PRF1200: Acting Workshop

2 free elective credits

This course will introduce the methods and tools required for stage performance. Through various exercises, games, improvisation, and assignments you will create characters, gain an understanding of theatre terminology, and attempt to find not only meaning but also the performance potential of dramatic literature. Most importantly, you will develop the confidence to approach the craft of acting with the discipline and rigor required for compelling performance.

The art of acting not only requires you to call upon knowledge in history, languages, and literature but also to understand your capabilities physically and vocally. The lessons you will learn this semester in active listening, characterization, vocal capabilities (resonance, range, enunciation, and delivery), collaboration, and bodily awareness are some that you can use in any career and in any field.

Prerequisites: none

SPN4615 Advanced Spanish in the Community
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsSPN4615 Advanced Spanish in the Community is a service-learning course where students will explore issues of Latino identity in the U.S. Through direct engagement with a community partner in Boston, along with corresponding readings, films, podcasts, and class discussion, students will consider the diversity of the contemporary Latino experience and its representations in the media, popular culture, and politics. Class discussions will be supplemented with a review of advanced grammar topics designed to help students improve their proficiency and gain confidence in their language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing). As an integral part of this course, students will complete 12 hours of service learning (approximately 2 hours every other week) through a partnership with Sociedad Latina, a Boston-based organization whose stated mission is _to create the next generation of Latino leaders who are confident, competent, self-sustaining and proud of their cultural heritage._ Students will provide mentorship to high school students that are participating in a 10-week entrepreneurship curriculum as part of an after school program run by Sociedad Latina. Extensive journaling will allow students to reflect on their experiences and improve their writing in Spanish. Guided writing workshop sessions will help prepare students' written reflections to be published on a class blog. At the end of the semester, Babson students and their high school mentees will develop a joint presentation about their collaborative learning.

Prerequisites: SPN4620 or higher, or similar proficiency as demonstrated by a required placement test. Heritage speakers may enroll upon permission of the instructor.

LTA2010 African American Literature
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course will introduce students to the African American literary tradition starting with the slave narrative and concluding with contemporary literary production. Along the way, we will consider the move from oral to written literatures, the aesthetic forms created and adapted by African American writers, and the role of African American letters in chronicling and shaping the experience of African American people. Our study will be informed by major historical moments -slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration from south to north, the Civil Rights and post-Civil rights eras-and we will read work by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LIT4661 American Autobiography
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsAutobiography, always popular, has reached new heights of acclaim in recent years - especially in the United States. Why do readers find it so attractive? Sensationalist, exhibitionist, self-serving, revelatory, probing: while it can be all of this and more, autobiography as a literary genre has its roots in a person's desire for expression and meaning. As its writers explain themselves to the world, they explain the world to themselves, imposing on it their views and causes. Autobiography can demonstrate how history is made in words, not found; how people make sense of their own lives. Reading a cross-section of such works written by authors living in what is now the United States compels us to question simplistic notions of what _America_ stands for, and to rediscover its promises and its meanings in its variety and conflict.

This is an upper-level liberal arts course. Readings range from Benjamin Franklin to the present.

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination)

LIT4608 American Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is a deep dive into literary works representing three major movements in American literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. Romanticism is thematically concerned with nature and the common man, the frontier and immigration. Our study may include Thoreau, Whitman, and Morrison, as well as the genres of the gothic story and the slave narrative. Realism and Naturalism are often understood as reactions to Romanticism and are thematically concerned with man-made reality, objectivity and Darwinian ideas. Our study may include Wharton, Dreiser, and contemporary U.S. fiction.

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination)

ARB4650 Arab Culture for Business

(Formerly Business Arabic)

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This course aims to help students acquire cultural intelligence and develop the tools necessary to learn about business culture of the Arab world and be aware of local traditions and sensitivities. It provides an understanding of Arab business etiquette and culture, and discusses related topics such as travel, dress codes, Islam and business, communication and negotiation styles, attitudes, and hierarchy in the workplace. Students survey countries like UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia …etc. They use diverse forms of authentic and recent media and examine materials from different Arabic newspapers and media sources such as Al-Hayat, Al- Ahram and Al-Jazeera to comprehend practical business issues, cultural values and social etiquette in the Arab world and the Middle East.

The course is taught in English. No prior knowledge of Arabic is needed.

ARB4640 Arab Cinema and Culture

(Formerly ARB4600)
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is designed as an advanced-level conversation class, with a strong cultural component. It explores Arab cinema from the colonial period to the present, and provides an in-depth exploration of "cultural identity" and "politics" in the Arab World. Although Egypt is considered the biggest film producer in the Arab world, the course aspires to represent various cinemas across the region, from Morocco and Algeria to Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine, introducing students to notable moments and phenomena in the history of these cinemas. The course will be taught in Arabic and all films will be in Arabic with English subtitle. In addition to film viewings, students will be required to read critical and theoretical articles that pertain to class discussion. These films and readings serve as the basis for debate, discussion and written analysis of issues relevant to the history, culture and politics of the Arab world and the Middle East. Films will be on reserve at Horn Library, and screenings will be scheduled.

Prerequisites: Students need to be at least at a high intermediate level
This course is open to advanced and heritage speakers of Arabic

ARB4610 Elementary Arabic II: Language and Culture
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Arabic 4610 is a project-based course designed to give students the opportunity to develop Arabic language and culture knowledge through engaging projects set around daily activities and situations students may experience in the real world. These projects will help students to build vocabulary, grammar and general communicative competence. They will help them enhance the spoken skills necessary for a variety of daily activities and will expose them to the diverse dialects and rich cultures of the Arab World. Projects include: cooking lessons at the Foundry, learning Dabke dance, learning Arabic calligraphy, dining at an Arab restaurant … and much more.

You may sign-up for this class if you have successfully completed ARB2200 or its equivalent, or you are a heritage speaker who can understand Arabic minimally.

Prerequisites: ARB2200

LTA2005 Art as a Visual Language
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is designed to introduce you to the realm of visual communication - how it's done, how it works and how cultural and personal experiences shape your reactions to it. Fine arts (painting, sculpture, architecture), industrial arts (graphic and product design) and everyday objects will be presented as the workings of visual communication, the role of art and artists in a variety of times and places, the nature of good and bad art and design are explored.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

ART4610 Arts of the Renaissance: Patrons, Politics and Piety
(Formerly VSA4610)
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis is an advanced level course in the area of Literature and the Visual Arts. This course examines some of the major paintings and sculptures and architecture from Italy and Northern Europe that shaped modern culture. The Renaissance was a period of discoveries. New concepts of the self, new markets, new technologies, new devotions changed the shape of Europe. Works of art document many of the transformations that occurred between the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation. It will develop skills in interpreting visual images and build competence in creative thinking. Class lectures and discussions will be based primarily on slide presentations.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring or Fall

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination)