Special Spring 2021 Courses Available to CUNY BA Students

CUNY GC Building

CUNY BA enjoys a number of relationships across the University which make available a variety of specialized courses to our students.

The Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program at Baruch College

Playwriting: The Musical, ENG/JRN 3630/3630H, THE 3052/3052H, Wed. 2:30 – 5:25 — is taught by Tony & two-time Obie Award-winning playwright, singer/songwriter, educator, and veteran of noisy rock clubs, Stew. From week to week, as Stew builds a musical, you will be right there with him, observing and analyzing the way songs and dialogue are created, experimenting, engaging, and writing songs and scenes of your own. Each week’s class will have a different theme, addressing another aspect of how Stew’s unique brand of musical theater is created. In fall of 2021, the musical that emerges will be performed as the Baruch student play. 

Stew has produced multiple award-winning albums, both in his solo career and with his band, The Negro Problem. In 2008, his musical Passing Strange was nominated for Tony awards in seven categories and won for Best Book; it also received two Obie awards for Best New Theater Piece and Best Ensemble. Passing Strange was made into a 2010 movie by Spike Lee, with whom Stew has also worked on the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It. 

To register for this course, students must submit an application by through this link—https://baruch.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/ form/SV_3rDgrBt4JNfXE4B 

Seminars at Macaulay Honors College

Each semester Macaulay Honors College makes a selection of their seminar courses available to CUNY BA students. Choose from among the following Spring 2021 courses:

MHC 319 [58081] The Latin American She-BOOM 
MHC 325 [57681] Detecting Nonsense in the Modern Age 
MHC 361 [58075] Surveillance and You 
MHC 362 [58078] Science Communication 
MHC 379 [58073] Impact Documentaries II 

Graduate Courses through The Futures Initiative

The Futures Initiative provides a unique set of interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, team-taught courses. Following a competitive, CUNY-wide application process, five to seven courses are selected annually for support from the Futures Initiative, with faculty teaching these courses designated as Faculty Fellows. These courses are designed to exemplify equity and innovation, and promote the Futures Initiative’s goals of increasing faculty diversity and establishing robust peer mentoring among faculty members across the CUNY system. Spanning many content areas, the courses emphasize creative, student-centered pedagogy and interdisciplinarity in their methods. The following Spring 2021 courses are open to CUNY BA students, with permission:

Traditional Japanese Theatre (Spring 2021) at Hunter College

This course offers students the opportunity to spend the semester discovering the inspiring traditional performing arts of Japan through lectures, readings, videos, and possibly some hands-on workshops. Japanese theatre blends music and dance with poetry and dramatic texts and includes exquisite costuming and often the use of masks, extravagant make-up, and puppetry.

We will begin with the roots of Japanese performance in early ritual, move on to forms such as bugaku, gigaku, and sarugaku, then to the flourishing traditions of noh, kyogen, kabuki, and bunraku, both in their traditional models and in contemporary adaptations.

The course will include folk traditions and other puppetry forms, such as kuruma ningyō (cart puppetry) and the itinerant hakomawashi tradition. Intended for students in both Theatre and the Japanese Program, the course will combine scholarly and artistic approaches to appreciating Japanese performance.

College: Hunter College
Name: Traditional Japanese Theatre
Course Number: JPN 303 / THEA 397.18
Days and Time: Tuesday / Friday 9:45 am – 11 am
Professor Claudia Orenstein

X