The Arts and Social Responsibility actively seeks interdisciplinary understanding of social concerns and, using the unique capacity of the arts to engage and address those concerns, these collaborations can deeply enrich the ways both art and society are positively influenced. A broad range of academic exploration can develop that understanding. To this end, the Center encourages students to take courses across department lines. Each of the courses below can offer insight into different aspects of social concern and artistic development.
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Courses (listed alphabetically):
Creating Social Activist Images (CT366)
Theater Department (Spring: 3)
Crystal Tiala
The goal of this course is to participate an interdisciplinary process of creating an ‘image event', an event designed to grab the public's attention and motivate people to take constructive action toward an important social need. This course will enable a truly unique collaboration between students from all across campus examining aspects of social need, visual literacy and psychology, political theatrical and artistic movements, marketing effectiveness and the creative thinking necessary to accomplish the task. In the end, realized 'image events' created by the class will serve as a visual statement, a tangible educational experience, and an effective application of the artistic and performance processes. Whether it is a new awareness of social issues, political activism, marketing of images, or visual and media literacy, the course will provide a means for students to make a difference through the production of an event which will be entirely their own.
Documentary Film (FM 382)
Film Studies (Spring: 3)
John Michalczyk
The aim of this course is to provide a history of the evolution of the documentary film, as well to develop a critical skill in interpreting documentaries. It will begin with the origins of the documentary in the works of pioneer Robert Flaherty and Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov, and conclude with socio-political documentaries made for PBS television. There will be some emphasis placed on documentary production for students interested in producing their own works.
Holocaust and the Arts (FM 220)
Film Studies (Spring: 3)
John Michalczyk
To express the inexpressible tragedy of the Holocaust from 1933 to 1945 remains a challenge. The Arts nonetheless attempt to get at the intrinsic experience of this 20th century genocide through poetry, film, music and literature. These symbolic, realist and at times surrealist expressions help us in a human way to understand the historical and personal events of the Holocaust.
Rhetoric, Resistance and Protest (CO435)
Communications
This course engages the discourses of discontent, mobilization, transformation and discipline that emerge and evolve whenever a "movement" attempts to make the world over again.
Mass Communication Ethics (CO250)
Communications (Fall/Spring: 3)
Kevin Kersten, S.J.
Offered Periodically
Satisfies the one cluster course requirement within the Communication major
This course gives students a greater awareness of the ethical dimension of mass communication. It helps them learn to spot, evaluate, and deal with moral conflicts in our media environment, in the media industry, and between the industry and the media consuming public. It uses norms like truth, social justice, and human dignity to reveal the moral consequence of decisions and performance by practitioners in the news, entertainment, and advertising industries.