works. All mediums and backgrounds welcome.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
In this project-based digital fabrication course, students investigate the idea of shelters and structures, both built and imaginary, as a source for 3-D work ranging from the miniature to the environmental, from the substantial to the ephemeral. This course will utilize laser-cutters, CNC router and 3D printers.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Instruction in acetylene gas welding and all the tools required for direct metal fabrication of sculpture. The focus varies each semester (within the parameters of contemporary, nonfigurative sculpture) and includes the refining of technical form-making and welding skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
In this first half of a two-course sequence, information and experience gained in SCP 2150 are used to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the way an object’s overall form is affected by the methods used in its construction. More complex joinery and shaping processes are presented and practiced.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP2150 Or VSC2150 ) Or (SCP2155 Or VSC2155 )
Department: Sculpture
In this second half of a two-course sequence, information and experience gained in SCP 2150 are used to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the way an object’s overall form is affected by the methods used in its construction. More complex joinery and shaping processes are presented and practiced.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP2150 Or VSC2150 ) Or (SCP2155 Or VSC2155 )
Department: Sculpture
Combines nontraditional photographic production with digital and hands-on fabrication techniques to investigate the fluid dynamic between image and form. Focusing on the politics, economics, and aesthetics of a data-driven culture, this course takes a critical project-based approach to bridging the virtual-physical divide. By exploring various imaging processes, students apply an additional layer of content in their sculpture.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
In this digital fabrication course, students explore the relationship between the three-dimensional world and digital technology. In this creative new-media environment, students are given a foundation for developing 3-D content and integrating it into their preferred field. Students generate digital objects, prepare them for real-world fabrication, and create virtual-reality simulations and photorealistic sculpture proposals. This course will utilize laser-cutters, CNC router and 3D printers.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: VIS1260 Or NME2100
Department: Sculpture
Takes advanced students through the process leading to the fabrication and installation of a public art commission. Students answer a call for proposals; create a professional-level response, including a written statement, model, drawings, budget, and fabrication schedule; and present to a committee of experts for appraisal. This course is especially recommended to any student considering making a public art proposal for the Purchase College campus.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Exploring techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, this course uses the arsenal of Theatre of the Oppressed exercises as a process to further understand self, each other, and surrounding social systems. Individual project forms may vary (sculpture, writing, etc.). In addition, the class makes a forum theatre piece to be performed with the campus community.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Students explore various techniques using glass as an artistic medium. Demonstrations, image presentations, and critiques augment the work done in class.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
An extensive study of a particular topic or technique in sculpture. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
A workshop devoted to the production of independent video projects. Students are expected to have some facility with electronic cameras, sound, and editing techniques and to be highly motivated in the use of video as a creative tool. The course is strongly (though not exclusively) focused on video installation, exploring both its unique properties as a mixed-media, time-based form and its relationship to other contemporary 3-D practices.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP2420 Or VSC2420 ) Or NME2420
Department: Sculpture
Various methods used to make sculptural multiples are explored. Mold-making techniques are taught in clay, glass, paper, and mixed media. Assignments focus on achieving technical expertise and understanding the use of the multiple in contemporary sculpture.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS1260 Or VSC1010
Department: Sculpture
An introduction to and overview of the fundamentals of animation as a conceptual and technical medium. Students learn the historical and conceptual background of animation and create a series of works within the medium. In addition to digital video and still camera skills, the class explores stop motion, 2-D, and 3-D animation in combination with traditional practices, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Weekly field trips to gallery and museum exhibitions of contemporary sculpture in New York City. Students write responses on a regular basis, both analyzing the exhibitions seen and relating them to their own work. Several classes are held on campus to discuss each student’s current studio work.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
This first half of a two-semester course is intended to foster the discovery and sharpening of personal vision and the development of personal initiative and self-motivation. Students have the opportunity to work independently on self-generated projects, which are then presented for both group and individual critique. Required for sculpture majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
This second half of a two-semester course is intended to foster the discovery and sharpening of personal vision and the development of personal initiative and self-motivation. Students have the opportunity to work independently on self-generated projects, which are then presented for both group and individual critique. Required for sculpture majors.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
This intensive exploration of installation art consists of a series of temporary projects that explore site-specific work, which may include a variety of media. Taking into account the range of sensory experience, space and time take on a greater importance than in object-based art works.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Sound is explored as material in the context of the visual arts, using DAT recorders, sampling, synthesis, processing, computers, sensor control, and MIDI systems. Projects may include making sonic instruments, sounding objects, and experimental video; ambient, interactive, performative, and multimedia installations; and surround-sound DVDs. Advanced technological means enable uncharted explorations in the time-based arts.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
A continuation of SCP 3630, for advanced sound and multimedia projects. Sound is further explored in ambient, interactive, performative, time-based, and site-specific installations. Tools available include the Kurzwell K2600 Architectural Synthesis System and Macintosh computers with mixing, synthesis, and DVD surround-sound mastering technology. Interactive programs in the studio include MAX, Jitter, and Cyclops.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP3630 Or VSC3630 ) Or NME3630
Department: Sculpture
Students explore and create sound events and installations from a sculptural and an architectural perspective. This includes listening, recording, playing back, and simulating sound in space. Tools include multichannel systems, the KDFX processor, Ableton Live, Max, MIDI, Open Sound Control (OSC), and handmade instruments/circuits. Collaborations and workshops enable advanced students to plan, construct, budget, and document sonic events in public spaces.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: SCP3630 Or VSC3630 Or MCO1310 Or MCO3330 Or NME1060
Department: Sculpture
Students gain technical professional experience by helping provide a safe and well-functioning studio environment for their fellow students. Studio assistants are expected to have advanced standing in their media area and a thorough understanding of current professional practices. Duties include basic maintenance and demonstrations of equipment, independent or group tutorials and workshops, weekly meetings, and other responsibilities assigned by the sponsoring instructional technician. A maximum of 4 credits in SCP 3950 (or a combined maximum of 6 credits in VIS 3998 and SCP 3950) may be applied toward the BFA.
Credits: 2
Department: Sculpture
Students explore alternative or expanded practices in metal. These may include both processes and materials that do not overlap with currently offered classes. Materials may include aluminum, iron, and titanium. Processes may include furnace building, mold making, and metal casting. Demonstration, image presentation, and critique augment the actual work done in class.
Credits: 2
Department: Sculpture
A select group of advanced students focus on independent projects working within a specific video genre. Explorations may include video animation, installation, performance, documentary, or another specific video application. Lectures and presentations augment the students’ hands-on work.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Focuses on commitment and professional practice. Students generate portfolios and documentation materials of their own work. Public speaking is emphasized as students learn to articulate and clarify their own work. Teaching methods include lectures, discussions, readings, and field trips. Required for all students undertaking a senior project in sculpture.
Credits: 3
Department: Sculpture
Extends the goals of SCP 4800, preparing students for the “real world” after graduation. Students research venues for their work, write grant proposals, investigate job possibilities, etc. Contemporary issues in sculpture are addressed through readings and discussions. Required for all students undertaking a senior project in sculpture.
Distinct from the more specialized BFA programs in the School of Art+Design, the BS major in visual arts provides an overview of contemporary art–based research methods and cultural theories, art history, and studio practice in a broad liberal arts context designed to introduce students to analytic and critical thinking.
The BS program combines the studio foundation program (required for all undergraduates in the School of Art+Design) with studio electives, courses in art history, and a synthesizing senior project. Students may choose from other art electives offered by the School of Art+Design, as long as they have taken the prerequisite courses. With half of their required credits earned outside the visual arts, many BSVA students complete a double major or a minor in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, or performing arts. This freedom offers students access to the full range of programs at Purchase College.
The Neuberger Museum of Art and Performing Arts Center on campus serve as active resources and integral components of the curriculum. Study abroad programs may provide enrichment and global perspectives to the course of study. Internships may also provide a practical connection between academic studies and potential career paths.
Academically engaged, visually attuned, and skillful students who wish to initiate this course of study will be admitted by portfolio review. Upon completion of the program, students may pursue careers in such cultural organizations as museums, galleries, and nonprofit organizations; art journalism and publishing, marketing and advertising; and other professions that require creative problem solving and inventive solutions. Graduates of this degree program will also be prepared to continue study in graduate and professional programs.
Updated 9-29-20
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in the visual arts BS program must complete the following requirements (55 credits), as outlined below:
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 12 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art prior to 1800 (lower-level)
ARH —/Art history elective (modern/contemporary)
Studio Electives: 17-18 credits
V —/Visual arts studio electives: 5-6 credits
V —/Visual arts studio electives (upper level): 12 credits
Synthesis Courses: 9 credits
VIS 2880 or 3880/BSVA Seminar I or II: 3 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 3 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 3 credits
Students are also expected to abide by the policies and procedures laid out in the A+D Student Handbook.
Updates to the 2019–20 Purchase College Catalog
Effective Fall 2019:
VIS 1050 is now a 2-credit course.
Minor requirements:
The minor in visual arts is designed to provide students in other disciplines with an understanding of visual arts processes, issues, and skills.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Visual Arts
In addition to the two prerequisite courses listed above, a total of 12 credits in visual arts studio courses are required. These are to be chosen in consultation with the academic advisor in the School of Art+Design.
A maximum of 4 transfer credits may be counted toward these academic requirements. All studio courses must be completed with a grade of C or higher to count toward the minor.
Applying for Admission to the Minor
An application and review process is required for admission to the minor in visual arts; acceptance is not automatic. To apply, students must have completed the prerequisite courses and must submit the following to the School of Art+Design main office (Visual Arts Building, second floor):
a completed Application for Minor Study
a written statement
a portfolio (submitted online via Slideroom.com or USB; see the Application for Minor Study for details)
For more information, please refer to the Application for Minor Study. If you still have questions, please call the School of Art+Design, (914) 251-6750.
Working in close consultation with a faculty advisor, students in this BFA major design a course of study that bridges two or more traditional areas in the visual arts. This degree is designed for students whose natural interests and curiosities lead them beyond the borders of a single major. Students must identify a primary and secondary area of focus, such as Graphic Design and Printmaking or Sculpture and Photography. The course of study should direct the student along a path of exploration, experimentation and synthesis.
For more information on declaring this concentration, please refer to the A+D Student Handbook.
Updated 10-2-20
Requirements:
In addition to fulfilling general degree requirements, undergraduate students majoring in interdisciplinary visual arts must complete the following requirements (82 credits):
Foundation Courses: 16-17 credits
VIS 1050/ComX: 2 credits
or VIS 2150/Key Class: 1 credit
VIS 1060/Foundation Drawing: 3 credits
VIS 1070/Extended Media: 3 credits
VIS 1080/Visual Language: 3 credits
VIS 1260/3-D Processes: 3 credits
VIS 1330/Lens and Time: 3 credits
Art History Courses: 12 credits
ARH 1020/History of Art Survey II: 3 credits
ARH —/One course in the history of art before 1800 (lower-level)
ARH —/Art history elective (modern/contemporary)
Studio Art Courses: 30 credits
Students must find a faculty sponsor in each of the two areas (primary and secondary). Primary area:
Studio art courses (lower level): 6 credits
Studio art courses (upper level): 12 credits Secondary area:
Studio art courses (lower level): 6 credits
Studio art courses (upper level): 6 credits
Visual Arts Studio Electives: 12-13 credits
Synthesis Courses: 11 credits
Senior seminar or other synthesis course: 3 credits
VIS 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
VIS 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Students are also expected to abide by the policies and procedures laid out in the A+D Student Handbook.
Updates to the 2019–20 Purchase College Catalog
Effective Fall 2019:
VIS 1050 is now a 2-credit course.
Courses
An introduction to digital visual communications and basic creative software applications used by professionals outside of the visual arts. The course focuses on building a digital and visual vocabulary and developing skills within the Mac iLife suite and Photoshop. Concepts include basic design principles, resolution, printing, scanning, optical media, and multimedia presentations. Digital literacy is promoted through observation, discussion, workshops, tutorials, exercises, collaborative work, reading, writing, and small projects. Coursework is designed to integrate the student’s field of study with digital visual communications.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
This common experience brings freshmen in the School of Art+Design together as a community, allowing them to engage and draw links between the class activities and the rest of the foundation curriculum. Students experience happenings ranging from artist lectures, films, and readings to performances and field trips. Includes required meetings each week with peer advisors outside the scheduled class time.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Drawing is explored as a distinct practice inspired by particular media and traditions, as well as a fundamental tool for exploring ideas across disciplines. Observational skills are emphasized, but seeing extends beyond the visual, enriched by physical, intellectual, and personal experience. Analytical and intuitive approaches are developed toward the goal of communicating significant form and content.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Working thematically toward a finished project (realized in an artist’s book), students gain experience in traditional and alternative methods for art making. Digital media, printmaking, and photography are used as unique forms or in new combinations. Emphasis is on the process of making and the challenge of expressing ideas. Demonstrations, critiques, readings, slide lectures, visiting artists, and films are included.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Introduces the fundamental theories and methodologies of visual communication that explore the relationship between form and content. Through observation, analysis, writing, exercises, and projects, students begin to develop work processes that involve articulation, visual research, concept generation, form making, and craft skills. Class time is spent generating ideas, establishing criteria, and making and refining form.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students explore various art-making processes through the unique lens of the cultures of India and Tibet. Readings, lectures, writing, and studio work are combined with locally developed research to form projects that focus on themes established by the instructor.
Credits: 4
Department: Art + Design
A foundation studio course that introduces the fundamental skills and vocabulary needed to design and create three-dimensional works. Students explore areas of 3-D construction, sculpture, and design, ranging from object to installation and using a variety of processes, materials, and techniques, including wood, metal, plaster, clay, mixed media, and digital tools (e.g., vector and raster graphic programs).
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students explore time- and lens-based artistic processes that use pictorial space, narrative strategies, sequence, sound, video, social practice, screen-based interaction, and coding.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students incorporate on-site drawing, ephemeral site-specific sculptures, and performance around the city, using both found and traditional materials. Exploration of the spaces that are Antibes is expanded to include not just the physical, but also the historical, political, and psychological.
Credits: 4
Department: Art + Design
Students create a photographic essay that is inspired by their observations and experiences of Pisciotta. The development of content and narrative strategies, along with a consideration of sequence, rhythm, and layout in books, is discussed. Working with digital cameras (a simple one is fine) and Internet publishing, each student creates a self-published book.
Credits: 4
Department: Art + Design
Students research, investigate, and comment on the architecture at Purchase College, using the Visual Arts Building as a focal point to investigate both 2-D and 3-D methods of site-specific art. Projects may include site drawings, temporary interventions with interior and exterior architecture, and object-based installations. All media and backgrounds are welcome.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Engaging the daily newspaper as a readily available and highly tactile form of communication, students use broad and deep research to develop and understanding of the printed medium as a visual abstraction of its content. In seven weekly critiques, students engage in diverse mediums to present their evolving, experimental work as an abstraction of the newspaper in a visual cultural and social context.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Composition is an experimentation in synthesizing word, image, sound, and movement through close observation and cohesion presentation. Exploring the universality of composition in musical and non-musical terms engaging processes of translating and effectively communicating ideas from and within mediums and disciplines, students use their own evolving mediums of expression in diverse ways.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Wordless books, or novels in pictures, are from the early 20th century. Using the medium of woodcuts, artists like Frans Masereel were able to create complex narratives told only with images. This course examines the history of these books and how they are relevant today. Students learn how to effectively plan, develop, and create a hand-printed woodcut novel.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Color affects the work of all artists and designers. This seminar/studio engages two ways of understanding color: color behavior and color meaning. Assignments include color studies, readings, and discussions. Color is addressed as relevant to all media, and students are asked to make color studies and present analyses of how color is used in their own studio practices.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Color is the most relative of all visual attributes. The seminar makes use of this relativity as the means by which visual awareness is heightened and refined through fundamental studies in color action and interaction. This is not a course in color theory; rather, it is a practicum in color as experienced. Mastery of basic color grammar and syntax leads to a personal sense of looking and expression.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Juxtaposes art and science as inquiring and creative pursuits. Exchanging knowledge of the materials and processes used in their creative endeavors, students collaborate on three innovative projects that focus on perceived relationships between science and art. Visiting professionals, at work in studios and labs, provide insight into thinking and doing through and across the disciplines of art and science.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Introduces new transfer students to the School of Art+Design, its faculty, and core values. The class explores what it means to be an artist at Purchase College. What are the expectations, challenges, and rewards? Activities include discussions, artist lectures, films, performances, field trips, and peer advising. Includes required meetings outside the scheduled class time.
Credits: 1
Department: Art + Design
The collage medium is often associated with Cubism because it has the power to both fracture and reassemble shapes and images. This course explores the fabrication of two-dimensional artworks, using a variety of materials (both found and created), including paper, fabric, wood, metal, and string, along with drawing and painting elements.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
A survey of contemporary artists, ideas, and texts in which cross-disciplinary research and critique skills are taught. A combination of slide lectures, discussions of readings, and museum/gallery visits familiarize students with contemporary art discourse, its interdisciplinary character, and many of its important figures. Guest lecturers from various backgrounds visit throughout the term.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
An overview of electronic media and its relationship to the fine arts. This course covers the genre from its infancy to the present and focuses on the study of the art and artists critical to the genre’s development. Lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and visiting artists are augmented by assigned readings, critical writing, and examinations.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Coordinated by faculty in Art+Design, this master class includes guest lectures by the resident artist in the Center for Applied Design and focuses on areas related to the particular artist’s pursuits. Students engage in collaborative research and studio production as they explore the cultural relevance and social impact of objects. Open to students in other disciplines; may be taken a maximum of three times for credit.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: (SCP2080 Or VSC2080 ) And (SCP2150 Or VSC2150 )
Department: Art + Design
Juxtaposes art and science as inquiring and creative pursuits. Exchanging knowledge of the materials and processes used in their creative endeavors, students collaborate on three innovative projects that focus on perceived relationships between science and art. Visiting professionals, at work in studios and labs, provide insight into thinking and doing through and across the disciplines of art and science.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
An interdisciplinary investigation of making, using such methods as collage and assemblage. Working both digitally and physically, students explore materials, found images and objects, and original content, culminating in kinetic and animated projects.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
An extensive study of a particular topic or technique in the visual arts. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
This colloquium augments the Art+Design undergraduate program by focusing on the independent research of a current MFA student with advanced standing. The graduate student shares his or her unique research through readings, workshop activities, studio critiques, writing, and other assignments.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Public art is used in this course to promote community engagement and cross-cultural interaction. Students use established, recognized methods of collaboration to explore local community issues, concluding with the physical implementation and exhibition of student-led solutions.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Collaborate with Beninese students researching cultural artistic production in Benin. Activities include service-learning workshops at local mini-libraries; visits to cultural sites including Ouidah and the slave trail; visits to artists’ studios; and drawing and DIY printmaking workshops with both Beninese and Purchase students. Students write response papers, participate in class discussions, co-teach workshops, and make artwork.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: ARH3030
Department: Art + Design
A summer service-learning course that takes place in struggling urban centers, in which students work with city residents to help rejuvenate abandoned homes. Activities and topics include skill-sharing workshops with residents, readings, lectures, and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, interrogating the impacts of gentrification, the roles of outsiders in development, and the unintended consequences of good intentions in transitional neighborhoods.
Credits: 4
Department: Art + Design
Students will conduct independent research on the landscape of the region in terms of borders, history, politics, geography, and migration. This research will be compiled in various ways and result in a final artwork or paper to be determined by the faculty and student.
Credits: 4
Department: Art + Design
Independent research is introduced as a major focus. Students gather threads from classwork, with their humanities studies, to begin a comprehensive archive. Discussion and critique reinforce the loop between making, research, and analysis. Course topics focus on advancing key frameworks in the field. The seminar serves as a laboratory for senior projects and culminates in an independently driven project.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students assist visiting resident artists in the School of Art+Design or the Neuberger Museum of Art with the creation of a new work. Duties are assigned, overseen, and evaluated by the faculty sponsor and may include fabrication, technical support, rendering, printing, or other artistic practices.
Credits: 6
Department: Art + Design
In this seminar, which facilitates the peer-mentoring program, students are taught methods to support their roles as leaders and peer mentors of incoming students in the School of Art+Design. Their mission is to reinforce the student community, providing a support system that supplements the curricula. Tools are introduced in class meetings to enhance student experience and professional practice. Students meet weekly with their peer mentees.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
The class meets at various museums, galleries, and alternative spaces in and around New York City, where students encounter a wide range of media, aesthetic sensibilities, and institutional settings. At least one class is devoted to discussing student work in relation to concepts explored during the field trips. Student-funded travel required.
The MFA program in the School of Art+Design is a two-year, interdisciplinary graduate program in the visual arts.
This small and highly selective program fosters the artistic, intellectual, and professional growth of each student through exposure to a variety of viewpoints represented by faculty, visiting artists, and critics, and through independent studio work and academic studies.
Emphasis is placed on the development of originality, clarity, and studio discipline that will carry into the student’s professional career. The focus on independent studio work encourages discovery of individual forms of expression. This is accomplished through one-on-one meetings with faculty sponsors chosen each term, group critiques, and cross-disciplinary critiques with the MFA faculty.
Graduate students are expected to produce an individual body of work during their two years, culminating in an MFA exhibition accompanied by a written thesis. For those interested in developing teaching skills and pedagogical approaches to art making, opportunities are available to assist in the teaching of undergraduate courses and, when appropriate, to develop and offer courses.
The extensive facilities of the school, including photography, video, and digital labs, a furniture-grade wood shop, metal shop, and printmaking studios, all housed within the school’s 160,000 square foot building, are available to MFA students. In addition, each MFA student is assigned a semiprivate studio space. Thirty-five miles south of the campus, the vast art resources in New York City also play a crucial role in every student’s curricular and extracurricular studies.
Dual Degree: MFA in Visual Arts/MA in Art History
Graduate students have an opportunity to earn both an MA in art history through the School of Humanities and an MFA in visual arts through the School of Art+Design.
Apart from preparation for museum and gallery work and writing art criticism, students enrolled in the MA/MFA program gain a significant competitive advantage when pursuing a teaching career in studio art. Candidates for both the MA and MFA should review the options for the thesis exhibition. Studio space is provided during the first two years of the program.
The MFA program is designed to be completed in two years with a minimum requirement of 60–61 graduate credits.
This includes 33 credits of studio work (VIS 5210–5220, 5720–5750, and 5801–5804, and one studio art elective), 8 credits of graduate seminars (selected from VIS 5760 and electives), 8 credits of art history, 11–12 credits of elective coursework chosen in consultation with a graduate advisor, and a 2-credit writing tutorial for the MFA thesis. For successful progress through the program, a 3.0 (B) GPA must be maintained.
First Year: 30–31 credits
Fall:
14–15 credits
VIS 5150/College Pedagogy or elective
3 credits
VIS 5720/Graduate Studio Critiques I
3 credits
VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics
3 credits
VIS 5801/Independent Graduate Studio I
3 credits
VIS 5—/Graduate teaching assistant or elective
2–3 credits
Spring:
16 credits
VIS 5210/Professional Practices: Artists or
VIS 5220/Professional Practices: Institutions
3 credits
VIS 5730/Graduate Studio Critiques II
3 credits
Elective (open)
3 credits
VIS 5802/Independent Graduate Studio II
3 credits
ARH 5326/Master’s Colloquium II
4 credits
Second Year: 30 credits
Fall:
16 credits
VIS 5740/Graduate Studio Critiques III
3 credits
VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics
3 credits
VIS 5803/Independent Graduate Studio III
3 credits
VIS 5—/Visual Arts elective
3 credits
ARH 5325/Master’s Colloquium I or
ARH 5—/Graduate art history elective
4 credits
Spring:
14 credits
VIS 5005/MFA Thesis Tutorial
2 credits
VIS 5210/Professional Practices: Artists or
VIS 5220/Professional Practices: Institutions
3 credits
VIS 5750/Graduate Studio Critiques IV
3 credits
Elective (open)
3 credits
VIS 5804/Graduate Studio Capstone
3 credits
Notes:
ARH 5325 is required for students who are also enrolled in the art history MA program. Otherwise, MFA students may choose a different graduate art history course in consultation with their faculty advisor.
Students may enroll in ARH 5325 or the graduate art history elective in the fall semester of either their first or second year. ARH 5325 and 5326 may be taken in either order.
Students must take VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics two times.
In most cases, obtaining both an MA in art history (through the School of Humanities) and an MFA in visual arts at Purchase College requires three years of in-residence study with a total course load of 98 credits. For successful progress through the program, a 3.0 (B) GPA must be maintained.
First Year: 32 credits
Fall:
16 credits
VIS 5150/College Pedagogy or elective
3 credits
VIS 5720/Graduate Studio Critiques I
3 credits
VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics
3 credits
VIS 5801/Independent Graduate Studio I
3 credits
ARH 5101/Proseminar: Method and Theory in Art History*
4 credits
*ARH 5101 offered alternate years; one semester required
Spring:
16 credits
VIS 5210/Professional Practices: Artists or
VIS 5220/Profesional Practices: Institutions
3 credits
VIS 5730/Graduate Studio Critiques II
3 credits
Elective (open)
3 credits
VIS 5802/Independent Graduate Studio II
3 credits
ARH 5325/Master’s Colloquium I*
4 credits
*ARH 5325 and 5326 may be taken in either order
Second Year: 34 credits
Fall:
16 credits
VIS 5740/Graduate Studio Critiques III
3 credits
VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics
3 credits
VIS 5803/Independent Graduate Studio III
3 credits
ARH 5326 Master’s Colloquium II*
4 credits
Studio art elective
3 credits
*ARH 5325 and 5326 may be taken in either order
Spring:
18 credits
ARH 5—/Art history elective**
4 credits
VIS 5005/MFA Thesis Tutorial
2 credits
VIS 5210/Professional Practices: Artists or
VIS 5220/Professional Practices: Institutions
3 credits
VIS 5750/Graduate Studio Critiques IV
3 credits
Elective (open)
3 credits
VIS 5804/Graduate Studio Capstone
3 credits
Third Year: 32 credits
Fall:
16 credits
ARH 5—/Art history electives (two)**
8 credits
Elective (open)
4 credits
ARH 5990/Master’s Thesis I
4 credits
Spring:
16 credits
ARH 5—/Art history electives (two)**
8 credits
Elective (open)
4 credits
ARH 5991/Master’s Thesis II
4 credits
**At least one course elective must deal with art before 1950
Notes:
Students must take VIS 5760/Graduate Critical Topics two times.
Students work independently, choosing their subjects and approach to painting under the guidance of a faculty member. Critical thinking is promoted in critiques and discussion of readings. Students’ work is considered in the context of contemporary painting as they attempt to define their individual sensibility and concerns in preparation for (or in complement to) the MFA graduate project.
Credits: 3
Department: Painting and Drawing
Printmaking
Students explore ways in which print media can be integrated with time-based (4-D) media and animation. Using the cross-disciplinary potential of printmaking and its inclination toward variation, alteration, and seriality as a starting point, students learn methods of analog and digital animation to make works that move their ideas to the dynamic, temporal space that 4-D media occupies.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
An intensive, weeklong off-campus course that takes place on the occasion of a professional conference or residency offered at different national or international locales each year. With the goal of providing professional opportunities and meaningful connections to the broader printmaking/art community, students participate in the full scope of events available: demonstrations, lectures, panel discussions, portfolio exchanges, and exhibitions.
Credits: 1
Department: Printmaking
The field of printmaking is an ongoing negotiation between artists and historic processes, commercial technologies, and social structures. Weekly topics—the multiple, the copy, aura, simulacra, repetition, mechanical reproduction, the human touch, technical or historical determinism, chance operations, process art, the image, appropriation, and sampling—are coupled with studio research to explore how concepts from contemporary art intersect with printmaking.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Digital tools offer ways of making between image and object, lens and plate, screen and paper. Expanding their skills, students translate work into digital print forms. Technical skills include wide-format printing and hybrid printmaking techniques employing laser engraver, vinyl cutter, CNC router, and 3-D printers to produce works or matrices for traditional relief, intaglio, and screen printing.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Lithography is the closest printmaking technique to direct drawing. Students are taught how to create images on lithographic stones, aluminum plates, and photolithography plates. The goal is for students to develop a series of personal images that emphasize the graphic potential inherent in lithography. Individual and group critiques challenge students’ methods and ideas while aiming to improve their skills.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Woodcutting is the oldest printmaking technique and considered the most direct of the printmaking processes. Using wood and linoleum, students learn the varied techniques of relief printmaking. They explore a variety of carving methods, print by hand and on press, and register multiple-layer prints. Reduction, multiblock techniques, color, and digital techniques are covered. Experimentation and combining approaches are encouraged.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Screen printing, also known as serigraphy, is valued for its versatility, ease of working on a large scale, quality of color, and ability to integrate hand-drawn, photographic, and digital imagery. In this course, students learn a variety of techniques for creating layered images on paper, fabric, and other surfaces. They are challenged to create expressive works in new ways, bringing complexity, depth, and refinement to their imagery.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Papermaking is a particularly flexible and adaptable medium that blends aspects of printmaking, painting, and sculpture. In this course, paper is explored in both its flat, two-dimensional aspect and as a three-dimensional sculptural object. Students learn how paper is made by viewing demonstrations of pulping, dying, pressing, pouring, casting, and spraying paper pulp
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Explores the use of printmaking and drawing techniques to create unique works while allowing experimentation and a more open adaptation of printmaking. Students are introduced to such techniques as monotype, stencil, photo transfer, collage, collograph, chine collé, and embossing. Assignments help students develop the ability to use drawing and printmaking as tools for inquiry and studio experimentation.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
From Rembrandt to Kiki Smith, artists have used intaglio processes to generate marks ranging from the precise and detailed to the physical and expressive. Students explore such techniques as engraving, etching, aquatint, drypoint, and photo transfer. Independent projects, demonstrations, and critiques guide students toward creating a body of prints that deploy these various media to shape their creative ideas.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
In preparation for the professional world, students are exposed to contemporary practices in printmaking and to the New York art world through visits to museum study rooms, artists’ studios, print workshops, publishers, artists’ collectives, and other venues. Topics include portfolio development, résumé writing, artists’ statements, applying for grants, project proposals, and looking at ways that one’s work overlaps and intersects with the larger context of printmaking and contemporary art. Student-funded travel required.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students are challenged to contextualize their printmaking skills within contemporary conceptual practices. A series of weekly critical theory readings, seminars, and slide lectures introduces how printmaking today functions as an artistic strategy beyond the traditional boundaries of the medium. Studio assignments requiring advanced research follow in tandem with the critical issues explored.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Explores large-scale and monumental works that expand the definition of printmaking. Such projects as installations, interventions, and site-specific works are made within the framework of print-based concepts and methods. Students are introduced to oversize printing techniques, repeat imagery for large-scale works, and unconventional printing surfaces.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Covers the traditional methods of Japanese water-based woodblock prints, known for their subtle tonal variations, blending of colors, and color intensity. All aspects of the process are covered, including proper care and use of the carving tools, preparing and carving wood blocks, hand-printing using the baren, Japanese papers, water-based pigments, and the kento registration system.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
In this survey of the historical significance of printmaking, the focus is on understanding the history of print media and its influence on culture in Europe, Asia, and the New World. Students explore both the history of printmaking and its intertwined relationship to the history of art. Of prime concern are the unique and distinct characteristics of each printmaking process.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
Monotype is a bridge between painting and printmaking. Students use brushes, paints, inks, rollers, and drawing implements to create unique prints from a Plexiglas or metal plate. The nature of the process allows students the freedom to work in a direct, spontaneous manner leading to gestural images and textured surfaces.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
An exploration of the numerous processes that form a bridge between painting and printmaking. This course begins with the basic monotype on paper through brushes, rollers, plates, and basic ink chemistry. The toolkit is then expanded to include stencil, collage, inkjet, and mixed media techniques on paper, panel, and canvas.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
All aspects of the limited-edition artist’s book are explored. Students are taught that, by the act of turning pages, they can express the continuity of an idea flowing through a near-cinematic continuum. Students realize the potential of narrative, sequence, and pacing, together with the importance of combining word and image. Discussions include letterpress, binding, other bookmaking techniques, and printmaking media.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Focuses on the development of the student’s narrative voice through word and image. Students learn basic bookbinding with an emphasis on development of subject matter and ways of storytelling. Rhythm and timing are examined as components of narrative structure. Unique works, small editions, and collaborative projects are made, using media chosen by each student.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
With the dual goal of developing content while pushing to the boundary of the medium, students learn to use experimental structures and a variety of media in the making of their own artist’s book. Experience is gained in book forms ranging in scale from intimate to grand, and with making sculptural books and books as installation.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
The artist’s book is a time-based medium that occupies three-dimensional space. In this course, students learn how to approach the structured use of time in the book form and incorporate book structures and image-making techniques in their own content for artists’ books. Bookbinding demonstrations, critiques, readings, and field trips are important components of the course.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Covers practical knowledge to prepare students for a professional career in printmaking and the fine arts. Different aspects of a studio career are covered, including résumés, artists’ statements, documenting work, grants, residencies, artists’ taxes, exhibition planning, graduate school applications, and creating a Web presence. Students create a professional file, apply for grants and/or residencies, and conduct research on artistic opportunities.
Credits: 3
Department: Printmaking
General Visual Arts
Students meet weekly with a writing professional to develop their graduate theses, developing working bibliographies and submitting regular assignments and drafts of the final project.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Three visiting artists are featured each semester. Each artist meets individually and in groups with graduate students, focusing on areas of interest to both the students and artist. Activities include studio work and critiques, field trips, and lectures. Through direct work with these artists, students become engaged with current trends in the New York City art community. For information on the artist(s) and subjects covered, contact the School of Art+Design main office.
Credits: 4
Department: Art + Design
Provides pedagogical methods for the graduate teaching assistantship experience. Students examine different approaches to the teaching of art through readings, discussions, and research. Topics and activities include syllabi formatting, common teaching problems, role-playing classroom situations, and course development.
Credits: 2
Department: Art + Design
Faculty members bring students to the studios of artists in New York City in order to gain an understanding of varieties of individual creative practices. Addressing their background and training, artists demonstrate ways of surviving in today’s challenging art world. Readings and writing complement the visits, helping students to assimilate and process their experience in the field.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students visit a variety of professionals—dealers, curators, editors, grant-writing specialists, et al.—at their home bases in galleries, museums, nonprofits, publications, foundations, and other institutions to learn about how the art world functions. Readings and writing complement the visits, helping students to assimilate and process their experience in the field.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students engage in intensive weekly group critiques with a full-time faculty member. Critiques are based on students’ evolving practices and are intended to hone both their artistic development and ability to articulate and communicate their observations on their own and their classmates’ endeavors. Throughout the semester, visiting artists, critics, and curators provide additional individual critiques.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students engage in intensive weekly group critiques with a full-time faculty member. Critiques are based on students’ evolving practices and are intended to hone both their artistic development and ability to articulate and communicate their observations on their own and their classmates’ endeavors. Throughout the semester, visiting artists, critics, and curators provide additional individual critiques.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students engage in intensive weekly group critiques with a full-time faculty member. Critiques are based on students’ evolving practices and are intended to hone both their artistic development and ability to articulate and communicate their observations on their own and their classmates’ endeavors. Throughout the semester, visiting artists, critics, and curators provide additional individual critiques.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Students engage in intensive weekly group critiques with a full-time faculty member. Critiques are based on students’ evolving practices and are intended to hone both their artistic development and ability to articulate and communicate their observations on their own and their classmates’ endeavors. Throughout the semester, visiting artists, critics, and curators provide additional individual critiques.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
An extensive study of a particular topic or technique in the studio arts. Topics vary each semester.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
A reading and writing seminar designed to complement and enrich studio practice and group critiques. Students are expected to fully participate in classroom discussions based on critical and theoretical reading on topics determined by the instructor.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Each MFA student meets regularly with a studio sponsor. All MFA students work independently in semiprivate studio spaces and have access to the majority of the school’s facilities. During the academic year, graduate students have 24-hour access to their studios. Successful completion of each graduate studio is a prerequisite for the following semester’s graduate studio.
Credits: 3
Department: Art + Design
Each MFA student meets regularly with a studio sponsor. All MFA students work independently in semiprivate studio spaces and have access to the majority of the school’s facilities. During the academic year, graduate students have 24-hour access to their studios. Successful completion of each graduate studio is a prerequisite for the following semester’s graduate studio.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS5801
Department: Art + Design
Each MFA student meets regularly with a studio sponsor. All MFA students work independently in semiprivate studio spaces and have access to the majority of the school’s facilities. During the academic year, graduate students have 24-hour access to their studios. Successful completion of each graduate studio is a prerequisite for the following semester’s graduate studio.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS5802
Department: Art + Design
Each MFA student meets regularly with a studio sponsor. All MFA students work independently in semiprivate studio spaces and have access to the majority of the school’s facilities. During the academic year, graduate students have 24-hour access to their studios. Successful completion of each graduate studio is a prerequisite for the following semester’s graduate studio.
Credits: 3
PREREQ: VIS5803
Department: Art + Design
Students assist faculty members with the delivery of an undergraduate studio course. Duties include grading, critiques, lecture/demonstrations, and other tasks assigned by the faculty sponsor. Graduate students interested in teaching must participate as a teaching assistant and take VIS 5150 at least once before being allowed to independently teach a course.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: VIS5150
Department: Art + Design
*MA/MFA Option: A three-year program leading to both the MA in art history and the MFA in visual arts is also available
The minor in Asian studies provides students with a general introduction to the history and culture of Asian countries through a combination of courses in the humanities and social sciences.
Students interested in the minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study to the School of Humanities main office. The student is assigned a minor advisor after consultation with the coordinator of the Asian studies program.
Minor requirements:
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Asian Studies
Five courses, as follows:
Two courses must be at the 3000 or 4000 level.
One course must be in history. The remaining four courses may be selected from Asian art history, anthropology, Chinese language (strongly suggested), cinema, literature, philosophy, politics, and theatre arts.
Courses Available for the Minor in Asian Studies
School of Film and Media Studies
CIN 3757/New Waves of East Asian Cinema
School of Humanities
ARH 4710/Exoticism in Modern Art
CHI 1010/Beginning Chinese I
CHI 1020/Beginning Chinese II
CHI 1505/Chinese Culture and Social Life
CHI 2010/Intermediate Chinese I
CHI 2020/Intermediate Chinese II
CHI 3010/Advanced Chinese I
CHI 3020/Advanced Chinese II
HIS 2250/Introduction to Asian Studies
HIS 2600/History of Modern Japan
HIS 2820/Introduction to Chinese Arts and Culture
HIS 2825/Modern South Asian History (added Fall 2017)
HIS 2830/Modern East Asia
HIS 3145/Chinese Cinema and History
HIS 3269/Vietnam and Modern America
HIS 3310/Politics and Literature in Modern China
HIS 3510/China in the Modern Age
HIS 3770/Traditional China
LIT 2387/Literature of the South Asian Diaspora
LIT 3215/South Asian Literature
LIT 3226/Literature of Decolonization in South Asia
PHI 2430/Classical Buddhist Philosophy
PHI 3290/Chinese Philosophy: From Confucius through the Neo-Confucian Synthesis of the Song Dynasty
School of Natural and Social Sciences
ANT 2400/Anthropology of South Asia
ANT 3185/Global Media, Local Cultures
ANT 3600/Contemporary Japan: Aesthetics, Politics, Modernity
POL 2105/Citizens Living Under Islamic Laws
POL 2350/Free Speech, Heresy, and Gender in Islamic Societies
POL 3430/Politics of South Asia
POL 3573/Human Rights and Literature
Conservatory of Theatre Arts
THP 3170/Theatricality and Interculturalism (changed Spring 2018; formerly THP 3155/The Theatrical Avant-Garde: East Meets West)
The Contemplative Studies minor is dedicated to integrating the art and science of contemplative practices into academic work in order for students to develop self-knowledge, resilience, critical awareness, and positive social engagement.
This experiential approach complements a rigorous interdisciplinary academic investigation and discussion of contemplative practices in the sciences, humanities, and arts.
The minor is composed of courses already offered at Purchase, as well as the framework for faculty to develop courses dedicated to the minor. In addition, students can design an internship/independent study under the supervision of a Contemplative Studies advisor.
Minor requirements:
Students are required to take:
1 Foundational course (Contemplation, Meditation, and Mind)
3 electives; or 2 electives plus an internship under supervision of their minor advisor. Electives must be taken from a minimum of two separate disciplines
Contemplative Studies minors are required to have an advisor help navigate the complexity of a minor that is comprised of various disciplines.
Courses
ANT2555/Magic, Witchcraft and Modernity
ANT3350/Myth, Ritual, and Performance
ANT3215/Anthropology of Religion
ANT3540/Sensing and Knowing in Anthropology, Psychology and the Arts
DPB1060/Ballet
DPM1060/Modern Dance
DPM1551/Somatic Practices for Dancers:Yoga
DPM1552/Somatic Practices for Dancers: A Moving Inquiry
DPM1553/Somatic Practices for Dancers:Alexander Technique
HIS 2870/Judaism, Christianity and Islam
HIS 3295/Travelers to the Holy Land
HIS 2880/The Atlantic World
LIT2530/The Bible
LIT3745/Identity and Self-Fashioning
PHI2430/Classical Buddhist Philosophy
PHI2400/Introduction to Asian Thought
PHI2800/Philosophy of Religion
PHI1160/Religion, Science and Modernity
PHI2060/Existentialism
PHI2835/Happiness: Philosophy, Film, Literature
PHI3290/Chinese Philosophy: From Confucius through the Neo-Confucian Synthesis of the Song Dynasty
The gender studies program, which offers a major leading to the BA as well as a minor, examines gender and sexuality from a variety of approaches, from anthropology to psychology, literature to performance. Our studies reflect core values that celebrate the extraordinary diversity of gender and sexual expressions.
Consisting of a variety of courses drawn from across the college, the program offers students the opportunity to study gender in a variety of historical periods and geographical areas using different academic, political, and feminist perspectives. The program equips students with reading, writing, research, and analytical skills that enable them to:
identify and analyze the links among gender, sexuality, identity, power, and social justice
identify and analyze intersections among gender and sexuality and other categories of difference, such as class, race, religion, nationality, and physical ability
situate gender and sexuality in broader historical and geopolitical contexts
write or otherwise present (depending on the field of study) analyses of gender and sexuality in specific visual, literary, and theoretical works
design and execute a senior project that demonstrates these competencies within a theoretical framework of gender and sexuality
Requirements:
In addition to meeting general degree requirements, all gender studies majors must complete a minimum of seven courses with a grade of C or higher and an 8-credit senior project (31–36 credits total), as follows.
GND 1200/Introduction to Gender and Sexuality: 4 credits
Five electives in gender studies: 15–20 credits
One theory course: 4 credits
SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Notes:
All students majoring in gender studies who do not have a second major are required to declare a minor and enroll in the methods course or junior seminar offered in that minor’s discipline. Consult with your minor advisor about appropriate coursework in that board of study.
An internship is highly recommended.
Courses in the following list are subject to change, and new courses may be added. Students should consult with their faculty advisor when choosing electives.
Courses in the following list are subject to change, and new courses may be added. Students should consult with their faculty advisor when choosing the theory course.
GND 3130/Feminist Theory
MSA 3160/Queer Media Convergence
PHI 2500/Gender and Power
PHI 3725/Theories of Sexuality
POL 3095/Queer Politics in the U.S.
THP 3300/Women in Performance
Minor requirements:
Students majoring in any discipline may pursue a minor in gender studies, which offers a variety of courses drawn from across the college.
Students have the opportunity to study gender in a variety of historical periods and geographical areas using different academic, political, and feminist perspectives.
Students interested in this minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study and should plan their program of study in consultation with the gender studies faculty in their major field or with the coordinator of the gender studies program.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Gender Studies
Five courses, as follows:
GND 1200/Introduction to Gender and Sexuality
Four elective courses in gender studies, at least two of which must be upper-level (3000- or 4000-level)*
*Learning assistantships, internships, independent studies, and tutorials cannot be used to satisfy this requirement.
Explores and compares the diverse ways in which sexuality and gender are practiced, experienced, and regulated in different communities around the world. Particular attention is paid to how sexual identities and practices have influenced, and been influenced by, global political, economic, and cultural movements, including colonialism, capitalism, feminism, queer activism, and the spread of world religions.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender Studies
An introduction to women artists from the Renaissance era through the Enlightenment, including Anguissola, Gentileschi, Vigée-Lebrun, and Kauffmann. Topics include access to professions, constructions of sexuality and gender, and attitudes toward the body in representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Focuses on women artists and their place within the art-historical narrative of the 20th century. Students examine both the diverse practices of women artists and the reception of their work by critics, dealers, and collectors.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Emerging queer cinema is explored in its historical contexts and its relation to contemporary theories of gender, sexuality, and their intersection with race, class, and nationality. The course focuses on the “queering of the gaze,” interrogating conventional notions of representation, desire, identification, filmmaking, and spectatorship. Featured directors: Warhol, Fassbinder, Haynes, Von Trotta, Akerman, Rozema, La Bruce, Araki, Denis, Jarman.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
This course covers three areas of gender economics. The first examines basic facts and trends regarding women’s distinct economic experiences, particularly the gender gap in education, wages, occupations, and labor supply. The second examines the impact of marriage market forces and reproductive constraints on women’s socio-economic choices. The third provides a historical and international overview of women’s rights.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An introductory and foundational course on the key concepts, themes, and theories of studies of gender and sexuality. Students engage with materials that are social, scientific, historical, literary, autobiographical, artistic, and/or philosophical in examinations of themes of human gender, sexual relationships, and the intersection of gender and sexual identity.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
The RAD system incorporates physical self-defense options developed in response to realistic situations facing women. This course covers awareness and prevention techniques, personal protection tips, and reporting procedures. Students learn to develop a defensive mind-set, respond verbally to aggression, and adopt the optimal stance for self-defense. Concludes with an opportunity for students to test their skills in realistic simulations.
Credits: 2
Department: Gender Studies
An exploration of feminist theories of women and society from Mary Wollstonecraft to the beginning of the modern women’s movement, followed by a study of the major theoretical trends of today, including liberal, socialist, separatist, and women-of-color feminism.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: GND1200 Or LIT2310
Department: Gender Studies
Covers the experience of American women from colonial times to the 20th century, from political, social, religious, cultural, and economic points of view.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An exploration of the relationships between orthodox religions and heretical sects in the medieval West and how heterodoxy evolved into the witch-craze of the early modern period. Questions of gender, spirituality, repression, and interpretation are examined in light of their effects on society and established religion. Focuses are on Islamic, Jewish, and Christian relations in medieval Europe; the development and perception of certain heretical sects; the discernment of saints and spirits; Protestant and Catholic Reformations; and the persecution of witches.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines how war changed gender relations in 20th-century Europe. For instance, how did mobilization reinforce or undermine masculine and feminine norms? How did total wars that blurred the line between fighting front and home front challenge notions of chivalry and turn noncombatants into warriors of sorts? Did new job opportunities outweigh the trauma and grief suffered by women during wartime?
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines the new historiography on gender and sexuality in Latin America. It is organized around the themes of changing gender roles and shifting constructions of masculinity, femininity, and honor, with particular attention to issues of sexuality, sexual preferences, constraints, and transgressions.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
This reading-intensive seminar traces the history of feminist movements in the U.S. and Europe from the 18th century to the present and also examines postcolonial global feminisms. Students are expected to master the basic historical narrative of Western feminist movements and to wrestle with the questions of race, class, and region that postcolonial feminist movements have raised.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: HIS1000-1994 Or HIS2000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994 Or GND1000-1994 Or GND2000-2994 Or GND3000-3994 Or GND4000-4994
Department: Gender Studies
Explores the place of women in Western society, from ancient Greece to the 17th century. The roles covered range from the prescribed (wife and mother) to the actual (intellectual and worker). Lectures are supplemented by discussion of primary sources.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines the relationship between the media and social constructions of race, gender, and class, both in the U.S. and within a global context. Topics include biases and assumptions in print and visual media; representations of masculinity and femininity; and the media’s role in creating and reinforcing ideas, symbols, and ideologies within cultures. Text analysis includes newspapers, magazine articles, cartoons, television, movies, and advertising.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
A writing-intensive course in which students study the poetry of queer-identified writers through the lenses of sexuality, culture, identity, history, and poetic technique.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
We will examine Baldwin’s moving fictional and nonfictional works to understand his enduring legacy up through our contemporary moment. Students read Baldwin’s work through the lens of literary history, civil rights, transnational black activism, the arts, and queer theory. Major texts include The Fire Next Time, Another Country, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Giovanni’s Room.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Considers the intersections of sexual difference and cinema. Topics include theories of enunciation and sexual difference, female authorship and the idea of “women’s cinema,” gender and genre, woman as spectacle, the female spectator, and feminist film theory. Representations of sexual difference in films by selected male directors are studied as a means of examining the institution(s) of cinematic expression. The bulk of the course is devoted to studying women directors as they attempt to work within and against that institution.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An investigation of the formation of the literary canon and the women who were written out of it. Students become familiar with the novel form as well as genres such as amatory fiction and the Jacobin novel, and read a selection of the most influential women writers of the long eighteenth century.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An exploration of Toni Morrison’s generous literary career as a playwright, fiction writer, and essayist. Students read a collection of Morrison’s most popular works (Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved) alongside her more recent publications (A Mercy, God Help the Child). Discussions place Morrison in conversation with her literary interlocutors (Hurston, Woolf, Faulkner) and some of her most cherished contemporaries (James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara).
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Study LGBTQ identities via novels, short fiction, and films, by queer-identified authors who interrogate heteropatriarchy within a postcolonial framework. Texts include Queer Africa (eds. Martin and Xaba), Leche by R. Zamora Linmark, Walking with Shadows by Jude Bidia, Fire (film by Deepa Mehta), Same-Sex Love in India (eds. Vanita and Kidwai), and Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
How does embodiment reveal shifting notions of race, gender, sexuality, and ability? Students read performance theory and explore contemporary representations of bodies as sites of display, resistance, and re-construction in literature, performance, and everyday practices in transnational and intersectional contexts. Authors include Ntozake Shange, NourbeSe Philip, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and David Henry Hwang.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An examination of the novels, short stories, and essays of Virginia Woolf.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines several texts written by American women, including works by Radstreet, Wheatley, Rowson, Stowe, Dickinson, Jewett, Cather, Wharton, Hurston, Bishop, and Naylor. The question of whether there is a traceable female tradition during the past 350 years is addressed. Readings include feminist literary criticism and theory.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An examination of the novels of Jane Austen. Topics include gender and authorship; irony, sympathy, and point of view; the marriage plot; and filmic adaptation.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines Hurston’s novels, short stories, plays, and essays alongside archival recordings and visual media. Discussions cover Hurston’s influential role in shaping conversations around race, class, and gender in the 20th century and her impact on other writers, including Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Media convergence refers to large-scale changes in the ownership and production of media content, as well as the role that audiences and consumers have in its development. This course examines media convergence from the perspectives of queer theory and history, and asks how queer identities, sensibilities, styles, and practices both shape and are shaped by media convergence.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
What is gender? What is power? What tools do we have for understanding and addressing gender injustice? This course employs philosophical, feminist, and queer theory to address these and related questions.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An investigation of classical, modern, and contemporary theories of desire and sexuality, with an emphasis on the relationship between familial and other social institutions and on the formation of individual identities. Readings include works by Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and queer theorists.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Theoretical, historical, and empirical analyses of the relationship between women’s private roles and socialization, and their integration into politics. Topics include changes in the laws affecting women, the impact of feminism on the quality of political discourse and political action, and the vexing problem of the “gender gap.”
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Focusing on South Asia and the Middle East, this course examines how postcolonial Islamic states currently use “Islamic laws” to negotiate power and control with their citizens. Examples include Hudood, Zina, and blasphemy laws, which result in fatwas (religious decrees) that sometimes lead to extrajudicial killings.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
In Islamic societies, heresy charges against women and men are leveled for different reasons, including Islamists’ opposition to democracy, modernity, and women’s education and their employment. Instances of heresy leveled by Muslims against Muslims are studied.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Although health is typically treated as a biological issue, health, illness, and wellness are social and political conditions. The politics of health policy as it is experienced, administered, and made accessible to men, women, and gender non-conforming healthcare seekers, and the activism that leads to more equitable treatment from medical professionals, insurance providers, and government service providers, regulators, and legislators is examined. Access to the health care system, poverty, Medicaid/Medicare, managed care, breast cancer, reproductive justice, sexual assault, HIV/AIDS, transgender care, disability, and medical research are investigated from an intersectional feminist perspective that foregrounds issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
The legal and political dimensions of race and sex discrimination are examined beginning with the 14th (1868) and 19th (1920) amendments to the US Constitution, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), Brown v. the BOE (1954), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Rajender v. University of Minnesota (1982). The way law is shaped by the politics of race and gender is considered. Topics discussed include the intersection of white supremacy, misogyny, capitalism, and the law from perspectives offered by legal studies, critical race theory, and feminism.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines health concerns on an international scale and analyzes how gender is interwoven with these concerns. The roles of international agencies are explored, with emphasis on their support (or lack thereof) of the health needs of various populations. The role of the U.S. in the implementation of programs through funding issues, restrictions on the use of funds (the “global gag rule”), and other strategies is also analyzed.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An examination of how notions of gender and sexuality are defined in the postcolonial Islamic state. Laws, customs, and cultural practices that enforce control are investigated in South Asian and Middle Eastern contexts.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
A critical examination of social, psychological, and biological factors governing female behavior and experience. Within the context of a life-span model (infancy to old age), topics include gender development, puberty, school performance, sexuality, the body, depression, relationships, and communication styles.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender Studies
Examines the processes involved in the development of gender during childhood, emphasizing the interaction between biology, socialization, and cognition. Students read primary source articles that examine the influence of hormones, parenting, knowledge, friendships, and media on children’s beliefs about their gender and on sex differences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530 Or BPS1530
Department: Gender Studies
An overview of biological, psychological, and sociological approaches to understanding human sexual behavior. Topics include values in sexuality, sexuality through the life span, sexual dysfunction and therapy, sex and disability, sexual preferences, atypical sexualities, and sex and the law.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender Studies
A cross-cultural examination of social constructions and expressions of gender. Students define gender, examine ideological tensions, and explore the flexibility of gendered systems.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender Studies
An examination of the impact of feminist thinking on the visual and performing arts. Emphasis is placed on the historical absence of women in art worlds and the creation of work that critiques dominant modes of cultural production. A plurality of feminisms and attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality inform investigations of craft, performance, and collaboration.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
An exploration of different sociological renderings of birth and death in contemporary societies. Understanding the concepts from a sociological perspective offers an opportunity to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, spirituality, and age. This course also focuses on recent biomedical technological innovations and their implications for birth and death representations. Students conduct an independent field trip and do extensive reading and writing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: (SOC1500 Or CSO1500 ) Or (ANT1500 Or CAN1500 ) Or GND1200
Department: Gender Studies
Given the ethnic complexity of society, major social institutions—including education, criminal justice, health care, social services, and business—face many challenges. This course explores the past, present, and future of race and ethnicity in American society, and how immigration, culture, religion, education, and income play parts in prejudice, discrimination, and racial inequalities.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Considers experiences and images of men in U.S. society. Recent feminist theory and research concerning men are studied, with attention to the various meanings of masculinity in American culture. This course provides a sociological understanding of gender and society, with attention to race, class, and other aspects of identity that shape men’s lives, including media representations of masculinity.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or CSO1500
Department: Gender Studies
Sexuality is grounded in bodily experience, but meanings of both body and experience are socially constructed. This advanced seminar examines contemporary sexual constructions and their cultural and historical roots.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: GND1200 Or SOC2020 Or ANT3750 Or GND2020
Department: Gender Studies
This course considers 20th- and 21st-century performance work by women in dance, theatre, and the visual art world (performance art) from a historical and theoretical perspective. Critical and theoretical feminist essays and other writings are assigned. Students read original texts, view documentation, and analyze contemporary works by women writers, choreographers, performance artists, and theatre directors.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Explores how LGBTQ identities and issues are represented in diverse dramatic forms, performance styles, and cultural venues. Through discussions, presentations, and writing assignments, students analyze queer theatre in relation to production history, theories of sexuality, and cultural and political contexts (both past and present).
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Explores female characters in plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, and contemporary women playwrights (Mann, Fornes, Churchill, Shange). Theories of gender, language, and performance are addressed.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender Studies
Examines multiple modes of queer performance beyond traditional drama and theatre, including performance art, dance, drag shows, stand-up comedy, poetry slams, political protests, and live music. Using queer theory and performance methodologies to support aesthetic analyses, students explore the ways in which queer performance engages with current struggles surrounding issues of queer identity, community, and representation.
Engaging the Complexities of Global Black Experience at Home and Abroad
The minor in global black studies provides students with analytical lenses, tools, and frameworks for the development of a multidimensional understanding of the black experience, with a particular focus on the interdependent nature of local and global black dynamics. Students in any discipline may pursue this minor by submitting a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study.
Crossing Boundaries, Exploring Connections
The minor consists of five courses taught by Purchase faculty whose research and teachings, while “housed” within various fields, are deeply engaged with global black issues. This makes the minor a critical complement to students’ current major fields of study, such as anthropology, art history, literature, music, new media, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and the visual arts, among others.
Minor requirements:
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Global Black Studies
Five courses, including at least three upper-level (3000–4000 level), chosen from an approved list.
Because new courses may be added to the curriculum from time to time, students should also consult with the coordinator of the global black studies minor.
Courses Available for the Minor in Global Black Studies
School of Humanities
ARH 2300/West African Art
ARH 2305/West African Dance: History, Theory, Practice
ARH 2550/Arts of Africa
ARH 3170/African American Art
ARH 3177/Contemporary African Art
ARH 3565/Photography in Africa and the African Diaspora
ARH 4130/Contemporary African American Art: East Coast-West Coast
ARH 4770/African Art and Film
ARH 4775/Performance Art in the West African Diaspora
FRE 3067/French Caribbean Literature
HIS 2540/Society and Culture in Modern Brazil
HIS 2770/Ancient Africa: History and Archaeology
HIS 3466/To Enjoy Our Freedom: African American History Since 1865
HIS 3555/African Diasporas in the Americas
HIS 3625/Slaves and Enslavement in the Americas
HIS 3705/Slavery and Social Status in the Atlantic World
LIT 2100/Freedom Dreams: Introduction to African American Literature
LIT 3012/The Lives of James Baldwin (added Fall 2020)
LIT 3043/Toni Morrison
LIT 3380/Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
LIT 3605/Jazz and the Literary Imagination
LIT 3845/Zora Neale Hurston
PHI 2560/Thinking Race
JOU 3040/Race, Gender, and the Media
School of Natural and Social Sciences
ANT 1010/Nigerian/Hausa Language and Culture
ANT 2730/New Black Ethnographies
ANT 3255/Urban Life in Africa
ANT 3345/Media and Performance in Africa
POL 2130/Race and Politics
POL 3090/Race, Gender, and the Law
SOC 4025/Critical Race Theory
SOC 2140/Race and Ethnicity
SOC 3725/Globalization, Culture, Social Change: Africa & US
PSY 3090/Psychology of Stigma
Conservatory of Music
MPE 1245/Soul Voices Ensemble
MUS 2570/Introduction to Jazz
School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education
SOC 3415/Racial Inequalities
School of Film and Media Studies
CINE 3090 - Cinema of the Portuguese Speaking World
The combination of training and teaching allows students to critically engage the historical, social, cultural, and artistic aspects of museum culture. By encouraging a form of “museum literacy,” the minor introduces students to the ways in which museums shape the meanings of objects as well as the role museums play in society.
Minor requirements:
Foundation Courses:
Students must take one of the following courses and must select a foundation course outside their declared major:
AMG 1100 Fundamentals of Arts Management
ARH 2140 Introduction to Structure and Function of Museums
Students must take four of the following courses, with two being outside their declared major:
ARH 1025/Exhibition as Exploration: Topics
ARH 2140/Introduction to Structure and Function of Museums
ARH 3145/Collections Research/Neuberger Museum
ARH 4030/Exhibition Seminar
ARH 4460/Field Trips to New York Museums and Galleries
ARH 4715/Collect, Display, Exchange
ARH 4035/Museology
ARH 4037/Critical Curatorial Studies
ARH 4202/ The Inclusive Museum
AMG 3100/Funding the Arts
AMG 3520/Marketing the Arts
HIS 3721/Local History Workshop
HIS 3855/Oral History Workshop
HIS 3027/History’s Places and Spaces: Museums, Movies and Materials
Global Education at Purchase: International Programs and Services
Purchase College, in collaboration with other SUNY campuses and with international partner institutions, has developed innovative study abroad, virtual, and on-campus co-curricular programming, including the campus-wide annual event (T)HERE: A Global Festival of Arts, Culture & Ideas. These opportunities, along with an engaged international student population, add to our diverse campus environment and make Purchase College an excellent place to obtain a global education. The college’s internationalization efforts are spearheaded by the Office of International Programs and Services, in partnership with the academic units and student support offices.
Global Scholars Program
The Purchase College Global Scholars Program is a four-year co-curricular program designed to bring together like-minded students from across academic areas to develop skills in intercultural communication and create a forum for globally focused, interdisciplinary collaboration.
Students accepted to Purchase College are invited to apply to become Global Scholars; applications are then reviewed by committee and recommended to the Dean for Global Strategy for admission into the program. Upon achieving designated academic benchmarks for success, Global Scholars are awarded a $4,000 scholarship to study abroad on the Purchase College winter, summer, or semester-long program of their choice.
In addition to their monetary award, students receive customized advising throughout their time at Purchase to connect them with opportunities related to global learning, international internships, and post-graduation global career pathways; invitations to participate in a number of off-campus opportunities in New York City and/or Washington D.C. to visit organizations and people working in international fields; and opportunities to participate and collaborate in on-campus events, such as master classes and workshops during Purchase’s annual global festival, as well as seminars, talks and other events related to global topics.
International Students
As a combined office, International Programs and Services provides international student and scholar services. Purchase has an exceptionally diverse international student population with students coming from over 35 countries. Our office works with international students from acceptance through graduation to ensure they maintain their visa status.
We also design and lead the International Student Orientation (ISO) to welcome international students and introduce them to student life and the United States.
Education Abroad
Studying in another country often becomes one of the most treasured experiences in a college education. Language and culture can be studied in an American classroom or perfected in the streets and cafes of a foreign land. Seeing an unknown part of the world and gaining a new perspective on an area of study can greatly enhance a student’s education. Viewing the United States from another region of the world can enrich a student’s understanding of his or her own country, major, and self. In addition, experience abroad can open new and unexpected career options after graduation.
Hundreds of study abroad opportunities are available through Purchase College, other SUNY campuses, and affiliated schools around the world.
Purchase College Short-Term, Faculty-Led Study Abroad Programs
Purchase College offers study abroad programs in France, Honduras, Benin, Italy, Czech Republic, and Israel during the summer and winter sessions. These short-term programs, which run three to five weeks, feature courses that can fulfill requirements for a major and/or general education requirements. In addition to courses in several languages, courses change from year to year but have been offered in a variety of disciplines, such as anthropology, art history, creative writing, drama, history, journalism, literature, marine biology, philosophy, photography and other visual arts, and political science.
Semester Exchange Programs
In these semester-long and academic-year programs, students enroll directly at one of Purchase’s partner universities taking at least 12 credits while being fully immersed in life on a new campus in a foreign city. Purchase partners with 18 different institutions that offer similar academic programs so that students can take courses that apply towards their degree while keeping their financial aid and paying Purchase tuition, making it one of the more affordable study abroad options within the SUNY system. Some locations include Australia, China, Denmark, England, Holland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Mexico, Scotland, Spain, and Taiwan.
Other Study Abroad Programs through the SUNY Network
Purchase students are also eligible to take advantage of the hundreds of programs offered in more than 60 countries through other SUNY campuses. Interested students apply directly through the respective institution in accordance with their application instructions. The credits received abroad are treated as SUNY transfer credits and the grades are not averaged into a student’s GPA.
Learn More
For students interested in studying abroad, the Office of International Programs and Services offers various preparatory information sessions, one-on-one advising meetings, study abroad program fairs and other promotional and informational events throughout the academic year.
Office of International Programs and Services Student Services Building, Second Floor 735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577, USA (914) 251-6032 study.abroad@purchase.edu
Physical Education Courses (PED)
The physical education program places major emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge and skills in lifetime activities. Self-discovery and physical development are underlying themes, and students maintain the freedom to progress at an individual pace and level of accomplishment.
Our extensive offerings, from P.E. courses to intramurals and recreation, provide students with quality leisure experiences on campus, as well as outdoor trips that provide the opportunities to explore.
Our NCAA Division III Panthers feature 17 intercollegiate teams that compete in the highly competitive Skyline Conference.
Develops aquatic skills and basic knowledge of safety and accident prevention in the aquatic environment. Skills include preventive lifeguarding, emergency action planning, aquatic facility management, and preparation of records and reports. Qualified students receive Red Cross Lifeguard Training Certification.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
An introduction to the basic disciplines of hatha yoga, focusing on body awareness, appropriate body warmups, beginning yoga postures and breathing (pranayama), and relaxation skills. Upon successful completion, students understand and are able to demonstrate the basic components of yoga practice (sadhana), including safe, stable body alignment and at least 21 classical yoga postures.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
In this gentle yoga course, students learn methods of caring for their physical, mental, and emotional bodies: Pranayama, breath control, classical posture and alignment, subtle mudras that transform energy to higher levels for equilibrium and healing, and a variety of relaxation experiences. Yoga Nidra (the “sleep of the yogis”) leads to deep relaxation and heightened consciousness. Recommended for all students, including those who may have physical challenges as well as the most serious athletes.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Offers students an opportunity to grow their yoga practice through the exploration of beginner-advanced postures, through meditation and through the discourse of the texts that have been passed down from teacher to student for thousands of years. Building knowledge of the ancient healing system and physical practice of yoga, students will delve deep into their own practice of Hatha yoga as it challenges them to link breath with movement into a Vinyasa flow – a moving meditation.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Designed for the novice who has never fenced, this course explores the various techniques of combat with a foil. Instruction includes the use of the foil as a weapon, with emphasis on various forms of offensive and defensive strategies; the history of fencing; bouting rules and procedures; conditioning; and fencing in bouts.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Focuses on the application of the fundamental principles used in fencing bouts, with emphasis on tactics and strategies. More detailed actions are examined while refining the basics learned in PED 1020 and 1035. Students also learn advanced techniques, such as the glissade, the gain, and intercepting and yielding parries, as well as time actions. During the fencing bouts, students learn how controlling the blade, distance, and time ensures success.
Credits: 2
PREREQ: PED1020 Or PED1035
Department: Physical Education
An introductory class in classical Italian sabre fencing, focusing on sabre fundamentals: the guard, the lunge, basic footwork, attacks, defenses, and sabre technique. Toward the end of the class, students participate in sabre fencing bouts and learn sabre strategy.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Emphasizes both swimming and aquatic survival skills. The course includes personal safety in the aquatic environment, basic swimming strokes, use of safety and rescue equipment, survival swimming skills, rescue breathing and basic care for an airway obstruction, entries into the water, and aquatic fitness for life.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Offers students an opportunity to develop the physical and professional skills necessary to successfully navigate various levels of an aerial challenge course. Topics include understanding and mastering the use of cutting-edge safety equipment, learning and performing the various rescue techniques used in the Challenge Course industry, and the physical and mental benefits of climbing at heights.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students learn climbing, belaying, and rapelling techniques. Other skills include face climbing, layback, body jams, chimneying, and mantling. Top-rope climbing is included for safety. All equipment is provided.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
This course provides students who are already familiar with basic climbing skills with the knowledge and experience required for self-sufficiency when top-rope climbing in an outdoor environment. Topics include climbing techniques, advanced rope work, climbing anchors, and rescue/self-rescue.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: PED1070
Department: Physical Education
Students choose two overnight weekends in outdoor activity areas like downhill skiing, canoeing, camping, caving, rockclimbing, and backpacking. Includes instruction in the various skill areas, plus wilderness first aid, camping equipment and camp setup, and survival skills.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
An introduction to the sport of racquetball. Skills include use of the racquet; grips, serve, and basic shots; singles and doubles strategy; shot selection; and court technique.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Covers the various aspects of both skin and scuba diving and prepares students for PADI certification, including getting ready for the deep dive requirement. Upon completion of the course, students can make arrangements for the deep dive and PADI certification with the instructor.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
American Red Cross fundamentals of instructor training and water safety instructor skills. Students must pay a $175 fee to the Red Cross for additional books and administrative fees and attend one six-week session of the Community Learn to Swim program.Note: Students are required to teach 18 hours per semester in the Community Learn to Swim program and complete written lesson plans for each lesson taught. The teaching must be done during Wednesday or Thursday, 3:30–5:15 p.m., Saturday, 9 a.m.–12 p.m., or Sunday, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.
Credits: 3
Department: Physical Education
Basic skills and fundamentals of tennis, including grips, forehand, backhand, the serve, basic shots, singles and doubles play, court techniques, and game strategy. Match play is emphasized.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Basics of personal defense for men and women are taught: conditioning, attitude, and techniques for everyone. Realize “It could happen to you,” and learn what to do against grabs, chokes, shoves, locks, hugs, punches, and more. Women, enforce your NO! Material taken from American Kenpo, Judo, and Hapkido.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
With a partner, students learn and practice intermediate-level defenses against unarmed and armed assailants brandishing a stick. Techniques are derived from Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido systems. Students should have prior knowledge of personal defense that includes the ability to break a fall.
Credits: 1
PREREQ: PED1310 Or PED1335
Department: Physical Education
An introduction to the art and science of the Korean martial art Tae Kwon Do. This traditional six-part class consists of warm-ups, basic techniques (strikes, kicks, blocks), poomse (a precise pattern of techniques), one-step prearranged sparring, no-contact free spar, and cool downs. The history and philosophy of Tae Kwon Do, physiology, biomechanics, and anatomy are also addressed. Students must purchase and wear a dobak (uniform).
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Designed to teach students the rules and skills of the sport of golf. Topics include the history of the sport; safety, grips, swing, and stance; use of irons and woods; and putting. Students are given the opportunity to apply their skills and play on local golf courses.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students learn a vast array of dance fundamentals as well as communication and cooperation skills used to lead and follow in a dance. Styles include salsa, merengue, bachata, tango, and swing. World dance styles are compared and contrasted while increasing stamina and fitness levels. Students also explore the history of the international music and dance styles that are used during class.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
A practical, introductory course on the elements of good nutrition and how they affect performance in sports, dance, and everyday life. Practical applications and self-assessments help students apply nutrition concepts to their daily lives. Important nutrition issues are emphasized (e.g., food choices, healthy body weight and weight management, alternative diets, fluid intake, and strategies to enhance human performance through sound nutrition practices).
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Zumba is a dance-fitness program based on international rhythms, featuring interval training to tone and sculpt the body while burning fat. Students monitor the effects of dance and toning through periodic weigh-ins and taking of body measurements. The history of the world music and dance styles that are used during class is also explored.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Offers students an opportunity to learn from the bronze level International Latin and Standard dances through the exploration of basic figures, actions, and techniques as established by the syllabi written by the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance (ISTD). Learning the etiquette teaches students to treat their bodies and the bodies of all others with the utmost care and respect; and learning the figures teaches a new language with which to communicate. Students will learn how to lead and follow the dances comprising DanceSport: Waltz, Tango, Viennese Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Emphasizes the development of body strength, flexibility, poise, and cardiovascular fitness through jazz-based dance. Students assess their fitness levels at both the beginning and end of the course to note their progress.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Offers basic skills and fundamentals in kayaking, including basic strokes, maneuvering strokes, kayaking rolls, rescue techniques, bracing skills, handling a kayak, and selecting equipment. Practical experience is acquired through skill drills, timed obstacle courses, and kayak water polo.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students are introduced to a range of circus skills (e.g., juggling, unicycling, trapeze, sky pole, rolla bolla, stilt walking, gym wheel), which may vary depending on physical ability and experience of the class. At the end of the course, students select one or two skills to perform as a required final project.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Training in the skills needed to respond appropriately to breathing and cardiac emergencies for all age levels, including the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED) to care for a victim of cardiac arrest. The first aid component provides the knowledge and skills necessary in an emergency to help sustain life and minimize the consequences of injury and sudden illness. Students who successfully complete the three course components will receive Red Cross Certification in CPR/AED and RTE (Responding to Emergencies).
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Students are introduced to the basic skills of archery, including selection of equipment, stringing, stance, grip, drawing the arrow, aiming, shooting, and error analysis, and are exposed to target and tournament archery.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
The effects of weight training on the human body. The course combines both lecture and physical activity and includes fitness evaluations, weight training safety, basic weight training programs, weight training for women, aerobic training, and proper lifting techniques. Reading is required to gain the knowledge needed to develop individual training programs.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Tone up, slim down, and improve your cardiorespiratory (aerobic) fitness with aerobic routines and healthy eating habits. Students work toward individualized fitness and weight goals under the guidance of the instructor and learn to identify and change unhealthy eating habits. Techniques for managing weight and stress associated with eating problems are also covered. A textbook and lectures supplement the aerobic exercise program.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
An introduction to the basics of nutrition, anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, injury prevention, and the impact of these elements on human performance. Lectures and class activities are followed by instruction in exercise techniques and physical training activities geared toward improving human performance. Several guest lectures are included on the topics mentioned above. Designed for athletes, dancers, and anyone interested in improving their physical performance.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Focuses on the mind-body relationship and identifies stress factors and their influences on health and wellness. Students are also introduced to a variety of modalities used to reduce and manage stress (e.g., biofeedback, guided imagery, the influence of music, relaxation techniques, massage and acupressure, Chi therapy, breathing and meditation, nature walks, low-impact exercise, multisensory therapies).
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Designed for students who are interested in improving their total fitness via aerobic-based conditioning. This course seeks to improve each student’s level of cardiovascular fitness and involves a variety of aerobic activities. Students are given opportunities to design and practice their own routines and programs. Proper stretching techniques, basic conditioning principles, and fitness assessments are also included.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
An introduction to health and wellness concepts for the college student’s lifestyle. All of the dimensions of wellness are embodied in a behavioral change project designed for each student. Topics include physical health, sexual health, stress management, drug and alcohol use, healthy relationships, and healthy eating strategies.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Through readings, lectures, and discussions, students explore a personal wellness vision, identify behaviors to change in their lives, and discover an integral “why” for behavior change. Students also set cognitive and behavioral goals; identify obstacles, strategies, and solutions; and move through stages of change at their own pace with instructor’s guidance and facilitation. This course follows the American College of Sports Medicine wellness-coaching guidelines.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Students learn the fundamentals of belly dancing (e.g., hip circles, undulations, shimmies) and progress to layering of movements. Familiarity with Arabic rhythms, cultural knowledge as it pertains to this dance form, finger cymbals, veil work, and choreography are covered. The natural movements of belly dancing, which improve flexibility, endurance, and coordination, are appropriate for all fitness levels.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
In this full-semester course, students learn about the history and development of the Pilates body conditioning method, as well as basic Pilates mat exercise workout routines. Topics include the six major principles of the Pilates body conditioning method, the five characteristics of the mind, and the “Powerhouse” and core stabilization development and its importance in physical conditioning. Students apply these concepts in their workouts.
Credits: 2
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Credits: 1
Department: Physical Education
Students earn this physical education credit by participating on a varsity athletic team.Requirements: Academic and medical eligibility, and participation in practices and athletic contests for the duration of the athletic season.
Academic advisors are here to expand the educational world of our students. We are committed to helping students move forward in their academic journey and in life.
The Advising Center
The Advising Center supports and supplements the College’s faculty-based advising program. We serve all students across all programs at all phases of their academic standing with focus on assisting new freshman and transfers, undeclared students, and those who are interested in changing majors.
Why Would I Talk to an Academic Advisor?
To learn about academic policies and procedures.
To understand your Degree Progress Report (DPR).
To understand your academic requirements.
To discuss your academic goals with an Academic Advisor.
To discuss future courses and your timeline to graduation.
To learn about any of the majors or minors we offer.
To learn how to declare a major or minor.
To learn how to navigate the Course Search.
To discuss any other questions or concerns you have regarding your academic career.
Every student in the College is assigned to an official advisor who may be a professional academic advisor from Advising Center, a full-time professor within the student’s board of study, or their First-Year Seminar instructor.
Students can locate their advisor’s name by looking at their Degree Progress Report (DPR), which can be viewed by logging into myHeliotrope.
The Learning Center at Purchase College assists students in learning, developing academic skills, and attaining academic success.
24/7 Online Tutoring from ThinkingStorm
Students have access to virtual professional tutors online 24/7.
Students can make appointments by accessing ThinkingStorm Tutoring Services in their Moodle course.
Learning Center Tutoring
The Learning Center offers a comprehensive system of support, ranging from help in a specific course to detailed instruction in writing and study skills. The primary modes of support are peer-based individual and group tutoring.
Students may schedule up to three appointments per week, in any combination of virtual sessions and Online Writing Lab (OWL) submissions.
The Pareto Improvement Unit provides students with free tutoring assistance in economics. The Economics Faculty handpicks tutors at the beginning of every semester. The PImU is intended to provide students taking economics courses with additional and alternative instruction, tutoring, and mentoring.
The Pareto Improvement Unit is located in room 1018 of the Social Sciences Building, where students can also consult copies of the textbooks used in different economics courses. No appointments are required. Feel free to meet with the tutors in person or to contact them by email. Get more information on tutoring in economics.
The Purchase College Library is a resource of central importance to the academic life of the college, as illustrated by its location at the center of the campus. Its mission is to teach students the life-long skills and knowledge critical to becoming responsible consumers and creators of information, and to transform students into digitally, globally and culturally sophisticated citizens.
The library combines technological innovation with personalized service and instruction. Library services and collections are designed to support the college’s academic emphasis on learning through independent study and exploration.
The library’s collections are a blend of digital and print resources, including more than 85,000 unique, full-text online journals, magazines, and newspapers, and more than 230,000 print volumes. Students, faculty, and staff can access a wide range of online resources from any location. The library has special strengths in the visual and performing arts, including extensive collections of music scores and recordings, digitized art slides, and video recordings (as well as scores, recordings, and videos in streaming format). The Digital Collections Center supports the integration of images in classroom teaching, presentations, research papers, lectures, and other educational endeavors. The Special Collections/Archives include rare books and archival publications of the college in a closed stack, which is available on site by appointment.
The library is also rich in technology, with public computing spaces in several areas of the library, including a Digital Media Zone (DMZ), several computer labs, “smart” classrooms, and computer areas specifically designed for group work. There are more than 150 public computers in the library, including both PCs and Macs. Students working on film projects can use an advanced Mac lab to edit their work, and music students can take advantage of the two digital audio suites in the DMZ. The Office of Technology Assistance includes equipment and software for students with vision and learning disabilities and provides assistance with basic computer, printing, and scanning questions. The Media Resource Center offers listening and viewing space for audio and visual materials. The library also houses the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center (TLTC), which partners with faculty to enhance teaching and learning at Purchase College through the adoption of innovative and applicable pedagogies and technologies.
Librarians with subject specialties provide individual assistance to students undertaking research and class assignments. In addition to in-person research assistance, the library provides 24/7 online chat reference and a text-message reference service. The library also has an active instructional program, designed to inform, encourage, and produce an information-literate student body.
The campus directory contains telephone numbers and email addresses for members of the Purchase College administration, faculty, and staff. It can be searched by first name, last name, and department.
The Office of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management oversees a wide array of programs and services that support you from the first moment you engage with Purchase College until the moment you walk across the stage at commencement.
From life on campus to academic support to health and wellness and everything in between, seasoned professionals are available to provide guidance and assistance.
The Career Development Center can connect you with internships and job opportunities, career counseling/coaching, résumé and interview preparation, networking events and more. Through these resources and other skill-building opportunities, we hope to help make your transition to professional life smooth and successful.
The Counseling Center provides a variety of counseling services to matriculated students experiencing personal difficulties or mental health needs while at school. Our staff provide emergency response and Campus Advocacy Services to all students. Sessions are confidential, voluntary, and require no payment or insurance to participate.
Meal Plans: All resident students—with the exception of those who live in on-campus apartments—are required to purchase a meal plan. However, like most things at Purchase, the parameters of your meal plan are flexible. Meal plans are primarily intended to be used in our all-you-care-to-eat Dining Hall, but can be used at any retail location on campus.
Food Allergies: We want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to dine in a safe environment on campus. If you have a food allergy, or dietary concern that requires accommodations, please reach out to the Office of Disability Resources.
Nutrition and Wellness: Purchase Dining Services offers nutritional information, wellness tips, and suggestions for “brain foods” on their website. You can also browse menus and check out our meat-free, nut-free, and dairy-free options.
We also have a campus nutritionist. To learn more, please reach out to Health Services.
Where to Eat: Dining Hall (all-you-care-to-eat) The Hub (food court) Terra Ve Cafe (vegan and vegetarian) Starbucks
The Office of Disability Resources coordinates academic adjustments and auxiliary aids and services for students with disabilities to ensure equal access to all programs, services, and activities at Purchase College.
Our Mission
The mission of the Office of Disability Resources is to enhance the college experience by supporting full participation for students with disabilities. We collaborate with campus partners to provide leadership and guidance, and facilitation of equal access to our programs, services, and activities.
The Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and Merit Access Program (MAP) provide the opportunity for a college education to students who have not yet reached their full academic potential.
EOP/MAP at Purchase has a committed, dedicated staff who are eager to help students succeed. All members of the full-time EOP staff have earned the distinguished SUNY Chancellor’s award for Excellence in Professional Service.
Admissions Process for EOP
First-year Students
Admission to the Educational Opportunity Program is not based solely on traditional admission criteria. If the candidate is academically eligible and demonstrates strong motivation for a college education, they will be interviewed by a member of the EOP staff.
In addition, applicants to the conservatory programs must pass an audition, interview, or portfolio review. After the EOP interview, candidates will be assessed for economic eligibility to the program.
Transfer Students
Candidates must have a minimum GPA of 2.5 for consideration. Verification of enrollment in an opportunity program (EOP, HEOP, SEEK, CD) is required for transfer eligibility. Priority is given to EOP students in the State University of New York.
Precollege Orientation Program
All first-time students must attend the EOP/MAP pre-freshman summer orientation program in addition to the college’s regular summer orientation. The summer program for EOP is three weeks in duration and MAP is a four day program. Its primary focus is to orient the student to EOP/MAP and begin to formally introduce the student to Purchase College and its various supportive services. For more detail on the summer program, visit our Orientation site and click on the EOP/MAP tab.
Financial aid is money provided to help you and/or your family pay for the cost of attendance at Purchase College.
Scholarships and Grants
Scholarships and grant aid are often called “free” money or gift aid because a student does not have to pay it back. Scholarships and grants are the most desirable type of financial aid.
Loans
Loans are a type of aid that the student or parent must pay back. Because loans have to be prepaid, they are considered self-help aid. Repayment usually begins after a student finishes his education or drops below a specified enrollment level. In some situations, all or part of a loan can be cancelled or forgiven if the borrower meets certain conditions.
The NYS Get on Your Feet Loan Forgiveness Program provides up to 24 months of federal student loan debt relief to recent NYS college graduates (as of December 2014 and after) who are participating in a federal income-driven repayment plan whose payments are generally capped at 10 percent of their discretionary income. Apply for the NYS Get on Your Feet Loan Forgiveness Program.
Employment
Employment is also considered self-help aid because a student earns compensation for work performed.
Sources of Financial Aid
As you can see, financial aid comes in a variety of forms. All types of financial aid comes from four primary sources:
Federal Government
The federal government is the largest source of financial aid. Financial aid from the federal governments includes grants, loans, and work.
State Aid
A second source of financial aid is the states. The types of financial aid available vary from state to state and can include scholarships, grants, and loans. Some states also offer loan forgiveness programs students may be eligible for after they graduate. States establish the eligibility criteria for their aid programs. A common criterion is state residency.
Institutions
Many institutions offer financial aid using their own resources. Institutional aid comes from private or corporate donations, and from institutional revenue. Schools that offer institutional aid generally award it at their discretion.
Private
A final source of financial aid is private aid, available from individuals or groups such as community or civic organizations, associations, clubs, churches, foundations, and businesses. Private aid donors often develop their own application and eligibility criteria and procedures.
Assistance in Obtaining Institutional or Financial Aid Information
HEA Sec. 485(a)(1)-(2) (20 U.S.C. 1092(a)(1)-(2)). Not changed by HEOA. 34 CFR 668.43, 34 CFR 668.44. October 28, 2009 FR notice (revised 34 CFR 668.43)
Each institution must make available to prospective and enrolled students information regarding how and where to contact individuals designated to assist enrolled or prospective students in obtaining the institutional or financial aid information required to be disclosed under HEA Sec. 485 ( a ). This information is posted on Purchase College’s website via the links set forth below. Paper copies are available upon request from the individuals and offices listed in the relevant sections below.
Director of Student Financial Services: Corey York, (914) 251-7000 opt. 2
Provost: Barry Pearson, (914) 251-6020
Associate Director of Admissions: Anna Valinoti, (914) 251-6300
The following presents the standards of conduct expected of students.
A range of sanctions has been authorized for each type of violation. Aggravated, repeated, or multiple violations may result in more serious sanctions than those indicated for a violation of a single standard of conduct. A more detailed description of each of the sanctions is found under Glossary and Sanctions.
Uses or possesses fraudulent identification and/or refuses to present college ID or another form of identification upon request of any authorized college personnel acting within their authority. Please note that students are required to have their Purchase College ID on them at all times.
Respect for rights of personal safety and individual liberties are fundamental expectations in any academic community.
The college expects all students to adhere to the highest level of civility and respect regarding the integrity and rights of others in all aspects of their interpersonal relationships. Violations of any of the standards of conduct in this section are considered serious breaches of those expectations and will be treated as such. An offense against the rights of other individuals is committed when a person:
Acts in a manner which inflicts physical harm, physical abuse, or injury to any person.
Stalks any person by any means, including but not limited to physical, written, telephonic, or electronic modes.
Minimum: Suspension
Maximum: Expulsion
Threatens, harasses, or intimidates any person, and/or uses words which reasonably tend to incite an immediate, violent reaction and are specifically directed toward another individual (see also the college’s Affirmative Action and Sexual Harassment Policies).
Collectively or individually participates in the following practices in connection with initiation into, or affiliation with any group. Violations include, but are not limited to activity which:
a) Forces or requires participation in any physical activity.
b) Forces, requires, or condones application of foreign substances to the body resulting in lewdness, potential for ridicule, or bodily harm.
c) Forces or requires participation in illegal activities.
d) Creates excessive fatigue or stress through deprivation of privacy, sleep, or decent edible meals.
e) Forces or requires the consumption of any food, alcoholic beverage, drug, or any other substance.
f) Forces or requires conduct that would embarrass or negatively affect the dignity of the individual, or the creation of situations which cause psychological or undue emotional strain.
g) Uses brutality of any kind.
Minimum: Disciplinary Probation
Maximum: Expulsion
Engages in any behavior against a person which significantly interrupts or prevents that person from carrying out duties and responsibilities associated with their role as faculty, staff, or student at the college.
Engages or attempts to engage in any sexual act toward any individual without consent, including but not limited to: fondling; exposing oneself; anal, oral, and/or vaginal penetration; or sexual intercourse with someone who is physically helpless (e.g. drunk and/or under the influence of a substance or substances rendering them helpless), unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated or unable to accurately communicate.
Minimum: Suspension
Maximum: Expulsion
Engages or attempts to engage in sexual exploitation or non-consensual exploitation including but not limited to electronic or other means of disseminating, publishing, and/or taking still or video image(s) of unclothed or exposed intimate part(s) of another person, and/or of person(s) engaging in sexual conduct without their consent.
Enters or uses facilities or property of another person or the college without consent or official written authorization (e.g. roof access, exiting and entering through non-designated areas, double occupancy, etc.)
Violates the use of college residence halls and apartments, including but not limited to non-approved microwaves or cooking appliances, bringing in non-designated college furniture, bicycles, refrigerators exceeding five cubic feet, smoke or fog machines, bed tents, water beds or other items that stress the physical structure of the building, high wattage electrical equipment (e.g. halogen lamps, air conditioners), outside antennas and satellite dishes.
Knowingly initiates or circulates a false report of any explosion, fire, incident, or other emergency, or interferes with the response of college or other officials to such emergency calls.
Abuses, misuses, removes, or damages fire or safety equipment (e.g. covered smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc.)
Minimum: Disciplinary Probation
Maximum: Expulsion
Recommended Standard 1st Offense: Disciplinary Probation for one year and Judicial Educator - Module 10: Fire Safety
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Residence Suspension for one semester and fire safety education class
Fails to vacate buildings when any fire emergency warning system is activated.
Minimum: Residence Probation
Maximum: Suspension
Creates a fire hazard, endangers safety of persons or property, improperly uses electrical appliances, or improperly uses or possesses flammable or hazardous items or substances. (e.g. burning incense, candles, or any other open flame device; extension cords; hanging non-LED lights).
(A): Uses or possesses narcotics, hallucinogens, concentrated cannabis, synthetic drugs, or any other controlled substances except as a medical prescription that is taken as prescribed. [1]
Minimum: Suspension
Maximum: Expulsion
Recommended Standard 1st Offense: Suspension for one semester, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s), and disciplinary probation upon return for one year. (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Expulsion (Includes parental notification).
(B): Uses or possesses cannabis or derivatives of cannabis, except as defined in policy violation E.8A.
Minimum: Disciplinary Probation
Maximum: Expulsion
Recommended Standard 1st Offense: Disciplinary probation for one year, a Substance Screening and Education appointment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Suspension for one semester, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s) prior to return, and disciplinary probation upon return for one year. (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 3rd Offense: Expulsion (Includes parental notification).
(C): Manufactures, distributes, sells, gives, or offers cannabis or its derivatives, narcotics, hallucinogens, or controlled substances.
(D): Uses, possesses, gives, or has under their control any drug or alcohol paraphernalia, including but not limited to water pipes, hookahs, vapes, e-cigarettes, rolling papers, tobacco products, bongs, beer balls, kegs, grinders and hypodermic syringes/needles not prescribed by a licensed physician.
Minimum: Disciplinary Reprimand
Maximum: Disciplinary Probation
Recommended Standard: Disciplinary probation for one year. (For paraphernalia associated with drugs other than cannabis, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s) will also be included).
For students that are sanctioned to a Substance Screening and Education appointment:
Recommended standard 1st Offense: Disciplinary Reprimand, a Substance Screening and Education appointment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Disciplinary probation for one year, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 3rd Offense: Suspension for one semester, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s) prior to return, and disciplinary probation upon return for one year. (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 4th Offense: Expulsion (Includes parental notification).
For students that are sanctioned to a Substance Assessment: Recommended Standard 1st Offense: Disciplinary probation for one year, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Suspension for one semester, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s) prior to return, and disciplinary probation upon return for one year. (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 3rd Offense: Expulsion (Includes parental notification).
(B): Possesses an open container of alcohol. A container of alcohol is considered open when it is found in a public area not assigned to a student (e.g. hallways, lobbies, balconies, porches, outdoors, etc.)
Minimum: Disciplinary Reprimand
Maximum: Disciplinary Probation
Recommended Standard 1st Offense: Disciplinary Reprimand (Includes parental notification).
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense:Disciplinary Probation for one semester and a Substance Screening and Education appointment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
(C): Public Intoxication. Public areas are those not assigned to a student (e.g. hallways, lobbies, balconies, porches, outdoors, residence assignment other than their own, etc.)
For students that are sanctioned to a Substance Screening and Education Appointment: Recommended standard 1st Offense: Disciplinary Reprimand, a Substance Screening and Education appointment, and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Disciplinary probation for one year, a Substance Assessment, and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 3rd Offense: Suspension for one semester, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s) prior to return, and disciplinary probation upon return for one year. (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 4th Offense: Expulsion (Includes parental notification).
For students that are sanctioned to a Substance Assessment: Recommended Standard 1st Offense:Disciplinary probation for one year, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s). (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Suspension for one semester, a Substance Assessment and compliance with any resulting appointment(s) prior to return, and disciplinary probation upon return for one year. (Includes parental notification)
Recommended Standard 3rd Offense: Expulsion (Includes parental notification).
(D): All students must comply with the College Alcohol Policy:
Students of legal drinking age are permitted to consume alcohol in their rooms, suites, or apartments with the door closed.
No alcohol is permitted in rooms, suites, or apartments where all assigned students are under 21 years old.
If a room is shared by students who are under age and of legal drinking age, it must be clear that the alcohol is being consumed by those who are 21 years of age or older.
Alcohol or empty alcohol containers are not permitted in freshman or wellness residence assignments even if one or more residents are of legal drinking age.
No person shall sell, deliver, give away, or cause, permit, or procure the sale, delivery, or giving away of alcoholic beverages to any person that is under the age of 21 years.
No person under the age of 21 may possess any alcoholic beverage. (Please see Alcohol Beverage Policy)
Minimum: Disciplinary Reprimand
Maximum: Suspension
Engages in, or offers games of chance for money or other game in violation of New York State law.
[1] Controlled substance (as defined by the New York State Penal Law) means any substance listed in Schedules I, II, III, IV, or V of section 3306 of the New York State Public Health Law, other than marijuana, but including concentrated cannabis as defined by the New York State Health Law (Section 3302, paragraph a, subdivision 5).
Concentrated Cannabis is defined by the New York State Health Law (Section 3302, paragraph a-5)
A violation of these standards occurs when a person:
Fails to respond to a reasonable request of college officials who are acting within their authority. College officials include faculty, staff, administrators, and students who are carrying out assigned work responsibilities.
Intentionally interferes with the normal flow of pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic, entrances to buildings, or with the normal operation, or functions of the college. (Please refer to the Board of Trustees Rules for the Maintenance of Public Order.)
Fails to respect the ongoing legitimate functions of classes, meetings, office procedures, study, sleep, or any authorized college activity. (e.g. unreasonable use of sound equipment, playing of instruments, drums, or amplified guitars in residential areas, engaging in indoor sports, violating courtesy or quiet hours, etc.)
Obstructs or interferes with the reprimand, discipline, or apprehension of another person who is involved in the commission of an offense under the Student Code of Conduct.
Duplicates, possesses, lends, or uses keys or access codes to college facilities or services without permission (e.g., lending/borrowing room keys or More Cards).
Uses, receives, or other acquires college utility, computer, or communication services; computer software, telecommunications cables and hookups; or any college equipment or facilities without proper authorization.
Minimum: Restitution
Maximum: Suspension
Brings into college buildings any animal, except as authorized by the college (small fish in containers no larger than 10 gallons are authorized).
All students must comply with the College Guest Policy:
Hosts are fully responsible for the behavior of their guests.
Guests must be with the host at all times.
Guests must have valid guest pass on their person.
Guests must produce the guest pass when requested by official college personnel.
Hosts and Guests are responsible for abiding with all additional regulations as detailed in the Guest Policy.
Minimum: Disciplinary Reprimand
Maximum: Suspension
All students must comply with occupancy levels. The maximum occupancy level for the residential areas are as follows:
For units designed as a residence hall single – 4 persons
For units designed as a residence hall double – 8 persons
For units designed as a residence hall triple – 8 persons
For units designed as a residence hall suite – 12 persons
For apartment units designed for three persons – 10 persons
For apartment units designed for four persons – 16 persons
For apartment units designed for six persons – 24 persons
For apartment units designed for eight persons – 24 persons
Minimum: Disciplinary Reprimand
Maximum: Disciplinary Probation
Students must comply with the registering of small, private gatherings/parties in residential facilities with the Office of Community Engagement. Properly registered small, private gatherings/parties are only permitted in the apartment complexes.
Excessive debris, recyclables, general uncleanliness, covering over 50% of walls or doors, hanging any ceiling decorations, or items outside of windows.
Violates the Computer Ethics and Usage Policy (e.g. DMCA Copyright Violations, sharing account information, etc.)
Minimum: Disciplinary Reprimand
Maximum: Suspension
Recommended Standard 1st Offense: Official Notification
Recommended Standard 2nd Offense: Residence Probation for one semester and Judicial Educator - Module 19: Being a Good Cyber Citizen
Recommended Standard 3rd Offense: Disciplinary Probation for one year
Fails to comply with any college policy and/or any local, state, or federal law, rule, or regulation.
The following is a list of regulations which have been published by various offices of the college and shall be considered supplemental to the community standards and regulations outlined in Section III of this publication.
All documents can be found in the Library, the New York State University Police, the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, and in specified offices cited below. Violations may be handled by the appropriate administrative officer(s) and/or as described in Section IV of this document.
What is an ombudsman? How can the ombudsman help me?
The ombudsman assists students in several capacities, including helping students navigate the campus community standards disciplinary system, assisting students who are experiencing difficulties using administrative offices, and helping students negotiate the complicated world of higher education finance.
The ombudsman can:
Listen nonjudgmentally and discuss questions, issues, and concerns
Help evaluate options
Explain college policies and procedures
Make appropriate referrals when necessary
Empower students to address their concerns and problems
Bring patterns of problems/complaints to campus administrators
The ombudsman cannot:
Make administrative decisions for Purchase College
Judge or assign the guilt or innocence of those accused of breaking the community standards of conduct
Give legal advice
Process work orders on campus residence repairs
Get involved in course grade disputes
Typical issues that our ombudsman assists students with are:
A student has spoken with the offices of financial aid and student accounts but still cannot meet the costs of college.
A student has been accused of breaking the college’s community standards of conduct and needs an objective professional outside the judicial process to speak with for advice, clarification of campus policies or understanding what to expect during the process.
A student is treated poorly by a college employee and wants to formally bring it to the attention of college administration.
Welcome to the Office of Student Financial Services. We are dedicated to assisting you and your family in developing a financial strategy for this extraordinary investment in your future—your college education!
The Student Financial Services website was created to address all of your potential concerns regarding your attendance at Purchase. Our knowledgeable and highly efficient staff are here and ready to help with all of your questions regarding financial aid and the billing process throughout your career at Purchase College. In the links to the top right you’ll find information on common topics that our office deals with on a per-semester and annual basis for Financial Aid as well as Student Accounts (Billing). Please browse through the links at your convenience.
Should you have further questions regarding your finances, please feel free to contact our office using the form below or by writing an email to financialservices@purchase.edu. When emailing our office, please be sure to include your Purchase ID (PID) number.
The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, is the premier museum of modern, African, and contemporary art in the Westchester and Fairfield County area. An outstanding arts and education institution, the Museum was conceived to serve as an important cultural resource to its regional, national, and international audiences, and as an integral part of Purchase College.
The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College is a four-theatre complex located on the campus of Purchase College, SUNY. We are the major professional, non-profit arts presenter in the Southeastern New York–Southwestern Connecticut region.
The Center presents a broad range of performances that engage, challenge, and educate as well as entertain, offering music, dance, theatre, family programming, comedy, and film.
Music presenting ranges from classical to pop and features the leading artists of our time as well as emerging stars. As the major regional presenter of dance, programs have included only area appearances of several important traditional, contemporary, and folkloric companies. Theatre presentations reflect a deep commitment to presenting innovative ensembles.
The Center’s on-going initiatives also encompass artist partnerships, residency activities, and commissions. We support revitalizing efforts in the community to make the arts more accessible to broad and diverse audiences.
Through our Arts-In-Education programs, we strive to create opportunities for K -12 students and multi-generational learners to participate in the artistic process.
The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College has an active and collaborative relationship with the student population. Purchase College students can take advantage of master classes with our artists, on site training, internships, job opportunities, and ticket discounts. We host a large number of performances throughout the year for the Conservatories of Music, Dance, and Theatre Arts.
Academic calendars are published in full by August of the preceding year to facilitate planning. Please note that details in these calendars are subject to change; updates will be published as needed.
The schedules for fall and spring registration are circulated in advance to the campus community by the Office of the Registrar.
Students are responsible for absences and any coursework missed during the add/drop period. Before adding any course, students are advised to check with the individual faculty member to ensure that they can make up any missed coursework.
Some offices may close on holidays when classes are in session.
Attendance on Religious Holidays
As provided for in New York State Education Law §224-a, no person shall be expelled from or be refused admission as a student to an institution of higher education for the reason that he or she is unable, because of his or her religious beliefs, to register or attend classes or to participate in any examination, study, or work requirements on a particular day or days.
Any student who is unable, because of his or her religious beliefs, to attend classes on a particular day or days shall be excused from any examination or any study or work requirements that he or she may have missed because of such absence.
It is the responsibility of the faculty and of the administrative officials at Purchase College to make available to each student who is absent under these conditions an equivalent opportunity to register for classes or to make up any examination, study, or work requirements that he or she may have missed because of such absence. No fees of any kind shall be charged by the college for making available to the student such equivalent opportunity.
Harassment harms the learning community Academic freedom, creativity, professional achievement and personal development flourish in a healthy environment. Such an environment must be one in which all employees and students can pursue their work free from coercion, intimidation, and exploitation. Harassment is antithetical to the mission of the College and violations of this policy will result in disciplinary action up to and including expulsion or termination.
By law and SUNY policy, sexual harassment is defined as: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when:
submission to such contact is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment or education
submission or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment or educational decisions affecting the individuals
such conduct has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an individual’s welfare, academic or work performance, or creating an intimidating, hostile or demeaning learning or work environment.
NOTE: Although the majority of incidents involve a man harassing a woman, the law also applies to women harassing men, women harassing women, and men harassing men. This policy applies equally to employees and students, male and female. Those who feel they have been victims of such discrimination should contact the Affirmative Action Officer or the Director of Human Resources. Pursuing a complaint on the campus does not rescind the right to file with an outside enforcement agency such as the State Division of Human Rights.
Sexual harassment may include:
subtle persistent pressure for sexual activity
unnecessary touching, pinching, and/or brushing against a person
sexual coercion or assault
demanding sexual favors with implied or overt threats concerning work or academic decision or preferential treatment
unwelcome verbal/expressive behavior of a sexual nature (e.g., jokes, sounds, obscene phone calls, demeaning graphic portrayals)
stalking, cyberstalking, and failure to accept the termination of a consensual relationship with repeated overtures or other aberrant or negative behavior
Sexual harassment is a violation of the law and of SUNY policy Harassment on the basis of sex is a violation of New York State law and the Federal Civil Rights Act. The Governor’s Office has reaffirmed the law for State employees, and the SUNY Board of Trustees has affirmed the right of all students to be free from sexual harassment.
WHAT YOU CAN DO IF YOU FEEL YOU ARE SUBJECTED TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT:
Say “No.” Say it firmly, without smiling, without making an apology.
Keep a diary or log. Write down what is happening to you. Include direct quotes, any witnesses, or patterns to the harassment. Save any letters, cards, or notes sent to you. Keep both the log and notes in a secure place, preferably at home.
Deal with the situation immediately. Ignoring it will not make it go away. Indeed, it may worsen.
Talk to the person involved, if you feel you can. Explain why you are offended. Sometimes that is sufficient to clear the air. You may want to bring someone with you for support.
Ask: “How do you think your spouse, significant other, daughter or son would like being treated like this?”
Tell the harasser, “That sounds like sexual harassment.”
Write a letter to the person, especially if you feel direct confrontation is not possible or has not worked. If the person does not stop his or her behavior, you have a copy of your letter for further action. It should include (a) a short statement of the situation as you see it; (b) a description of your feelings and the damage that he or she has done; and (c) a short statement of behavior you would like to see.
If the above approaches have not been successful, you may want to discuss the situation with the College officers listed below to find other informal means to a resolution.
You may decide at any time to take formal action by filing a written complaint with the Affirmative Action Officer or the Director of Human Resources. Such complaints are taken seriously by the College and will result in formal action to eliminate the harassing behavior. Grievances made to the Affirmative Action Officer or the Director of Human Resources must be made in writing and must be brought within 90 days of the last incident to within 90 of the receipt of a grade.
Relationships with Students One of the hallmarks of the Purchase experience for students is the opportunity to establish relationships with faculty and staff that extend beyond the classroom and office. These relationships help to provide an environment in which faculty and staff serve as role models and mentors, facilitating students’ intellectual and personal growth.
Trust and respect are diminished when those in positions of authority abuse, or appear to abuse their power. It is ethically wrong for faculty or staff to use their positions to exploit students. Voluntary consent by a student to a sexual relationship with faculty or staff is suspect, given the imbalance of power in such a relationship. Students involved in such relationships are at risk of exploitation. Faculty or staff involved in such relationships are creating potential conflicts of interest, personal liability to charges of sexual harassment, and interference with the welfare, academic, or work performance of others.
Sexual Orientation The Governor’s Executive Order No 28 prohibits all state agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation in the provision of any services or benefits by a state agency and in any matter relating to employment by the state.
Sexual orientation is defined as a private preference of an individual protected by Executive Order No. 28 for heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality; or a history of such preference; or an identification of having such a preference.
Harassment on the basis of sexual orientation is judged against the same criteria as those for sexual harassment, and protection applies to students, as well as to employees, to males as well as females.
Complaints may be made to the Affirmative Action Officer or the Director of Human Resources. This does not rescind a person’s right to file a complaint with the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations.
The following people on campus are available to help you:
Jerima DeWese Affirmative Action/Chief Diversity Officer and Title IX Coordinator and ADA Coord. Purchase College Student Services Building, 3rd Floor 735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577 (914) 251-5992 jerima.dewese@purchase.edu
Director of Counseling—(914) 251-6390
Employee Assistance Program Coordinator—(914) 251-6098 Student Services Building, Room 320
Purchase College is committed to fostering a diverse community of outstanding faculty, staff and students, as well as ensuring equal educational opportunity, employment, and access to service, programs, and activities, without regard to an individual’s race, color, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, familial status, pregnancy, predisposing genetic characteristics, military status, domestic violence victim status, or criminal conviction. Employees, students, applicants, or other members of the Purchase community (including vendors, visitors, and guests) may not be subjected to harassment that is prohibited by law or treated adversely or retaliated against based upon a protected characteristic.
Purchase complies with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination and harassment. These laws include the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as Amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, and the New York State Human Rights Law. These laws prohibit discrimination and harassment, including sexual harassment and sexual violence.
Sexual harassment is defined as: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when:
submission to such contact is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment or education
submission or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment or educational decisions affecting the individual
such conduct has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an individual’s welfare, academic or work performance, or creating an intimidating, hostile, or demeaning learning or work environment
Sexual harassment may include:
subtle persistent pressure for sexual activity
unnecessary touching, pinching, and/or brushing against a person
sexual coercion or assault
demanding sexual favors with implied or overt threats concerning work or academic decision or preferential treatment
unwelcome verbal/expressive behavior of a sexual nature (e.g., jokes, sounds, obscene phone calls, demeaning graphic portrayals)
stalking, cyber stalking, and failure to accept the termination of a consensual relationship with repeated overtures or other aberrant or negative behavior
Sexual violence has been defined as “physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or where a person is incapable of giving consent,” including rape, sexual battery, and sexual coercion.
Domestic victim status has been defined by the Human Rights Law as an individual who is a victim of an act which would constitute a family offense under N.Y. Family Court Act § 812. It is unlawful to discriminate against a domestic violence victim in hiring for a job, job advancement, requests for use of leave time, or other terms, conditions or privileges of employment. It is also unlawful for an employer to take an action in retaliation for filing a complaint of discrimination.
On-campus inquiries or complaints regarding violations of the Nondiscrimination Policy or Title IXmay be addressed to:
Jerima DeWese Affirmative Action/Chief Diversity Officer and Title IX Coordinator Purchase College 735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577 (914) 251-5992 Jerima.DeWese@purchase.edu
Inquiries may also be directed to:
New York Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Education 32 Old Slip, 26th Floor New York, NY 10005-2500 Tel: (646) 428-3800, Fax: (646) 428-3843 TDD: (800) 877-8339 OCR.NewYork@ed.gov
The academic year at Purchase College comprises two 15-week semesters. The unit of credit is the semester hour, which represents:
50 minutes per week (12.5 hours per semester) of instruction in lectures, seminars, and discussions*
100 minutes per week (25 hours per semester) of instruction in studios, labs, field trips, and practica*
150 minutes per week (37.5 hours per semester) of instruction in studios, labs, field trips, and practica with little or no outside preparation expected of students
37.5 hours per semester of academic work in part-time, supervised independent studies
In credit-bearing courses that meet for fewer than 15 weeks (for example, short-term courses, winter session and summer session courses, and study abroad courses), the hours per week are proportionately increased.
*For each credit, students are expected to complete a minimum of two hours of academic work (study, preparation, etc.) outside of class each week. Some courses may require three or more hours of outside work each week for each credit. In particular, the BFA and MusB programs are intensive professional training programs and require students’ full-time commitment. Students in all majors are advised to limit their job and social commitments in order to give their coursework adequate attention.
Student Workload and Remote Instruction
While the use of remote instruction (distance learning) in either some or all of a particular course reduces or even eliminates the amount of in-person instruction engaged by a student in that course, expected student workload is still calculated on a per-credit basis.
Assuming a 15-week semester, for each week of a course offered in a distance format, regardless of the subject of the course or original mode of delivery (e.g. lecture, studio), students are expected to complete 3 hours of course-related activities for each credit awarded in the course. Thus, a fully online course requires 45 hours of course-related student activity for one semester credit, and a 4-credit fully online course requires 180 total hours of student activity (or, 12 hours per week).
These course-related (Time on Task) activities are normally devised and monitored by faculty, and may include listening to a lecture, watching an instructional video, posting to a group discussion board, reading an article, preparing assignments, taking online quizzes, etc.
Additional guidance on student workload and remote instruction is provided by the NY Department of Education.
Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Science (BS)
Earn a minimum of 120 credits. Of the 120 credits, a minimum number of credits in the liberal arts are required: 90 for the BA, 60 for the BS. A total of 45 credits must be earned in upper-level (3000- or 4000-level) courses. A maximum of 4 physical education credits may be applied toward the degree.
Complete a minimum of 60 credits outside the student’s board of study (major).
Students who have received a bachelor’s degree from another institution and plan to receive a second bachelor’s degree from Purchase College must successfully complete:
at least one year (30 credits) at Purchase College
Students who plan to receive two bachelor’s degrees from Purchase College must satisfy the academic requirements for each degree and for two major fields. A second degree presumes that the student meets all the requirements for the first degree.
A minimum of 30 credits of additional work is required when a student with a BA or BS in one discipline at Purchase College matriculates for a BA, BS, BFA, or MusB in another discipline.
BFA and MusB students must meet the liberal arts credit requirement for a BA (90 credits) or BS (60 credits); liberal arts credits earned toward the BFA or MusB may count toward this requirement.
Purchase College believes that academic integrity is fundamental to the teaching, learning, and creative processes. Ethical behavior is the cornerstone of an academic and artistic community.
All forms of academic dishonesty are considered serious violations of the Student Code of Conduct. Alleged violations of the academic integrity policy are handled by the faculty via the Academic Standards and Awards Committee (not the Office of Community Standards). Please see the Academic Integrity subsite for all forms, reporting, hearing, and appeal procedures.
Faculty members and professional staff are held equally to this standard in their work. Allegations of violations are handled through procedures outlined in the applicable collective bargaining agreement.
The following is a list of some, but not all, types of prohibited behavior.
Prohibited Behaviors
Cheating on examinations and assignments, including:
Copying from another student
Allowing another student to copy from you
Using or attempting to use study aids, devices, “cheat sheets,” or other materials not expressly authorized by the professor
Unauthorized collaboration with another individual on take-home assignments or examinations
Buying, acquiring without permission, or selling copies of an examination, paper, written work, or creative work
It is the student’s responsibility to clarify with the professor what constitutes acceptable use of test aides or collaboration.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas, and/or thoughts of another person and the representation of them as one’s own original work. It includes:
Buying, selling, or downloading papers or works and submitting them as one’s own.
Copying sections of books or articles in one’s paper without proper citation.
“Copying and pasting” from online sources without proper citation.
Failing to properly cite quotations or ideas taken from external sources.
Using false citations or fabricating sources.
Receiving unauthorized assistance from another person on an examination, paper, written work, or creative project.
Self-plagiarism (submitting the same work for more than one course without permission of the instructor).
Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with the definition of plagiarism and the acceptable methods of attribution.
Submitting falsified data on lab work or research projects.
Giving or offering inducements to professors for the purpose of affecting grades.
Stealing, altering, or destroying the academic work of another student.
Sanctions
Violation of any of the above may lead to formal disciplinary action and assignment of the followingacademic or disciplinary sanctions:
Minimum Sanction: Failing grade on the assignment or examination
Maximum Sanction: Expulsion
Recommended Sanction (First Offense): Permanent failing grade for the course
Recommended Sanction (Second Offense): Expulsion
In cases that require a hearing, the Academic Integrity Committee may assign academic sanctions as outlined above or the disciplinary sanctions listed below, either alone or in combination. The number in parentheses at the end of each designated sanction identifies the minimum level of sanctioning authority required by the hearing officer/body in order for assignment of that sanction to be made. See definitions of Disciplinary Sanctions under the Office of Community Standards: Glossary and Sanctions.
Disciplinary Reprimand (I)
Educational Sanctions (I)
Disciplinary Probation (I)
Suspension (III)
Expulsion (III)
Professional Program Requirements
The School of the Arts and its individual units—the School of Art+Design and the Conservatories of Dance, Music, and Theatre Arts—have developed formal expectations for students in their professional preparation programs. Departments for individual programs may impose additional sanctions related to breaches of codes of professional conduct, including dismissal from the program. Copies are provided to each student upon entering the college and are available, upon request, from the respective director’s office.
Students in the BA and BS programs (and students who have not yet declared a major) cannot earn credit for the same course taken more than once, except for a very limited number of performing and visual arts courses in which the content is different by virtue of the repertoire or experience level. Students should see the registrar for more detailed information.
Academic internships provide practical experience in a student’s field of interest. Internship opportunities are available in diverse fields (for example, education, performing and visual arts, business, public service, communications, social service, and health care).
An academic internship is a supervised, applied learning experience conducted during the course of a semester for which the student receives academic credit. During the internship, the student is expected to accomplish certain predetermined goals and learning objectives agreed upon by the internship site supervisor and the faculty sponsor. Students must also complete an academic project, which is determined by the designated faculty sponsor.
A student may earn up to 4 credits by interning an average of 10 hours per week during the course of the semester. The exact number of credit hours, which depends on the hours required for each experience, is established as a part of the Internship Learning Contract.
How to Apply
Students who have completed at least 30 academic credits are eligible to participate in the academic internship program. Students can locate available internships by using Purchase JobScore, an online service accessible through the Career Development Center. Students are also encouraged to contact their board of study for recurring internship opportunities.
To receive credit for an internship, a student must submit an Internship Learning Contract online through Purchase JobScore no later than the last day of the add/drop period. This web-based form includes the student’s contact information, the internship description and site location, a description of the academic project, expected learning outcomes, and criteria for student evaluation, as determined by the faculty sponsor. Electronic signatures from all the involved parties, including the site supervisor, faculty sponsor, student intern, and an administrator in the Career Development Center, are required before the Internship Learning Contract is submitted to the Office of the Registrar for registration.
Internship Site Supervisor
The student must have a supervisor at the organization where he or she interns. To ensure that the internship has sufficient merit as a learning experience, this site supervisor must provide an electronic signature on the Internship Learning Contract, an internship description, and an outline of the competencies expected to be gained by the student. The site supervisor offers training and guides the hands-on, practical learning experience. If the site supervisor changes during the course of the internship, the student must immediately notify the Career Development Center and provide the name of the new site supervisor. Site supervisors must submit a performance evaluation of the student’s internship experience, which is used by the faculty sponsor to determine an appropriate grade.
Faculty Sponsor
The student must work with a faculty member (faculty sponsor), who determines the academic appropriateness of the proposed internship and agrees to monitor the student intern’s progress. The faculty sponsor reviews the internship description, outlines the expected learning outcomes of the experience, and assigns a meaningful academic project. This faculty sponsor need not be the student’s regular faculty advisor, but may be a faculty member knowledgeable in a discipline related to the internship. Students are strongly encouraged to meet with their faculty sponsor on a regular basis.
Performance Evaluation and Grading
Both the site supervisor and the faculty sponsor monitor the student’s progress throughout the internship and offer assistance as needed. Before the end of the internship, the site supervisor will be notified by email to complete a performance evaluation form via Purchase JobScore. The evaluation is then forwarded to the faculty sponsor, who assigns the grade for the internship based on this evaluation and the assigned academic project.
Receiving Credit
Most academic programs allow students to earn up to 12 internship credits during their time at Purchase. Because some programs have specific policies, students must check with their board of study before registering for a credit-bearing internship. Registration must be completed by the end of the add/drop period for the semester in which the internship will be undertaken. Academic credit will awarded only for hours worked during the period of the Internship Learning Contract. No “retroactive credit” will be awarded for hours worked before or after the period of the contract or after the internship is completed. Additional information is available at the Career Development Center.
Credit units are determined by the number of hours per week a student interns at his or her site. A maximum of 4 credits may be earned in a single internship. Internship credits are calculated as follows:
4 credits
150 hours total
10 hours per week x 15 weeks
3 credits
112½ hours total
7½ hours per week x 15 weeks
2 credits
75 hours total
5 hours per week x 15 weeks
1 credit
37½ hours total
2½ hours per week x 15 weeks
Note: A semester is 15 weeks in length, excluding class holidays. Internships undertaken in summer session, which is less than 15 weeks, require a proportionate increase in hours per week.
The Office of the Registrar maintains the official academic record of each student’s enrollment and accomplishment. Before a student graduates, the academic record includes the student’s transcripts from high school or other colleges. (As of September 1990, the Office of the Registrar does not maintain copies of narrative evaluations.) Students wishing to receive program clarification or to check on progress toward the degree are encouraged to see the registrar. The permanent academic record is normally available to the student for review. The record is considered confidential and is released to outside agencies only with the student’s written consent.
The Office of the Registrar is responsible for implementing academic policies and procedures. It is the student’s responsibility to be familiar with these policies, which are published in the Purchase College Catalog.
The Office of the Registrar is also responsible for the preparation of course schedules and registration guidelines for matriculated students each semester. The registrar must also certify students for veteran’s benefits and loans. Because of close association with both students and faculty, the Office of the Registrar is an excellent source of information about the many academic aspects of the college.
Academic Transcripts
Permanent academic records are maintained by the Office of the Registrar for internal use only. Transcripts of these records are distributed externally only upon a student’s submission of a Transcript Request. A transcript contains the following information:
All courses completed at Purchase College and the corresponding grades
If a student has outstanding debts to the college, a hold is placed on transcripts and diplomas until the account is cleared. A default on New York State or federal loans would also require a hold on a student’s academic records.
Attendance in classes may be mandatory. During the first class meeting, instructors are required to inform students about attendance requirements and policies for that course regarding absences and assignments, and the attendance policy must be clearly stated on the syllabus. Students absent from class for any reason are expected to complete all assigned work in the course.
Student Athletes Participation on an intercollegiate athletic team is a sanctioned college activity that enhances the student’s educational experience at Purchase College. It is a high-impact, outside-the-classroom learning experience that is credit-bearing and meets the health and wellness requirement in the core curriculum. Student athletes are required to meet with their professors before the start of their sport season to discuss any schedule conflicts and develop a plan to make up any missed work. The student athlete’s professor is required to sign the Intercollegiate Athletics Professor Acknowledgement form, which the student athlete must return to his or her coach before athletic competitions begin.
From time to time, students participating in intercollegiate athletic competitions may provide a faculty member with an approved absence excuse letter, signed by the athletics director, explaining an absence due to a game or match (not a practice) that had to be rescheduled. The student athlete still assumes responsibility for all work missed. If the student is not doing well in the course, the faculty member has the right to tell the student that he or she cannot miss class.
Other Student Activities Operating on the same principles as student athletic participation, students involved in credit-bearing activities that include high-impact, outside-the-classroom obligations (e.g., internships, performing arts ensembles, etc.) are also required to discuss schedule conflicts with their faculty at the beginning of the semester. Students may not miss classes for rehearsals or practices, and should plan with faculty to make up work missed due to performances or tours required in another course. As with student athletes, if a student is not doing well in a course, the faculty member has the right to tell the student that he or she cannot be absent for such activities.
No person shall be expelled from or be refused admission as a student to an institution of higher education for the reason that he or she is unable, because of his or her religious beliefs, to register or attend classes or to participate in any examination, study or work requirements on a particular day or days.
Any student in an institution of higher education who is unable, because of his or her religious beliefs, to attend classes on a particular day or days shall, because of such absence on the particular day or days, be excused from any examination or any study or work requirements.
It shall be the responsibility of the faculty and of the administrative officials of each institution of higher education to make available to each student who is absent from school, because of his or her religious beliefs, an equivalent opportunity to register for classes or make up any examination, study or work requirements which he or she may have missed because of such absence on any particular day or days. No fees of any kind shall be charged by the institution for making available to the said student such equivalent opportunity.
If registration, classes, examinations, study or work requirements are held on Friday after 4 p.m. or on Saturday, similar or makeup classes, examinations, study or work requirements or opportunity to register shall be made available on other days, where it is possible and practicable to do so. No special fees shall be charged to the student for these classes, examinations, study or work requirements or registration held on other days.
In effectuating the provisions of this section, it shall be the duty of the faculty and of the administrative officials of each institution of higher education to exercise the fullest measure of good faith. No adverse or prejudicial effects shall result to any student because of his or her availing himself or herself of the provisions of this section.
Any student, who is aggrieved by the alleged failure of any faculty or administrative officials to comply in good faith with the provisions of this section, shall be entitled to maintain an action or proceeding in the supreme court of the county in which such institution of higher education is located for the enforcement of his or her rights under this section.
It shall be the responsibility of the administrative officials of each institution of higher education to give written notice to students of their rights under this section, informing them that each student who is absent from school, because of his or her religious beliefs, must be given an equivalent opportunity to register for classes or make up any examination, study or work requirements which he or she may have missed because of such absence on any particular day or days. No fees of any kind shall be charged by the institution for making available to such student such equivalent opportunity.
As used in this section, the term “institution of higher education” shall mean any institution of higher education, recognized and approved by the regents of the university of the state of New York, which provides a course of study leading to the granting of a post-secondary degree or diploma. Such term shall not include any institution which is operated, supervised or controlled by a church or by a religious or denominational organization whose educational programs are principally designed for the purpose of training ministers or other religious functionaries or for the purpose of propagating religious doctrines. As used in this section, the term “religious belief” shall mean beliefs associated with any corporation organized and operated exclusively for religious purposes, which is not disqualified for tax exemption under section 501 of the United States Code.
A score of 4 or higher on either the Advanced Placement Literature and Composition exam or the Advanced Placement Language and Composition exam satisfies the Basic Communication core curriculum requirement.
Students who have received a score of 3 on either of these exams will receive 6 liberal arts elective credits for their score, but will still be required to enroll in College Writing. College Writing is generally required in the first semester of the freshman year.
Manhattanville College and Purchase College allow a limited number of matriculated students from each institution to cross-register at the other institution, typically for coursework not offered on their home campus. There is no additional tuition charged for cross-registered courses, but additional fees may be assessed for certification courses (excluding teaching certification).
Students require the permission of both institutions to cross-register. Purchase students who are interested in cross-registering at Manhattanville:
should consult with an advisor at both Purchase and Manhattanville before registration; and
must obtain the signatures of their advisor and the registrar.
Depending on its needs, Manhattanville College may completely restrict its registration in some areas. Manhattanville courses that are generally not available to Purchase students through cross-registration are:
Students who have not declared a major are strongly encouraged to meet with a staff member in the Advising Center for guidance in selecting a major. By the time students have completed 45 credits, they are expected to choose a major. Forms for declaring a major are available in the Office of the Registrar.
The purpose of this policy is to promote academic success among nonnative English-speaking students on campus. Success in courses at Purchase College depends, in part, on the ability to understand, read, write, and speak English. For this reason, international students whose first language is not English will be assessed to determine if they can benefit from additional language training as they embark on their studies at Purchase.
Policy
All nonnative English-speaking international students are required to take the college’s English placement exam before the beginning of their first semester. (This exam is not required for students who are native English speakers and from countries where English is the primary language of instruction.) The results of this test will be reviewed in combination with other relevant scores, including TOEFL or IELTS and academic transcripts, and students will be placed in the appropriate English language course as needed.
Responsibility
The director of the college writing program, in coordination with the Office of Admissions and the Office of International Programs and Services, is responsible for ensuring compliance with this policy. The director is also responsible for hiring the appropriate English language instructors. The Office of Admissions is responsible for identifying all incoming international students. The Office of International Programs and Services, in coordination with the Learning Center and the director of the college writing program, is responsible for identifying a time and location for testing, which is held during the orientation for new international students. Makeup testing arrangements are the responsibility of the director of the college writing program.
Policy Implementation/Guidelines
The English placement exam tests students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking abilities. Based on the results of the placement exam, combined with a review of other relevant test scores and documentation (e.g., TOEFL or IELTS scores and academic transcripts), students will be waived from an English language requirement or placed in one of the English as an Additional Language (EAL) courses offered under the auspices of the college writing program.
Students who demonstrate proficiency at or above EAL 1520 may enroll in any course for which they are otherwise qualified; however, enrollment in the WRI 1110/College Writing section for international students may be recommended. Unlike EAL courses, College Writing meets the general education requirement for basic communication.
If a student’s performance on the college’s English placement test is inconsistent with the test scores or with other proof of English language proficiency initially reviewed for admissions purposes, the college reserves the right to defer the student’s enrollment.
Exceptions
Exceptions to this policy may occur in special circumstances involving institutional agreements with international partner universities, new pathway programs, and/or other international agreements that would warrant exceptions. All such exceptions must be codified in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among the participating parties and have appropriate approvals in accordance with the agreement. Any MOU must be executed through the Office of International Programs and Services, which may require consultation with the Office of Academic Affairs and the Office of Admissions regarding exceptions set forth in the MOU.
Contact Offices
Office of International Programs and Services: (914) 251-6032
The last week of classes in each semester is commonly understood to be the exam period, and new work is not assigned during this time. The exam week schedule is available in the Office of the Registrar.
The minimum full-time semester workload is 12 credits for undergraduate students and 9 credits for graduate students. Certain forms of federal, state, and institutional financial aid require full-time status by the end of the add/drop period. Only full-time students are permitted to live on campus.
Overload Approval
To receive overload approval for a given semester, approval must be obtained from the appropriate program chair by:
students in the performing arts BFA and MusB programs who wish to register for more than 22 credits (a maximum of 30 credits is allowed each semester); and
students in all other undergraduate degree programs who wish to register for more than 18 credits (a maximum of 24 credits is allowed each semester).
Part-Time Status
Undergraduate students who pursue fewer than 12 credits (and graduate students who pursue fewer than 9 credits) per semester have part-time status. Part-time matriculated students meet the same admission and degree requirements as full-time matriculated students. Students who wish to pursue part-time studies should consult with the chair or director and the board of study to determine whether a part-time program is available.
Nonmatriculated, Winter Session, and Summer Session Students
Course Load and Overload
During the academic year (fall and spring semesters), nonmatriculated students may take a maximum of 18 credits each semester without special permission.
Overloads are not permitted in winter session. Given the intensive pace of winter session courses, all students are limited to a maximum of 4 credits—no exceptions.
During summer session, all students may enroll for a maximum of 12 credits across the four summer sessions. Limits within the sessions are as follows: a maximum of 4 credits in the online Session I and a maximum of 8 credits in Sessions II, III, and IV combined.
Note: According to New York State policy, all students must pay for summer session courses on a per-credit basis. There are no special rates for 12 or more credits.
Undergraduate students in their junior year, or one year from graduation, are required to submit an Application for Graduation in order to be eligible for graduation.
Instructions for completing the Application for Graduation
Make an appointment with your advisor to review your Degree Progress Report to make sure you are on track to graduate. If you are uncertain about any academic requirements or policies, please check with your school or conservatory or the Office of the Registrar.
Complete the Application for Graduation. Graduation applications should be submitted electronically through MyHeliotrope under the Student menu. Diploma name and mailing information will be collected at the time the application is submitted.
Students who submit graduation applications in a timely fashion will have their applications pre-reviewed in an effort to alert them to any outstanding issues that will prevent graduation. Pre-review notifications are sent at the beginning of a semester in which the student has applied for graduation.
Final determinations regarding degree conferrals are made by the Office of the Registrar at the end of a student’s last semester of study. To qualify for graduation, all degree requirements must be completed by the published graduation date. This includes the successful resolution of all Incomplete (I) grades and receipt of all external transcripts, test scores, and department waivers or substitutions.
Diplomas are distributed to graduates approximately eight to ten weeks after degrees have been awarded and are mailed to the diploma mailing address on file. If no diploma address was provided when applying for graduation, diplomas will be mailed to the permanent address on file. Diplomas of students in arrears will be held until all financial obligations to the college have been met and account balances have been cleared by the Office of Student Financial Services.
Students may participate in one graduation ceremony during matriculation at Purchase. If the student does not complete degree requirements by May, but the registrar has reasonable assurance that requirements will be completed by the end of that year’s summer session, the registrar may permit the student to participate in the May commencement ceremony. The student will be considered a candidate for August graduation. If the student completes requirements after summer session and registers for an additional semester, the student must defer participation in the ceremony until requirements are fully completed.
Any changes in the student’s senior-year plans must be reported to the Office of the Registrar. Students who wish to change their graduation date must send written notification to the Office of the Registrar and their program office as soon as possible.
College honors are awarded as summa cum laude, magna cum laude, and cum laude. The Educational Policies Committee has approved the minimum grade point average (GPA) needed to qualify for graduation with honors in each category. Undergraduate students are eligible to graduate with honors if they have:
completed at least 55 credits at Purchase College, graded A+ through WF (grades of P, S, SP, UP, or CR are not counted) and
achieved the following minimum GPA: Summa Cum Laude: 3.90 Magna Cum Laude: 3.75 Cum Laude: 3.50
College honors are noted in the commencement program with a statement that the notation is based on seven semesters’ work or the equivalent. This is necessary because the program is printed before the final semester’s grades are available.
Matriculated students in a BA or BS program who wish to transfer into a BFA or MusB program should contact the office of the director of their intended program. Likewise, BFA and MusB students who wish to transfer into a BA or BS program should contact the office of the chair or director of their intended program. (Nonmatriculated students who wish to enroll in a degree-granting program at Purchase must follow regular admission procedures.)
The student will be given an internal transfer application. Deadlines for internal transfer applications vary from program to program; however, all applications must be completed and submitted at least six weeks before a semester begins.
The student is then advised, when applicable, about the audition, interview, and/or portfolio requirements of the intended program and the procedure for completing those requirements. The student should also be advised about the nature of the program and any implications regarding transfer credit.
School of Art+Design: Students who wish to transfer from other degree programs at Purchase College to the School of Art+Design must submit to the school’s main office (Visual Arts Building, second floor):
an essay of intention
a portfolio
a student copy of their transcript
an application form (available on the school’s website)
Check with the main office in the School of Art+Design for applicable deadlines. After these materials have been reviewed by the Art+Design Admissions Committee and a decision has been reached, students will be informed of their acceptance or denial via email.
In order to graduate at the end of any given semester at Purchase, a student must be registered for that semester. A student may satisfy this requirement either by (a) being registered for coursework until graduation or (b) registering for MOM 3000/Maintenance of Matriculation and paying $50 to maintain matriculation. Students must receive permission from the registrar to register for MOM 3000.
Students may not register for MOM 3000 while they are completing a senior project, senior recital, or senior production. An additional senior project/recital/production registration is required.
Optional undergraduate minors—typically five courses, or 18–25 credits of coursework—are offered in many areas of study. After choosing a major, any student interested in pursuing a minor should carefully review the requirements for the minor before applying. An Application for a Program of Minor Study, available in the Office of the Registrar, is required for all minors. Unless required by the major, minors are not degree applicable for financial aid purposes.
Eligible students must secure approval of off-campus study before leaving Purchase and are urged to talk with their academic advisor as early as possible during the semester preceding the anticipated off-campus study.
If the off-campus study is at an American institution in the U.S., students should obtain a Request for Preapproval to Transfer Credit, available in the Office of the Registrar. The student completes the form in consultation with his or her advisor, who provides guidance regarding the specifics of the student’s program at another institution. Specific course titles and credits must be indicated on the form. The form is signed by the student and the advisor. The completed form must be submitted to the Office of the Registrar.
Eligibility for Study Abroad
Students must attend a “Study Abroad 101” information session before submitting an application.
Students must be in good standing (academic, financial, disciplinary) during the proposed period of study abroad.
Freshman may be eligible for short-term study abroad opportunities after one semester of full-time study at Purchase, with special permission.
Transfer students are eligible after they have successfully completed one semester of full-time study at Purchase.
Seniors in their final semester are generally advised against off-campus study.
Students must complete the following before studying abroad: the (1) Request for Preapproval to Transfer Credit and (2) Approval for Study Abroad, available in the Office of the Registrar. The student completes these forms in consultation with his or her study abroad advisor, who provides guidance regarding the specifics of the student’s program at another institution. Specific course titles and credits must be indicated on the forms. The completed forms, signed by the student and his or her academic advisor, must be submitted by the student for approval to the Office of International Programs and Services.
Students studying abroad through an approved SUNY program are:
required to register and pay tuition through Purchase
not considered to be on academic leave of absence
In addition to talking with an academic advisor, all students are strongly encouraged to meet with a study abroad advisor in the Office of International Programs and Services to help plan for a summer session, winter session, semester, or academic-year study abroad program. For more information, please contact:
Anne Kern, Dean for Global Strategy and International Programs Office of International Programs and Services Student Services Bldg., Second Floor study.abroad@purchase.edu (914) 251-6032
Conditions and Considerations for Off-Campus Study and Study Abroad
Leaves are granted for no more than two consecutive semesters for students who enter Purchase as freshmen and who have beginning sophomore or junior status at the time a leave would take effect.
For the credit earned to be applied toward Purchase matriculation, a grade of D or higher must be earned in academic work taken off campus.
Study must be done at an accredited institution of higher education.
Any questions concerning financial aid should be discussed with staff members in the Office of Student Financial Services (Enrollment Services).
The student should give the Office of Community Engagement timely notice of his or her intention not to be in residence at Purchase.
Readmission to the college is necessary for formerly matriculated students who have separated from the college. The readmission process must be completed for a student to be matriculated in a degree program. A student dismissed for academic reasons is eligible to apply for readmission one year after the dismissal. Students who wish to be readmitted should complete an Application for Readmission (available at www.purchase.edu/registrar, under “Forms”) and submit it to the Office of the Registrar by the published deadline.
Any student readmitted to Purchase College is on academic probation for the first semester after returning. If the quality or quantity of work during that first semester is considered unsatisfactory, the student could be permanently dismissed at that time and may not be eligible for readmission.
Freshmen in the BA and BS programs, and freshmen who have not declared their major, normally complete from three to seven general education courses, depending on their program of study. Freshmen in the BFA and MusB programs normally complete two to three general education courses as well as foundation courses within their discipline.
First-Year Seminar
EDG 1030/First-Year Seminar is required for incoming freshmen and selected transfer students in the BA and BS programs (excluding the liberal studies BA and the BS in communications), and for freshmen who have not yet declared their major. (In their freshman year, biology majors take BIO 1880/Biology Freshman Seminar and all incoming freshmen in the School of Art+Design take VIS 1050/ComX, as part of their major requirements, instead of FRS 1030.)
Freshman-Year Withdrawal Policy
Freshmen are strongly encouraged not to withdraw from 1000- and 2000-level courses during their first two semesters. The reasons for this policy are both academic and financial:
Freshman courses are a necessary foundation for further academic study and should be completed on schedule.
Students who fall below a minimum number of credits by withdrawing risk losing their financial aid.
Students struggling in a course should meet with their advisor as soon as possible to discuss the best course of action. In some circumstances, freshmen will be allowed to withdraw from a 1000- or 2000-level course, but they must first obtain the written permission (on an official withdrawal form) of both their advisor and their assistant dean (of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences or the School of the Arts).
First-semester freshmen who earn a semester GPA of 1.5 or lower will be automatically dismissed from the college. Students may appeal this dismissal.
The senior project is a collegewide requirement for the BA, BS, and some BFA programs. (Students in the liberal studies degree completion program are required to complete a senior capstone course.) It is the hallmark of the Purchase educational experience and the signature of our curriculum. Students devote two semesters (Senior Project I and II) to an in-depth, original, and creative study, which may take the form of a research paper (laboratory or field), an exhibition, a piece of creative writing, or a translation.
It is recommended that the senior project be sponsored by a member of the board of study in which the student has majored. After the student has chosen a faculty sponsor, he or she should consult that sponsor about the choice of a second reader.
At the end of Senior Project I, a grade of SP (satisfactory progress), UP (unsatisfactory progress), or NP (no progress) is assigned. After the completion of Senior Project II, the project or thesis is evaluated by the responsible faculty member, who obtains comments from other involved faculty and/or staff. A grade of A+ through F is given for Senior Project II. In the event a grade of F is received, Senior Project II must be retaken.
The thesis, signed by the sponsor and the second reader, must be submitted to the Purchase College Library by the last day of the semester. The Library does not accept paper projects; all senior projects, including capstone papers, and master’s theses must be submitted to the Library via Moodle. (Refer to the Library’s guide for instructions.)
In the event a senior project cannot be completed on time, it is subject to the same rules that govern other incomplete coursework. However, if the senior project is not submitted to the Library by (a) the deadline for resolving grades of Incomplete (I) for the fall semester or (b) August 15 for the spring semester, an additional registration for the senior project is required. This policy supersedes any arrangements for “extended incompletes” that may have been made. Special permission from the sponsor and board-of-study coordinator is required to register beyond a third semester for the senior project.
Accelerated Status in the Senior Year
Students may be given accelerated status in their senior year by registering for and completing Senior Project I and II in one semester. Acceleration requires permission of the advisor, senior project sponsor, appropriate board of study, and/or the chair or director of the student’s school.
Senior Project Registration in Summer Session
Students cannot complete both Senior Project I and II during the summer; however they may register for either Senior Project I or Senior Project II in the summer session, provided:
The principal sponsor can certify to the chair or director of the student’s school that he or she will be present for a significant portion of the summer to provide guidance and direction to the student.
The project is approved and the registration is allowed for the summer by the board-of-study coordinator and the chair or director of the student’s school.
The student registers and pays for the summer session work: 3 credits for a 6-credit senior project or 4 credits for an 8-credit senior project. (Students cannot complete the equivalent of two semesters of senior project work during summer session.) Students who register for Senior Project II during summer session must complete the project and submit a copy to the Library via Moodle no later than August 15.
Purchase College, State University of New York, accepts transfer credit from regionally accredited institutions of higher education and from recognized candidates for accreditation that are received on an official transcript by the Registrar’s Office. These regional accrediting bodies include:
Credit recognized by the National College Credit Recommendation Service of the University of the State of New York and the American Council on Education, recorded on official transcripts will be evaluated and may be accepted for applicability to specific degree requirements.
Students who have attended non-regionally accredited institutions of higher education may request that their coursework be evaluated for transfer credit. Credit will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and students will be expected to provide course descriptions and/or syllabi to assist in evaluating the coursework.
The U.S. Department of Education provides a searchable database of colleges and universities and their accreditation. We do not accept credit with national or specialized agency accreditation.
College-level credit taken at institutions outside of the US must be evaluated by an accepted translation/evaluation service. Examples include the World Education Service and Spantran.
Undergraduate Transfer Credit Policy
All students, regardless of credits transferred, must satisfy all academic requirements (or their equivalencies) for the major and the degree.
Students must disclose all prior college work on their application to Purchase. Transfer credit will not be awarded from work that was omitted on the application to the College.
Credits are converted to semester hours/credits. For example: unless otherwise specified, one quarter credit equals ⅔ of a semester hour. 5 quarter credits equals 3⅓ semester credits.
A maximum of 4 physical education credits can be applied toward a degree.
Remedial, college-prep, college success and college experience credits are not transferable.
Grades of D or higher are accepted in transfer credit, although several boards of study have higher grade requirements for satisfaction of major or minor requirements. If a higher grade is required for a requirement then the higher grade is the minimum accepted in transfer for that course or requirement.
Advanced Placement (AP) exam scores of 3 or better can transfer as credit. A maximum of 30 credits will be accepted. Purchase’s AP code is 2878.
A maximum of 30 credits will be accepted through the College Level Examination Program* (CLEP). Transfer is evaluated by review of each individual test score.
Acceptance of a course for transfer credit does not guarantee applicability to degree, major, or minor requirements.
Credits are transferred for the semester hour equivalent that they are taken. For example, courses taught elsewhere for 3 credits, which are taught at Purchase College for 4 credits, will transfer as 3 credits.
Transfer grades do not factor in to the Purchase GPA.
Once matriculated at Purchase, if a student wishes to transfer college-level work to transfer back to Purchase, they must complete a pre-approval to transfer credits form prior to registration if they wish to ensure transferability.
BA and BS Programs
A maximum of 90 credits—including a maximum of 75 lower-level (freshman-sophomore) credits—may be accepted in transfer to an undergraduate BA or BS program at Purchase College. The maximum of 90 can only be achieved if the student has at least 15 junior and/or senior level credits.
A maximum of 30 non-liberal art credits may be applied to a BA or BS degree. Non-liberal art credits include (but are not limited to) business, nursing, education, accounting, social work and engineering.
BS in Visual Arts: a maximum of 20 studio art credits and 9 art history credits are transferable. All upper-level studio art courses required for the BS major in the School of Art+Design must be completed at Purchase College. Art credits from other schools are not automatically transferable. Studio Art credit is awarded only for courses completed with a grade of “C” or better and if a comparable course is taught at Purchase with the approval of the Board of Study.
BFA and MusB Programs
Dance: Students may transfer a maximum of 36 general education (“core”) credits. Dance credits are not transferable. The Dance major takes 8 semesters to complete regardless of transfer credit.
Classical Composition, Instrumental Performance, Jazz Studies, Studio Composition, Studio Production, and Voice and Opera Studies: Students may transfer a maximum of 66 credits: 36 general education (“core”) and 30 music credits. The music credits are accepted if approved by the conservatory. Under extraordinary circumstances, a student may transfer up to 54 music credits with permission from both the area head (faculty coordinator) and the director of the Conservatory of Music.
Acting, Film, and Theatre Design/Technology: Students may transfer a maximum of 36 general education (“core”) credits. Major requirements in acting, stage/set design/technology and filmmaking are not transferable. These BFA majors take 8 semesters to complete regardless of transfer credit.
Graphic Design, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Visual Arts: A maximum of 69 credits (a maximum of 24 studio art credits, 9 art history credits, and an additional 36 general education (“core”) credits. All upper-level studio art courses required for the BFA majors in the School of Art+Design must be completed at Purchase College. Studio Art credit is awarded only for courses completed with a grade of “C” or better and if a comparable course is taught at Purchase with the approval of the Board of Study.
Graduate Transfer Credit Policy
Credits are converted to semester hours/credits. For example: unless otherwise specified, one quarter credit equals ⅔ of a semester hour. 5 quarter credits equals 3⅓ semester credits.
A maximum of 9 graduate-level credits with a grade of “B” or better may be accepted in transfer to an MA or MM program at Purchase College. Transfer credits are not accepted in the MFA programs
Credits are transferred for the semester hour equivalent that they are taken. For example, courses taught elsewhere for 3 credits, which are taught at Purchase College for 4 credits, will transfer as 3 credits.
When student athletes are readmitted and accepted into a degree program at Purchase College after (a) attending another two- or four-year college for two semesters and (b) successfully completing 24 credits with a 2.5 GPA or above, they will be eligible to participate in the Purchase College athletic program without having to complete a year in residence. In addition, student athletes must be deemed eligible on the NCAA transfer documents received from their previously attended institution. After readmission, student athletes must maintain a new, postcumulative 2.0 GPA or higher at Purchase College, or they will be ineligible to participate in the athletic program.
Matriculated students—generally juniors and seniors—are encouraged, when appropriate, to enroll in tutorials and independent studies. Both of these types of study enable motivated students to extend the learning process beyond the limits of regularly scheduled courses.
Tutorials
Tutorials are limited to individual students or small groups and assume a degree of academic maturity on the part of the student. Tutors meet regularly with students to discuss reading and other assignments. Students receive periodic evaluations and a final evaluation. Up to 4 credits may be awarded for a tutorial. One credit is equal to 50 minutes per week (15 hours per semester) with the tutorial instructor, plus two hours of student preparation per week.
Independent Studies
Similarly, independent studies are limited to students who are capable of working at an advanced level with limited supervision. Generally, students may receive no more than 4 credits for an independent study, with each credit the equivalent of 37½ hours per semester of academic activity.
Permission to Register
Students must complete a Special Course Contract, have their sponsor sign it, and submit it to the Office of the Registrar by the end of the add/drop period each semester. This form is available in the Office of the Registrar. For tutorial and independent studies during summer session, please refer to Summer Session Policies below.
Eligibility and Restrictions
Tutorials and independent studies are limited to Purchase matriculated students. (Nonmatriculated continuing education students cannot register for independent studies or tutorials.)
The amount of credit agreed upon at the time of registration is the amount of credit to be awarded at the end of the semester. Credit may not be reduced at the end of the semester because of partial fulfillment of a particular course, tutorial, or independent study.
Students may not count more than 16 credits of independent studies, tutorials, and senior project taken with one faculty member toward the 120 (or 45 upper-level) credits required for graduation. Any exceptions to this policy must be approved by the appropriate dean.
An independent study or tutorial cannot be used to fulfill a SUNY general education requirement.
Summer Session Policies
Only matriculated students are eligible to register for summer tutorials and independent studies.
The content of summer tutorials or independent studies should be significantly different from courses offered during the regular summer session or academic year.
Students must register, pay for, and complete all work during the designated summer session period.
Grades are due at the same time as regular summer session grades.
Summer tutorials and independent studies are approved only after ascertaining that the faculty member will be available in the summer to supervise the student’s work.
Only full-time members of the Purchase faculty are permitted to supervise summer tutorials and independent studies, but they are not paid to do so. All students should be aware that many upper-level courses in the liberal arts and sciences are available to students in the summer, and tutorials should not duplicate these courses.
In most cases, upper-level courses in the performing arts are not available during summer session.
After an instructor has submitted a student’s grade to the Office of the Registrar, the grade may be changed only with the approval of the instructor and appropriate assistant dean (in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences or in the School of the Arts). However, the final evaluation is the prerogative of the instructor.
If there has been a clerical error or if the student believes that the grade received is inaccurate, the student should discuss the grade with the instructor.
After consulting with the instructor, if the student has further questions regarding the grade, the student should discuss them with the chair or director of the student’s school or conservatory. The chair or director may, if appropriate, arrange a discussion with the instructor. However, the final grade is the prerogative of the instructor.
If a grade dispute involves an instructor who is no longer a member of the Purchase College faculty, the assistant dean may adjudicate the matter.
In exceptional cases, grades may be changed up to six months after the completion of a given semester. No grade changes are accepted after this date.
Students in the following programs who achieve the specified grade point averages (GPAs) are awarded the honor of Dean’s List, which is recorded on the student’s transcript. These GPAs are based on at least 12 credits graded A+ through F; grades of P, S, NC, UP, SP, CR, and INC do not apply. Students who earn a grade of UP or NP are ineligible.
BA and BS programs: A semester GPA of 3.50 is required.
BFA and MusB programs: A semester GPA of 3.75 is required.
Dean’s List students are notified by the Office of Communication & Creative Services after all Incomplete grades have been resolved for the previous semester (typically 6-8 weeks after the semester ends).
For inquiries about the dean’s list, students should contact:
To be eligible for an grade of incomplete (I), students must meet the following guidelines:
To receive a grade of incomplete (I), a student must request this grade from the instructor. Students on academic probation are not eligible for incomplete grades.
The instructor determines if a grade of incomplete (I) is appropriate. Criteria for this determination include previous work completed, seriousness of the student, and factors not in the student’s control (i.e., illness, death in family, etc.). If an incomplete is granted, the instructor determines the date for the work to be completed (no longer than four weeks) and files the grade of incomplete (I) online.
If a revised grade is not submitted by the published deadline, the grade of incomplete (I) is automatically converted to an F. In such cases, the grade of F is final.
If truly extenuating circumstances exist, an extension of an incomplete is possible with the approval of the designated administrator in the school that offered the course: the assistant dean in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences or the School of the Arts. An “Extension of Incomplete” form must be used and submitted by the published deadline.
All forms are available under Forms on the registrar’s site.
A+ = 4.334 A = 4.000 A- = 3.666 B+ = 3.334 B = 3.000 B- = 2.666 C+ = 2.334 C = 2.000 C- = 1.666 D = 1.000 F / XF / WF = 0
Multiply the courses credits by its grade’s quality points.
Grade QPs Cr. Course QPs
A+ 4.334 x 4 cr. = 17.336 B 3.000 x 4 cr. = 12 B- 2.666 x 3 cr. = 7.998 C+ 2.334 x 2 cr. = 4.668 F 0.000 x 1 cr. = 0
Add all the quality points = 42.002
Add all the attempted credits = 14
Divide the number of quality points by the number of credits attempted.
42.002 divided by 14 = 3.00 GPA
Program-Specific GPA Policies
When a student formerly registered as nonmatriculated is accepted as a matriculated student, credits acquired (a) as a matriculated student and (b) as a nonmatriculated student are counted toward the cumulative GPA.
When a student transfers between the School of the Arts and the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, grades previously earned remain in the cumulative GPA. The college-wide Academic Review Committee decides the issue of academic probation on a case-by-case basis.
Students obtain final course grades online via myHeliotrope on the Current Students portal. Matriculated students at Purchase College are graded as follows:
A+, A, A- (Superior)
B+, B, B- (Good)
C+, C, C- (Satisfactory)
D (Minimum Passing Grade)
A grade of D is acceptable in core curriculum/general education courses. In a major or prerequisite course, a grade of D is acceptable at the discretion of the individual boards of study in the liberal arts and sciences.
F (Failure)
This grade counts toward program pursuit for financial aid purposes.
Reserved for grading of Senior Project I. SP is assigned for satisfactory progress. UP, or unsatisfactory progress, is assigned to indicate that work is underway but is not meeting expectations. NP, or no progress, is assigned to indicate that little to no work has been completed and the student must retake Senior Project I.
Note: A grade of A+ through F is given for Senior Project II. In the event a grade of F is received, Senior Project II must be retaken.
For matriculated students who register for maintenance of matriculation or a SUNY study abroad program. The CR grade is not calculated in the GPA.
Matriculated students may elect one course (except those specified in #4 of this section) each semester to be graded on a pass/no credit (P/NC) basis. Summer session is considered a semester for this purpose. The P (Pass) or NC (No Credit) grade is not calculated in the GPA, but counts toward program pursuit for financial aid purposes.
If a board of study requires that a course within the major be taken on a P/NC basis, then a student may elect a second course for P/NC in that same semester.
A maximum of 32 credits of P/NC work counts toward the 120 credits required for graduation.
The following courses cannot be taken on a P/NC basis: all core curriculum/general education courses; senior theses/projects; repeated courses; courses in one’s major (refer to #5 for exception).
Boards of study may designate a few courses to be taken by all students on a P/NC basis. Courses so designated must be approved by the Educational Policies Committee. A board of study, at its discretion, may use pass/no credit grades for junior or senior seminars.
No more than two liberal arts courses may be taken on a P/NC basis by students in the BFA and MusB programs (a total of 8 credits out of the minimum 30 credits required for graduation) during their four years at Purchase.
Students must elect this option by the end of the third week of classes; please refer to the academic calendar for the deadline. For Fall 2020, the deadline was extended due to the pandemic.
Exclusively for the Spring 2020 semester due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The S grade is equivalent to a C or higher. D and F grades are the same as above.
The S grade is not calculated in the GPA, but counts toward program pursuit for financial aid purposes.
Core (General Education) and non-major elective courses are eligible for S/D/F.
Major requirements, minor requirements, and Senior theses/projects are S/D/F may be eligible as decided by each the academic department
There is no limit on the number of spring 2020 courses/credits allowed to be taken using the S/D/F option
S grades courses do not count toward the required 12 credits of dean’s list coursework or the 55 Purchase College credits required for honors.
This grade indicates that a student and a faculty member have entered into an agreement that grants an extension of time to complete the requirements of the course. For additional information, refer to Grade of Incomplete: Procedure for Receiving.
The work must be completed within four weeks of the end of the semester.
Incompletes that are not resolved by the deadline date or approved for a further extension will be converted to a failure (F) grade. Grade changes after the four-week period are discouraged as a matter of fairness to students who complete their work on time. Extension of an incomplete must be approved by the designated administrator in the school that offered the course: the assistant dean in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences or the School of the Arts, or the director of academic programs in the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education.
The credit value assigned at the time of registration is the credit value at the time the grade is submitted. Partial credit, whether for special or regular courses, is not given.
An “I” grade counts toward program pursuit for financial aid purposes.
The audit (AU) grade is available to nonmatriculated continuing education students only. These students may audit credit courses with permission of the instructor, who determines the requirements for participation by the auditor. Auditors pay full tuition and fees.
Matriculated students may informally audit courses with permission of the instructor, but may not receive AU grades. Registration for the course is not permitted, and the course does not appear on the student’s academic record. Matriculated students who choose to audit a course may not register for the course later in the semester.
Chosen by the student, this grade is available up to the end of the ninth week of classes and signifies an official withdrawal without prejudice. It is not calculated in the GPA or used to calculate accumulated full-time equivalent status, but may affect program pursuit for financial aid purposes and eligibility for campus housing. The signature of the student’s advisor is required on the Course Withdrawal form, which is available under Forms on the registrar’s site. Freshmen must also consult with and obtain the signature of their assistant dean on the withdrawal form; for more information, refer to the Freshman-Year Withdrawal Policy. The signatures, which do not necessarily indicate approval, are required to provide information to the advisor and the college.
When a student repeats a Purchase College course, all grades received will remain on the official transcript, but only the highest grade received will be included in the quality and grade point average and the hours toward graduation. Students who have taken coursework before fall 2014 must file a Repeat Course form with the Office of the Registrar to ensure accuracy of their cumulative grade point average and official transcript. This form is available under Forms on the registrar’s site. The grade excluded from the cumulative totals will be annotated with an “E” on the transcripts. The grade included in the cumulative totals will be annotated with an “I.” The repeated course, which is defined by the same course prefix and course number, must be repeated at Purchase College under the same grading system in order to be eligible for this policy. Therefore, courses previously taken and earned as transfer credit are not eligible for repeating.
Students receiving financial aid are encouraged to check with the Office of Student Financial Services to avoid losing an award, especially when repeating a previously passed course (grade of D or higher).
A WF grade is assigned by a faculty member when a student stopped attending the course and failed to officially drop or withdraw from the course. Faculty members may use the following as a general guideline:
If a student attended through the ninth week, he or she would receive an F or an NC, as is appropriate, instead of a WF.
If a student did not attend through the ninth week, he or she would receive a WF instead of an F.
The faculty member must include the student’s final date of attendance when assigning a WF grade. The WF grade is calculated as an F toward the GPA and does not count toward program pursuit for financial aid purposes.
Note: If the student never attended the course and failed to officially drop or withdraw, refer to the XF grade.
An XF grade is assigned by a faculty member when a student never attended the course and failed to officially drop or withdraw from the course. In online or hybrid courses, this grade should be assigned if the student never submitted an assignment or participated in discussions.
The XF grade is calculated as an F toward the GPA and does not count toward program pursuit for financial aid purposes.
Academic standards are used to assess satisfactory progress and to determine probationary status or the necessity to dismiss. The academic policies in this section define minimum satisfactory academic progress for all students at Purchase College.
Students in the BFA, MusB, MFA, and MM programs must meet these collegewide academic standards as well as the general professional standards, including professional conduct standards, governing these degree programs, and the academic and professional standards of the student’s school/conservatory and program.
Satisfactory academic progress (SAP) standards for financial aid (e.g., federal Title IV aid, state aid, and other loan programs) vary from those stated in this section; please consult the Office of Student Financial Services, (914) 251-7000, for specific guidelines. However, because the criteria for satisfactory academic progress affect all students, whether or not they receive financial aid, all students should be familiar with the standards in this section.
Normally, a student is placed on academic probation following a semester during which the student’s progress has been found to be problematic. Probationary status is not a punitive action. It is intended to indicate problems that require correction and, if not corrected, may result in loss of federal Title IV aid and academic dismissal. However, academic probation is not necessarily a prerequisite for dismissal.
Academic probation is recorded on the student’s transcript. To have such a notation removed from the record, a full-time student must, in the semester following the action, meet the minimum expectation described in the probation notice. The work must be completed on time, i.e., no incomplete (I) grades.
If placed on academic probation, students are encouraged to give particular attention to their educational and professional development.
In some situations, the appropriate school, conservatory, or arts board of study may determine that a student be placed on academic probation or dismissed during the course of a semester. Problems concerning professional conduct in a BFA, MusB, MFA, or MM program or lack of classroom attendance by a student in the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) may also fall into this category.
Restrictions of Privileges
Students who have been officially placed on academic probation are required to cease extracurricular activities in the expectation that they concentrate on their studies during the semester of probation. As soon as probation is removed from the student’s record, the student is eligible to continue with his or her extracurricular activities.
Extracurricular activities are defined as:
Any elected or appointed executive board position in the Purchase Student Government Association (PSGA) or a PSGA-sponsored club or organization.
Any elected or appointed executive position in any governance organization, including the Purchase College Senate, the Educational Policies Committee, the Personnel Policies Committee, the Purchase College Association, Academic Review Committees, the Campus Appeals Board, faculty review committees, etc.
Participation in any intercollegiate athletic team. Students employed by the college (e.g., head residents, resident assistants, student directors) who are placed on academic probation are placed on “job probation” as well. These students have their employment commitment re-evaluated by the supervisor, who may recommend a reassignment of duties. Students on “job probation” may also be required to participate in academic support services (e.g., a study skills workshop).
Exceptions to the restriction of privileges are considered by the appropriate Academic Review Committee upon receipt of a letter of appeal within five academic working days of probation notification. The letter of appeal should state exactly what circumstances mitigate against enforcement of the rule.
Satisfactory Academic Progress Standards for Financial Aid
To maintain eligibility for certain types of financial aid, students must also meet satisfactory academic progress (SAP) standards for federal and state financial aid. For additional information on these standards, please refer to the Student Financial Services site (www.purchase.edu/offices/student-financial-services/).
Important Policy Change for Spring 2020
Changes in Warning/Probation/Dismissal Policies for spring 2020
Due to extenuating circumstances brought on by the COVOD-19 pandemic, Purchase College’s student Warning, Probation, and Dismissal policies have been adjusted for the spring 2020 semester. These policy changes have been endorsed unanimously by the college’s Educational Policies Committee.
For the spring 2020 semester:
Enforcement of GPA-based academic dismissal will be suspended. No students will be subject to academic dismissal at the end of the spring 2020 semester.
Enforcement of GPA-based academic warning and probation will be suspended. No students will be newly placed on a status of academic warning or academic probation at the end of the spring 2020 semester.
Students currently on a status of academic warning or probation will not have their status re-evaluated at the end of this semester, unless this evaluation will result in removal from a status of warning or probation.
The new policy ensures that no students will be penalized as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic, but also allows for students who are showing progress in their academic work (by increasing their cumulative GPA to 2.0 or higher) to be rewarded for their efforts.
The progress of students is reviewed at the end of each semester by the assistant dean in each school (School of Liberal Arts and Sciences; School of the Arts). Appeals of academic dismissals are reviewed by the Academic Review Committee (ARC). Students are entitled to appeal dismissals in writing to this committee; those who are dismissed at the end of each semester have the right to an immediate appeal by following the specific instructions included in the dismissal notification.
Academic Review Committee (ARC) Composition:
Voting members: The assistant dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the assistant dean of the School of the Arts (co-chairs), and 5 faculty members appointed by the deans.
Non-voting members: two student affairs staff members appointed by the dean of student affairs, the registrar, a representative from EOP and at minimum, one current student.
Students in the BFA, MusB, MFA, and MM programs must also adhere to the professional standards, including professional conduct, of these programs.
Midterm Progress
Midterm Progress is a notification sent after the sixth week of a semester to notify a student that there is some question as to whether the student can complete a course satisfactorily. If a student is warned of this possibility, it is hoped that he or she will make whatever extra effort that may be needed to pass (or to withdraw from the course, if appropriate).
Each of these degree programs (BFA, MusB, MFA, MM) emulates the ethics and standards of its professional discipline. Students are expected to pursue their courses of study and conduct themselves in a manner consistent with each program’s criteria.
Students are required to maintain satisfactory academic progress as defined for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the grading and professional criteria of their respective programs.
Each student’s board of study is responsible for evaluating such matters as artistic growth, talent development, and a student’s suitability for a professional life in the field, which, though difficult to assess in terms of grades and credits, are factored into the student’s grades.
Professional Conduct Standards
All students are expected to comply with the policies and regulations established by Purchase College and their respective programs. College policies governing student conduct are outlined under Academic and Professional Integrity and in the Student Code of Conduct.
In the BFA, MusB, MFA, and MM programs, prompt attendance and preparation for all prescribed classes, studios, labs, tutorials, workshops, rehearsals, concerts, and performances are mandatory. Unexcused absences, tardiness, or lack of preparation indicates a lack of seriousness or interest in the program and constitutes a serious breach of professional conduct. Students should consult individual conservatory or school handbooks for the complete professional conduct guidelines for their program.
Professional Conduct Probation and Dismissal
Grounds for professional conduct probation, suspension, or dismissal in the BFA, MusB, MFA, and MM programs include breaches of professional conduct, lack of artistic growth (where relevant), or failure to make satisfactory progress advancing through program requirements. Before being placed on professional conduct probation, a student may be warned informally, but such a warning is not required. The director/chair of the school/conservatory formally notifies the student of the professional conduct probation via email to the student’s Purchase College address and regular mail to the student’s home address. The notification specifies the areas of concern and the corrective measures required.
Failure to satisfy the terms of probation may result in dismissal from Purchase College. While dismissal is normally preceded by a probationary period, a serious breach of professional conduct may lead to immediate dismissal. Professional conduct dismissal decisions are the prerogative and responsibility of the director/chair of the school/conservatory, in consultation with the board of study.
Copies of all letters relevant to warning, probation, and dismissal are placed in the student’s file, and immediate notification is forwarded to the student. Probation and dismissal letters are forwarded to the registrar. Dismissal letters are also forwarded to the Offices of Student Financial Services, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, and Residence Life.
Students’ Right to Appeal
A student may appeal a professional conduct probation or dismissal to the Interim Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Assistant Dean of Students and Enrollment, who will confirm or reverse the decision of the director/chair after reviewing all relevant materials. (Refer to the Academic Review Committee and Midterm Progress section for appeals of academic dismissals.)
In addition to the professional ethics and discipline standards, including professional conduct, required in all BFA, MusB, MFA, and MM programs, students must demonstrate satisfactory progress in their school/conservatory and program as detailed below.
Conservatory of Dance
The Dance Board of Study reviews a student’s artistic, academic, and technical proficiency twice each semester. In addition to prescribed coursework, all students participate in and are evaluated/graded on their freshman jury, sophomore jury, junior project, and senior project.
Undergraduate students must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses required for their major, excluding the senior project. A grade of C- or lower constitutes a failure to demonstrate successful academic or artistic progress. A student who receives grades of C- or lower for two or more semesters may no longer be eligible for scholarship funds and performance opportunities and may be dismissed from the conservatory.
An undergraduate student may also be placed on professional conduct probation or dismissed for breaches of professional conduct at the discretion of the director of the Conservatory of Dance. In cases of professional conduct dismissal, students may or may not receive a formal warning, or probationary status, in advance. A student may appeal a professional conduct probation or dismissal to the dean of the School of the Arts.
Conservatory of Music
Undergraduate students must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses required for their major, excluding the senior recital/production. A grade of C- or lower constitutes a failure to demonstrate successful academic or artistic progress. A student who receives grades of C- or lower for two or more semesters may be dismissed from the conservatory.
Graduate students must earn a grade of B or higher in all courses. A grade of B- or lower constitutes a failure to demonstrate successful academic or artistic progress. A student who receives grades of B- or lower for two or more semesters may be dismissed from the conservatory.
An undergraduate or graduate student may also be placed on professional conduct probation or dismissed for breaches of professional conduct at the discretion of the director of the Conservatory of Music. In cases of professional conduct dismissal, students may or may not receive a formal warning, or probationary status, in advance. A student may appeal a professional conduct probation or dismissal to the dean of the School of the Arts.
Conservatory of Theatre Arts
BFA students must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses required for their major. A grade of C- or lower constitutes a failure to demonstrate successful academic or artistic progress; students who earn a grade of C- or lower in a required course will be automatically placed on professional probation. When possible, students must repeat a required course to replace a grade of C- or lower in order to move forward within a discipline (i.e., to continue in a numbered sequence or to move from the 2000 level to the 3000 level, etc.). A student who receives grades of C- or lower for two or more semesters may be dismissed from the conservatory.
In the theatre design/technology BFA program, repeating a required course in a subsequent semester or substitution of equivalent coursework is permitted only at the discretion of the board of study.
In the acting BFA program, repeating a required course is usually not possible due to the cohort nature of the program. Therefore, students in this program who receive a grade of C- or lower in a required course will normally not be permitted to advance within the major.
Within the BFA programs, lack of academic progress, breaches of professional conduct, as well as judgment on such matters as artistic growth and development may also be the basis for professional probation or dismissal.
A student in a BFA program may be placed on professional conduct probation or dismissed for breaches of professional conduct at the discretion of the director of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts. In cases of professional conduct dismissal, students may or may not receive a formal warning, or probationary status, in advance. A student may appeal a professional conduct probation or dismissal to the dean of the School of the Arts.
School of Art+Design
Students in the BFA and BS programs in the School of Art+Design are expected to meet all attendance and participation requirements in all studio courses. Unexcused absences, tardiness, or lack of preparation for class will not be accepted. Three or more unexcused absences in any course will result in a grade of F or WF.
All undergraduate students in the School of Art+Design must earn a grade of C or higher in all studio art courses required for their major, excluding the senior project. Students must repeat a required course to replace a grade of C- or lower in order to move forward within a discipline (i.e., to continue in a numbered sequence or to move from the 2000 level to the 3000 level, etc.).
Graduate MFA students must maintain a 3.0 (B) GPA for successful progress through the program.
Lack of academic progress, breaches of professional conduct, as well as judgment on such matters as artistic growth and development may also be the basis for professional probation or dismissal from the School of Art+Design. Further information can be found in the A+D Student Handbook.
School of Film and Media Studies: Film BFA Program
Students in the film BFA program must maintain the board of study’s standards for academic and professional conduct. Criteria for advancement also include the student’s fitness and potential for a professional life in the field, as determined by the board of study. Advancement each year is by invitation of the board of study following a scheduled, mandatory review of each student’s work.
Any student on warning or probationary status is reviewed at the end of the semester (fall or spring). There is an ongoing assessment of professional growth in all work for all students.
Graduate students who meet all requirements of the college, including its academic standards, are considered to be maintaining satisfactory academic progress. A full-time graduate student is one who registers for 9 or more credits in a given semester; a part-time student is one who registers for fewer than 9 credits.
All graduate students are evaluated throughout the semester, although grades are only submitted once a semester. Grades of W, I, and WF and repeated courses may affect satisfactory academic progress (refer to the Grading System for definitions of all grades).
All graduate students are expected to maintain a minimum 3.0 (B) GPA each semester. Graduate students who have a semester GPA lower than 3.0 will be placed on probation and must maintain at least a 3.0 average in the following semester to have their probationary status removed. A graduate student must have achieved a minimum 3.0 GPA at the time a degree is awarded.
In addition to maintaining a satisfactory GPA, graduate students must meet all other academic and professional conduct standards set forth by their program.
A semester of residency is defined as one in which a full-time graduate student attempts 9 or more credits. Full-time graduate students in master’s programs cannot exceed eight semesters of residency at the college to complete the requirements for their degrees. This is a minimum standard for academic progress and is not intended to represent normal progress, which is four to six semesters of residency at the college.
Part-time graduate students must complete their degrees with no more than 12 semesters of residency at the college.
Courses designated as developmental for graduate students (usually undergraduate level) cannot be credited toward a degree and do not count toward the full-time equivalent (FTE) semester. These courses are not factored into a student’s GPA, but they may be used by the faculty in judging a student’s overall potential to continue toward a graduate degree.
Graduate students who do not meet the criteria for satisfactory academic progress face academic dismissal. A graduate student may appeal an academic dismissal to the graduate Academic Review Committee. Appeals must be made in writing and accompanied by documented evidence of mitigating circumstances (e.g., illness, injury, personal tragedy, etc.).
Students at Purchase are expected to maintain satisfactory levels of academic achievement and to progress towards timely degree completion and graduation. Among the requirements for graduation, a student must attain a cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 2.0. At the close of each semester all grades are processed, and the student’s semester GPA and cumulative GPA are then used to determine whether the student is in good academic standing. A student who is not in good academic standing will be issued an academic warning, placed on academic probation, or dismissed from the college. The only grades used in determining academic warning, probation or dismissal are the grades earned in courses taken at Purchase.
Criteria. Although these criteria are applied automatically, any student subject to a first-time dismissal will be invited to appeal that determination.
The following criteria are used to assess a student’s academic standing:
First semester students (freshmen and transfers) receiving a GPA less than 1.5 will be dismissed with the right to appeal;
Students whose cumulative GPA falls below a 2.0 for two consecutive semesters with be dismissed with the right to appeal;
Students whose semester GPA falls below a 2.0 for three consecutive semesters will be subject to dismissal from the college. The Academic Review Committee may grant an additional semester of probation prior to dismissal on a case-by-case basis;
Students whose semester GPA falls below a 2.0 for a fourth consecutive semester will be dismissed with the right to appeal;
Any student returning from a dismissal (either because an appeal was granted or by readmission) whose semester GPA is less than 2.0 will be dismissed without the right to appeal.
Appeals. Neither an academic warning nor an academic probation may be appealed.
Appeals of academic dismissals are reviewed by the Academic Review Committee (ARC). Students are entitled to appeal dismissals in writing to the committee. The committee will not hear appeals in person or by phone.
Details regarding the appeals process, including deadlines, will be stated in the dismissal notification. If the student’s appeal is granted, the student will be reinstated on probation for the semester following the dismissal. Any student returning from a dismissal (either because an appeal was granted or by readmission) whose semester GPA is less than 2.0 will be dismissed.
If a student does not appeal, or the appeal is denied, the student may not take any coursework at Purchase College for one year following their dismissal.
Students who have been dismissed a second time have no right of appeal and must reapply to the College after waiting one full academic year.
Any notice of academic warning or probation will appear on a student’s Degree Progress Report (DPR)
Notification. A notification of warning, probation, or dismissal will be sent to the student’s official Purchase email address prior to the commencement of the next semester. Any communication of probation may also include conditions for continued of study at Purchase (e.g. participating on athletic teams, holding a student government position).
Probation. As noted above, the Academic Review Committee has the right to set forth conditions on a student’s probation. Students are encouraged to work with their advisors to devise an appropriate course load and to attain a balance between study and other activities.
Dismissal. The first time a student is dismissed they have the opportunity to appeal for a reversal of the decision. Any student whose appeal is denied or who chooses not to appeal will not be allowed to return to the university for two full semesters. A summer session is not considered a full semester, and a dismissed student may not enroll in any classes during a summer session. For example, a dismissal following the spring semester means that the student will be required to remain out for the subsequent fall, spring, and summer semesters.
A student who is dismissed for a second time will not be permitted to reapply to Purchase.
Visiting Students
Nonmatriculated or Visiting students who have attempted 12 or more credits will be academically dismissed if their cumulative GPA is below 2.0. They may appeal in writing for a Waiver of Academic Dismissal to the Registrar. A waiver will be granted only once. Students granted a waiver will remain on Academic Probation. If a waiver is not granted, dismissed students will not be permitted to re-enroll until two semesters have elapsed (not including winter or summer sessions) and only after the Registrar has reviewed and approved the request.
Approved by the Educational Policies Committee April 26, 2019 Implementation effective for Fall 2019
Suspension is an action taken by the college under extraordinary circumstances, e.g., cases of plagiarism or cheating. Serious breaches of professional conduct by students in the BFA, MusB, MFA, and MM programs may result in suspension or expulsion as well. For additional information, please refer to Academic and Professional Integrity subsite and the Student Code of Conduct.
A student may be suspended for one semester or more and is considered to be “not in good academic standing” during the suspension period. At the end of the suspension period, the student may return to matriculated status at the college without formal readmission.
Students who are interested in studying at another campus as a visiting student, either in the United States or abroad, must receive approval in advance of an academic leave of absence. Please refer to Off-Campus Study for detailed information, including eligibility and the approval process.
A medical leave of absence may be requested by the student through the Counseling Center for substance-related or emotional reasons or through Student Health Services for physical reasons. A supporting letter from a student’s attending physician, therapist, or counselor is required. Medical leaves, which are generally for a period of no less than six months and up to one year, must be approved by the associate dean for student affairs.
Renewing Medical Leaves
Renewal of an approved medical leave of absence must be requested annually in writing by submitting new medical documentation to the Counseling Center or Student Health Services. Students who do not renew their medical leaves will be administratively withdrawn from the college by the Office of the Registrar.
Returning From Medical Leave
A request to return to the college from a medical leave of absence is assessed when requested by a student. Assessments can be completed during the following periods:
Fall semester returns: July 1 until the first day of classes
Spring semester returns: December 1 until the first day of classes
Summer session returns: May 1 until the first day of classes
Returns from medical leaves are subject to the recommendation of the Counseling Center or Student Health Services and approval of the associate dean for student affairs or designee. The required documentation and instructions for return requests is available online on the Student Affairs site.
Maintaining Enrollment in the Student Health Insurance Program
A student who has enrolled in the college’s student health insurance program is eligible to remain enrolled in that insurance program throughout his or her approved medical leave. To do so, the student must contact the Office of Student Financial Services before the beginning of each semester of the approved medical leave to make arrangements to pay the insurance premium in a timely fashion and to guarantee continuous insurance coverage. Failure to do so will result in loss of coverage.
Students who are granted a leave at the end of a semester are responsible for finishing any incomplete work before the deadline for resolution of incomplete (I) grades (refer to the academic calendar).
Students on leaves of absence who are later found to be in academic difficulty will have their academic records reviewed by the Academic Review Committee (ARC). When warranted, the ARC may place a student on probation or take other appropriate action.
Students on leaves of absence may take coursework elsewhere as a nonmatriculated student, but cannot be guaranteed that Purchase credit will be given for that work unless specific arrangements are made in advance. (Please refer to Off-Campus Study for additional information.)
Campus housing is limited and is not guaranteed for students returning from leaves of absence. For specific information related to on-campus housing, please email or call the Office of Community Engagement, ceg@purchase.edu, (914) 251-6320.
Taking a leave of absence may affect the repayment of educational loans and disbursements of student aid funds. Students who receive financial aid and/or have taken out educational loans must consult with the Office of Student Financial Services, (914) 251-7000, before taking a leave of absence.
Students on leaves of absence who do not return to the college at the agreed-upon time are administratively withdrawn as of the term that the return was to have taken effect. To return to Purchase College, students who have been administratively withdrawn must submit an Application for Readmission to the Office of the Registrar. Readmission, however, is not guaranteed.
Students in good standing may apply to the Office of the Registrar for a personal leave of absence. Applications must be submitted before the last day to withdraw from a course with a grade of W (refer to the academic calendar).
Leaves are normally not granted for first-year students, and seniors are advised not to interrupt their studies. When granted, a leave is usually for a maximum of two semesters. Permission to take a personal leave of absence includes the right to return without additional notification.
Students intending to withdraw from Purchase College should comply with the following procedures, which are designed to ensure a smooth flow of information regarding a student’s departure, to assess data regarding withdrawal, and to minimize potential problems in the event of readmission:
All required forms must be submitted, and an exit interview completed, at the Office of the Registrar before leaving the campus.
Purchase identification cards must be returned to the More Card Office.
Keys to residence hall rooms or apartments must be returned to the Office of Community Engagement. All other keys must be returned to the appropriate building manager.
Refunds are based on the refund schedule published by the Office of Student Financial Services. Refunds on residence assignments are based on the date that students vacate their housing assignment and return their keys. Refunds on meal plans are calculated from the date students return their identification card.
Students on academic probation at the time of withdrawal will have that status noted on their transcript.
Students who transfer to another college are required to withdraw from Purchase College. Any matriculated student who does not register and does not notify the Office of the Registrar of his or her withdrawal from Purchase College will be administratively withdrawn by the registrar.
Withdrawal affects the repayment of educational loans and disbursements of student aid funds. Students who receive financial aid and/or have taken out educational loans must consult with the Office of Student Financial Services, (914) 251-7000, before withdrawing.
The Office of the Registrar maintains the official academic record of each student’s enrollment and accomplishment. Before a student graduates, the academic record includes the student’s transcripts from high school or other colleges. (As of September 1990, the Office of the Registrar does not maintain copies of narrative evaluations.) Students wishing to receive program clarification or to check on progress toward the degree are encouraged to see the registrar. The permanent academic record is normally available to the student for review. The record is considered confidential and is released to outside agencies only with the student’s written consent.
The Office of the Registrar is responsible for implementing academic policies and procedures. It is the student’s responsibility to be familiar with these policies, which are published in the Purchase College Catalog.
The Office of the Registrar is also responsible for the preparation of course schedules and registration guidelines for matriculated students each semester. The registrar must also certify students for veteran’s benefits and loans. Because of close association with both students and faculty, the Office of the Registrar is an excellent source of information about the many academic aspects of the college.
Academic Transcripts
Permanent academic records are maintained by the Office of the Registrar for internal use only. Transcripts of these records are distributed externally only upon a student’s submission of a Transcript Request. A transcript contains the following information:
All courses completed at Purchase College and the corresponding grades
If a student has outstanding debts to the college, a hold is placed on transcripts and diplomas until the account is cleared. A default on New York State or federal loans would also require a hold on a student’s academic records.
Student records policies are designed to ensure that the college has a student record-keeping system that achieves an effective balance between the student’s right to privacy and the college’s need to use the same information in carrying out its educational mission.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (Buckley Amendment)
The college’s policies governing student educational records conform to and are in full compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, also known as the Buckley Amendment and referred to hereafter as FERPA. These policies are a declaration of existing practice and assure students’ rights of privacy, while providing them with access to their own records.
In these defined policies, the term “student” refers to any person who has completed the registration process for any semester at Purchase College and for whom the college has developed an educational record. Applications for admission are not included in the term.
“Educational records” are all collections of personally identifiable information pertaining to students; these records are maintained by the college or by parties acting for the college. This includes computer files and written materials contained in a file folder in a traditional manner. As stipulated by FERPA, the following files are not considered “educational records” and, as such, are not available to students:
Employment files (i.e., applications for resident assistant and student manager positions and job-related materials)
Records developed and maintained by faculty and staff that serve their individual record-keeping purposes and remain exclusively in their individual possession
A “school official” is a person employed by Purchase College in an administrative, supervisory, academic, research, or support staff position (including law enforcement unit personnel and health staff); a person serving on the board of trustees; or a student serving on an official committee, such as a disciplinary or grievance committee. A school official also may include a volunteer or contractor outside of Purchase College who performs an institutional service or function for which the college would otherwise use its own employees and who is under the direct control of the college with respect to the use and maintenance of personally identifiable information from education records, such as an attorney, auditor, or collection agent or a student volunteering to assist another school official in performing his or her tasks. A school official has a legitimate educational interest if the official needs to review an education record in order to fulfill his or her professional responsibilities for Purchase College.
The essence of these guidelines and FERPA is that all students have the right to inspect their own educational records, irrespective of age or economic dependence on parents, with the exceptions listed above. Although the college is not required to release records maintained by the Counseling Center and Student Health Services, on written request by the student, information maintained in these files must be released to the appropriate professional of the student’s choice.
There is a general limitation that a student may not review letters or statements of a confidential nature included in any of their files before January 1, 1975. These materials are removed before a student reviews the folder and are returned to the folder after the review, if relevant to the file. (Refer to VI. Expunging.) All materials included after January 1, 1975, are available for student inspection unless there is written evidence in the folder that the student has waived the right to review a particular item.
A request to inspect an educational record should be made directly to the office holding the record. For those unable to come to the campus because of geographical location, requests by mail are honored. Copies are available to all students at the cost of reproduction. (Contact the Office of the Registrar for further information.)
Parents and legal guardians have access to their dependent’s records if the student is a dependent in the Internal Revenue Service definition of the term or if the student has given written consent. Thus, it is the parents’ or guardians’ responsibility to present evidence of dependency before a student record may be released. If such evidence is presented, the student is notified.
Student records are accessible to employees of the college whose primary job responsibilities require access to some or all of the information included in a student’s educational record and to employees with a legitimate educational need to review a student’s educational record.
A student who discovers what he or she may feel to be an inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete recording of information in the personal record may request that a change be made by the appropriate submitting office. If the request for change is denied, the student may request that the hearing be conducted within a reasonable period of time by a person who is not directly involved in the issue, appointed by the vice president for student affairs and preferably approved by the student. In controversies related to a grade, the debate is limited to accuracy and completeness, and may not entail the justification for a particular grade. Complaints concerning the conduct of the hearing or the aspects of these guidelines may be directed to:
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) Office Department of Education 330 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20201
Students who differ with the decision rendered in the hearing are entitled to include a statement explaining their dissent in their file.
Students may waive their right to inspect a particular file or portion of a particular file. Individual referees may require that students waive their right to review a particular letter of reference they have been asked to write. Faculty or staff involved in advising may recommend that students waive their right to review recommendation letters, in the belief that a waiver effectively increases the credibility and usefulness of the reference when reviewed by the admissions committee or prospective employer. The college may not, however, require that any student waive the right of access to a file or any part of the file.
Student waiver of access to letters of recommendation is generally exercised on a letter-by-letter basis. This may be done by affixing a signed, dated statement to the letter before its inclusion in a folder; or, in the case of letters included in the credential file maintained by the Career Development Center, by signing the candidate’s waiver of right of access to confidential reference letters, printed on the confidential reference form.
Except with respect to directory information or as otherwise allowed by law, there shall be no oral or written release of personally identifiable information from any student educational record without the signed and dated consent of the student, except to:
school officials, as previously defined, who have a legitimate need to know
state and federal education authorities to whom information must be made available by statute and/or for the audit of federal programs
officials of another institution of postsecondary education where the student seeks or intends to enroll, or where the student is already enrolled to the extent that the disclosure is for purpose related to the student’s enrollment or transfer
organizations and educational agencies involved in testing, administering financial aid, or improving instruction, provided the information is presented anonymously
accrediting agencies
parents and legal guardians of students regarded as “dependent” by the IRS definition of the term, if dependency is demonstrated (access is “view only”)
comply with with a judicial order or lawfully issued subpoena, in which case an attempt is made to notify the student in advance;
parents or other appropriate persons in the case of a health or safety emergency
authorized representatives of the comptroller general of the United States and the Department of Education
Directory information is information contained in an education record of a student that would not generally be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed. Specific items regarded by the college as directory information are listed in the Registration Guide as part of an announcement informing students of their rights to exclude themselves form any or all such releases. Items currently regarded by Purchase College as directory information are noted below. Students also receive an annual FERPA notification through their official Purchase College email account. Students must notify the registrar in writing if they do not want their directory information to be available to the public.
Directory information: Name Local campus mailbox number Campus telephone number Home address Email address Home telephone number Date of birth Matriculation status Class level Current full-time or part-time status Photographs Dates of attendance and graduation Major fields of student and degree Awards and academic degrees given at Purchase Participation in recognized college activities (e.g., election outcomes, membership in athletic teams, participation in plays and performances) Personal information on members of college athletic teams (e.g., height, weight, high school)
Information may be released in an anonymous manner or in a way that does not infringe on any individual”s right to privacy for research and for purposes of research or to protect the health or welfare of certain groups.
Information regarding alcohol or drug use or possession may be released to parents or guardians of students under the age of 21. The guidelines regarding such release are published in the Alcohol or Drug Use/Possession Disclosure Policy.
Student records should be free of extraneous data that no longer serve the purpose(s) for which they were gathered. Therefore, systematic attempts should be made to expunge extraneous materials in student records. Another recommended means is to purge files on an ad hoc basis in the review given each file before the student inspects it. Judgments concerning the relevance of materials should be made by the person who is responsible for the particular file.
Students are informed annually through their Purchase College email account of the rights provided to them by FERPA. This information is also published in the Registration Guide each semester to inform students of their rights and responsibilities. This information is provided to each student entering the college.
The registrar is responsible for establishing these guidelines and monitoring their implementation. Questions, concerns, and suggestions should directed to the Office of the Registrar, Student Services Building, First Floor, (914) 251-6360.
Academic Records: director of admissions, registrar, academic deans, academic department, Advising Center, faculty offices
Student Services Records: Counseling Center director, dean of students, director of student activities, vice president for student affairs, director of residence life
Financial Record: director of student financial services, chief financial officer, director of financial aid
Educational records available for inspection do not include:
Financial records of the student’s parents or guardians
Confidential letters of recommendation which were placed in the educational records of a student prior to January 1, 1975
Records of instructional, administrative, and educational personnel which are kept in the sole possession of the maker, and are not accessible or revealed to any other individual except a temporary substitute for the maker
Records of law enforcement units
Employment records related exclusively to an individual’s employment capacity
Medical and psychological records
Thesis or research papers
Records that only contain information about an individual after the individual is no longer a student at the institution.
Students must not be allowed access to:
Education records that contain information on more than one student (the student may review only the specific information about himself or herself)
Financial records of the student’s parents
Letters of recommendation or reference received after January 1, 1975, for which the rights of inspection have been waived
In compliance with both federal and state law, the college makes available to students or prospective students information about instructional programs, costs of attending the institution, financial assistance available to students, the refund policy, qualifications of faculty members, graduation rates, and placement of graduates. The college’s Your Right to Know site is a centralized portal to the available information. The vice president for academic affairs and the vice president for student affairs are also available to assist students or prospective students in obtaining information specified in the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, Chapter 2, Sections 53.1–3.4.
The 1996 Solomon Amendment provides for the U.S. Secretary of Defense to deny federal funding to institutions of higher learning if they prohibit or prevent ROTC or military recruitment on campus. Directory information that must be released to the military as it is presently defined under the Solomon Amendment:
Student’s name and address
Telephone listing
Date and place of birth
Class level (freshman, sophomore, etc.)
Academic major
Degrees received
The educational institution in which the student was most recently enrolled
**Previously approved protocols that must be amended to conform to the College’s social distancing policies must get re-approval before changes to your procedures can take place. Please use the form, “IRB Protocol Modification Form” to submit your changes. Any change that involves no change in risk to participants will be approved within 24 hours of submission**
The Purchase College Institutional Review Board (IRB) oversees research conducted by Purchase College faculty, staff, and students, and will sometimes review protocols submitted by non-affiliated collaborators. The Purchase IRB is a standing committee of the College faculty. Its activities are overseen by the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs.
All research that involves human participants or animal subjects must be either exempted for review or approved by the IRB before it can be initiated. To help protect volunteers, investigators must complete training and receive project approval from the IRB before beginning their work.
The IRB, composed of faculty peers and community members, can approve, modify, or reject proposed research based on its perceived risks and benefits to prospective subjects
The IRB reviews the studies at least annually and may modify or suspend the research if it decides that risks to subjects are greater than initially understood.
All faculty, staff, and students engaged in research must complete human research protections training, whether their protocols are for exempt, expedited, or full board review before submitting a full protocol review or exemption request. The training need to be completed only once and your completion report or certificate must accompany your protocol submission. The training addresses a broad range of human subjects issues, from logistical to ethical, and promotes compliance with federal guidelines. Completing the training in advance will help ensure timely processing of your protocol submission.
Stand in the middle of campus and you’re 30 miles north of midtown Manhattan, but with nature as far as the eye can see.
The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 contains numerous federal reporting and disclosure requirements for information from various administrative areas of higher education institutions. This website has been created to provide quick access to this information.
