The Arts and Social Responsibility Project 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 Project 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):

Capstone: Conflict, Decision & Communication (CO 470)Communications
Anne Marie Barry
The goal of this This seminar focuses on inevitable questions which underlie most undergraduate study and which form the basis for critical decision making throughout our lives. Reading, viewing and discussion will center on inner- and outer-directed communication as a dynamic process that reflects our values, beliefs and hopes. Emphasis will be placed on the concepts of justice, freedom and responsibility, the wider imagination, and personal moral and ethical choices. Like all Capstone courses, it invites students to review their education at Boston College and to reflect on the lifelong task of integrating work, personal relationships, citizenship and spiritual development.

Creating Social Activist Images (CT366)
Theater Department (Fall: 3) - every other year
Crystal Tiala
This is an interdisciplinary course examining the 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.  Students choose the social issues that interest them, research how all forms of art have impacted social movements and form teams to initiate their own course of action.  Like many grassroots movements, the course encourages self-driven learning and collaboration between organizations across campus and beyond.  By the end of the semester, realized 'image events' created by the class will serve as a visual statement, a tangible educational experience and an effective application of the artistic, communication 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.

Popular Music and Idenity (CO 462) Communications (Fall/Spring: 3) Offered Biennially
Roberto Avant-Mier
The goal of this course is to increase the understanding of basic concepts and principles of popular music as a form of communication, and specifically, popular music as a symbolic form of behavior that relates to individual and group identity. This course will introduce you to theory and research in the area of popular music studies in communication, and will help you apply this knowledge in understanding popular music as meaning-making cultural practice. Seeing music as culture, we use both transmission and ritual/symbolic perspectives to address social/cultural dimensions of popular music in the U.S. as well as in international contexts.

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.

Visual Communication Theory (CO 370)Communications
Anne Marie Barry
This course explores how we make sense of what we see, what images are, and how images form the fabric of our thought. Topics include the role of perception within visual learning, the nature and aesthetic dimension of images, the significance of images & icons in forming cultures, and how public images function in political, economic and cultural discourse.