At CAMD, we’re always looking for new ways to grow—for emerging patterns in our professional fields, untapped interdisciplinary links, and bold avenues to teach, learn, and engage with the world. From course offerings to Dialogue of Civilizations destinations, there’s always something different to explore. Take a look.
Courses
Examines the question of value through the lens of cultural institutions big and small. Explores examples from real world case studies, focuses on areas of value, ways to measure impact on both qualitative and quantitative levels, and how to demonstrate that impact to a variety of audiences from our daily visitors to our federal government. Value in the cultural sector is a critical question that institutions and individuals working in this area must answer on a regular basis for themselves, their constituents, and their supporters.
Explores tools, technologies, and processes to create prototypes of artifacts, environments, and interactive systems for experience design projects. Offers students the opportunity to learn, use, experiment with, and test prototypes using a wide range of state-of-the-art prototyping technologies to further their understanding of multiple strategies and techniques of prototyping for experience design. Tools and techniques change over time but typically include laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC machining, electronics prototyping, augmented reality, machine tools and 2D forming, fast prototyping, and hand tools.
Aims to study and increase your level of proficiency in group interaction. Instructs in small group decision-making processes, problem solving, and the interpersonal dynamics of groups. Students develop skills in working with and in a variety of small groups. Topics include communication dynamics, systems thinking, dialogue, conflict management, leadership, power, teams, and learning organizations.
Explores the multiple and complicated ways in which our lives and ways of thinking are impacted by what things we decide to keep and how we organize access to them, i.e., storage. Using readings, podcasts, short films, and TV shows, the course uses the idea of storage to explore the Cloud and other contemporary media “containers” and what the future of storage holds as we try to find space and time to store and retrieve our data, memories, clothes, food, and more. Exploring these containers raises important questions and concerns about the social consequences of buying things (accumulation and consumption) and a general cultural anxiety about information overload, as well as issues related to gender, class, the economy, the environment, organization, and knowledge.
Surveys the relationship between music and technology from the Paleolithic Age to the present. Examines the origins and impact of diverse musical instruments, with attention to connections between musical and technological developments; the reasons instruments are accepted, modified, or abandoned; and debates about the effects of new technologies on music. Considers such forces as standardization, institutionalization, and commodification—as well as experimentation, hacker, and DIY cultures—and asks whether music technologies are just tools or rather carry with them ethical values and ramifications. By studying the sociocultural history of such instruments as the violin, piano, electric guitar, and synthesizer, offers students an opportunity to gain an understanding of the interplay between technological change and the enduring human need for music.
Explores significant dramatic texts that have shaped and expressed the changing nature of LGBTQ identity. Readings, viewings, lectures, and discussion focus on noteworthy queer plays as literature, history, cultural documents, and performance as seen through the lens of contemporary queer theories and knowledge. Analyzing these texts for their relevance to society and our lives, students evaluate and explore a range of topics including sexual identity, gender identity, religious and political views on queerness, the evolution of LGBTQ culture and communities, drag performance, homophobia, assimilation, appropriation, and coming out. Students who do not meet course restrictions may seek permission of instructor. THTR 3200 and WMNS 3200 are cross-listed.
Dialogue Destinations:
- Hairimasu, Tokyo, Japan
- English Culture and Documentary Filmmaking, London, England
- Reporting in Cuba, Havanna, Cuba
Faculty
Sara Jensen Carr, PhD in Environmental Planning & Master of Landscape Architecture University of California, Berkeley. Her work explores the intersections of public health and the urban realm, with an approach that encompasses ecology, economy, technology, and social systems from macro to micro scales.
Jana Cephas, PhD in History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Harvard University. History and theory of urbanism with focus on urban design, preservation planning, technology, and social and spatial justice. Currently completing a book manuscript, Fordism and the City: How an Industrial Aesthetic Shaped Detroit
Michael Arnold Mages, PhD Carnegie Mellon University, scholar of design whose research focuses on how things (images, spaces, objects, and interfaces) help facilitate high-stakes and difficult conversations. Partner in a startup, The Art of Democracy, which designs facilitated conversation events with government and not-for-profit organizations for strategic planning, community decision-making or community co-design of projects or policy.
Francesca Inglese, PhD Brown University, dissertation Colouring Cape Town: Music, Race, and Place in South Africa’s Minstrel Carnival. Recipient of the Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award & dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women. Since 2016, she has been a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Dartmouth College.
Psyche Loui, PhD Psychology University of California, Berkeley. World-leading expert in the areas of creativity and improvisation. Employs behavioral, neuro-imaging, and computational modeling to trace the learning trajectory of jazz improvisation; develops mapping systems that interface with standard electroencephalography systems to create music out of electrical signals.