Course descriptions

Instructor: Soares, Zachary
Location: Center for Human Ecology - Graphics/ Media Room 108

In 1979, the music producer Brian Eno argued that the recording studio is a “compositional tool,” upending the idea that the recording studio exists to document pre-existing musical compositions. His assertion came on the back of pivotal albums such as The Beatles’ “Revolver” and The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” (1966), which demonstrated the creative possibilities of composing in the studio. We might call this type of approach to music composition “playing the studio.” In this course, students learn how music production makes use of editing, mixing, and effect processing to maximize its impact. Through readings, film screenings, and audio listening sessions, students learn about past and present studio techniques and use these techniques during audio projects and exercises. Students learn to use virtual instruments, effect processors, microphones, and COA’s recording studio to strengthen their technical audio recording, editing, and mixing skills. Students will be evaluated based on their participation in class discussions, their fluency in the use of recording equipment and software, the process they use to approach each assignment, and the completion of assigned projects. No prerequisites or sound/music experience is required.

Instructor: Greenlief, Phillip
Location: Gates Center Meeting Hall - Auditorium

Using traditional music notation and a variety of non-traditional notation techniques, The Composer’s Ensemble will offer a fun series of sessions where we study ways that composers have used words (text scores), images (graphic scores), game strategies, collage, and iconic symbols to create open works that encourage students to develop their individual compositional voices and one-of-a-kind performances. We will start by defining what music is, how it works, what its principal components are, and then learn how to organize those elements in a variety of methods and perform the outcomes. The instructor will provide a variety of scores that have influenced his compositional output along with his own works. Ideally, we will spend equal time studying scores and playing/preparing music for a final concert. Classes will meet twice a week: one 90 minute ensemble section, and another 90 minute ensemble section that will culminate with a 90 minute session where the instructor can offer individual instruction/support and sectional or group rehearsal. Students will study scores by: Anthony Braxton (Language Modalities), Pauline Oliveros (Text Scores), Wadada Leo Smith (Scaffold Scores), John Cage (Time Based Scores), Phillip Greenlief (Graphic Scores) John Zorn, Rova Saxophone Quartet (Game Strategies) Evaluation will be based on: in-class participation and attendance; composition (composing) assignments; and written essays, reviews, etc.

Instructor: Slabach, Brittany
Location: Turrets - Putnam Room - 1st Floor

In this course we explore the different terrestrial habitats that occur on Mount Desert Island (MDI). We practice taking observations and investigating these habitats using different field ecology techniques. Therefore, a vast majority of classes are spent outside in the elements. We discuss what our observations—and data—can teach us about the natural history of landscapes and their inhabitants. We partner our adventures with readings on different foundational ecological concepts. We discuss the complexities of these concepts, their applications, and limitations based on our own observations and experiences. Students are expected to keep a field notebook of their observations, and are required to submit weekly reflections in a field journal. Students also explore topics through essays and/or other activities. Class meets for two sessions per week. The course is open to anyone interested in gaining skills in ecology and natural history, or those interested in learning more about the habitats of MDI. The course is designed to provide foundational skills in natural history observations and other field sampling techniques. This course is a partner course to Intertidal Ecology, meaning we explore the same topics just in different environments. Therefore, students may enroll in either Ecology: Natural History or Intertidal Ecology, but not both. A joint session of the courses is held at the end of the term.

Instructor: Sebastian, Neeraj
Location: Center for Human Ecology – 204 Painting Studio

In this course, students will be introduced to the basic aspects involved in the process of translating what they are observing in space onto two-dimensional surfaces in oil paint. Students will be introduced to the basics of color theory, mixing and matching colors, and also explore how color can change depending on context. Through the assignments we will investigate how form, volume, space and light can be captured in paint. Students will learn how to build their own frames and stretch and prepare canvases for painting and develop a studio practice, which includes cleaning and maintenance of brushes, the palette and other tools. A broad range of ideas and concerns in painting throughout history, from various parts of the world will be introduced in the class. In the last part of the term, different aspects of composition will be discussed: the way colors and shapes can work together to create an integrated image. Assignments will include quick paintings as well as paintings that are made over the course of multiple class sessions. The assignments over the course of the term will build students’ confidence in translating what’s in front of them, which makes the task of taking on the images in their heads, the images they are interested in, less daunting. Students will learn how to look at and analyze their peers’ work and provide them with constructive feedback during critiques. Previous drawing experience at high school or college level is strongly recommended. Evaluation will be based on how the specific criteria set for each assignment are met, participation and engagement during critiques, and receptivity to feedback.

Instructor: Nguyen, Duc Hien
Location: Center for Human Ecology - Flexible Seminar Room 202

You are not your job—or are you? Do you live to work or work to live? Consider a job you hope to hold after graduation: if it disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice? More fundamentally, why do we work—and why are we expected to work at all? These are the motivating questions of this seminar. Drawing on Marxist and feminist political economy, we will examine how work has come to function not merely as an economic necessity but as an ethical imperative in modern capitalist societies. We take seriously Kathi Weeks’s provocation that work has become the primary axis through which political subjects, social respectability, life’s meaning, and moral goodness are constituted (The Problem with Work, 2011). The problem with work, in this sense, is not only that it is often exploitative or alienating, but that it is compulsory—structurally and ideologically. We will also reckon with a peculiar feature of contemporary finance capitalism: the proliferation of “bullshit jobs” in administration, finance, corporate services, and other industries (Graeber, Bullshit Jobs, 2018)—jobs which arguably don't produce anything and whose elimination makes no material difference to the world. We will examine them alongside the rise of the gig and content creation economy, the increasing precarity of waged work, and the changes ushered in by technology such as AI and robotic automation (Standing, The Precariat, 2021). If bullshit jobs expose the hollow promise of meaningful work, these latter phenomena belie the fiction that work brings material stability. We conclude the term by examining antiwork politics and their imaginative project of a post-work society. We ask whether labor movements organized around fair wages, better working conditions, and recognition of unpaid labor represent a path toward emancipation from the employment relation, or whether they reproduce the very compulsion they contest. The course is valuable for students who want to engage critically with the demand and desire that binds us to work, who struggle to map out a future career that balances meanings, values, and material wellbeing, or who wish to cultivate a creative imagination about a post-work future. Students who are in the process of applying for internships, job hunting, or exploring post-graduation opportunities might find this seminar especially valuable. While the seminar does not address career preparation directly, it helps build the capacity to navigate the material and ethical demands of work with clarity and integrity. Students will be evaluated through a combination of seminar participation, reading responses, and a final project. Seminar discussion might be supplemented by opportunities to conduct ethnographic interviews with community members about their 19 relationship to work and career.

Instructor: Gadeken, Kara
Location: Center for Human Ecology Flexible Classroom 102

The intertidal occupies the space on the ocean shore between the highest and lowest extents of the tides, and the organisms inhabiting the intertidal must adapt to an ever-fluctuating environment. It is unique among ecosystems in that it condenses and concentrates many ecological processes along a strong physiological gradient, and so serves as an ideal environment to observe and investigate fundamental ecological principles. 7 In this course, you will be introduced to the many diverse intertidal ecosystems of coastal Maine, from rocky shorelines to tidal mudflats to salt marshes. Through discussions in class and observations in the field, we will endeavor to answer the questions: What organisms are found in the intertidal, and how are they adapted to life there? How is the distribution of intertidal organisms dictated by living in a transitional environment? How do intertidal organisms interact with each other, and how does this shape the community? We meet twice per week for class time with one afternoon lab period. During lab time we will be going on field trips as much as possible to explore the local intertidal habitats. This course is intended as an accessible introduction to marine community ecology and field work. Assessment is based on weekly question sets, lab assignments, and a short research proposal. This course is a partner course to Ecology: Natural History, meaning we explore the same topics just in different environments. Therefore, students may enroll in either Intertidal Ecology or Ecology: Natural History but not both.

Instructor: Khor, Su Yin
Location: Thorndike Library Seminar Room

Is it true that you can’t use “I” in scientific research papers? Is it accurate that you can’t start a sentence with and, or, but? And is there really only one correct way of writing? Definitions of “correct” and “good writing” have been informed by pervasive writing myths , which have been passed down for generations. These myths are widely accepted as universal truths and have been maintained through gatekeeping practices in professional, educational, and everyday contexts. However, language researchers would argue that correctness depends on the genre and rhetorical situation as writing and language are not static. They are dynamic and evolve over time. Indeed, new lexical items are continuously formed and grammatical functions change. Language myths begin to unravel if we examine what people actually do with language and writing across contexts. In this course, we will explore a range of genres in academic, professional, and everyday contexts to understand how writing and language work. Readings from applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and composition will provide historical insights into how writing myths evolved over time and current understandings of writing, language, and literacy. The readings will also provide a sociocultural understanding of language and how it works. We will investigate various everyday genres (such as recipes, blogs, and social media), academic genres (such as proposals and research papers), and professional genres (such as covers letters and resumes) to facilitate metacognitive and metalinguistic development and overall academic literacy development. Genre and rhetorical analysis activities of high-stakes and low-stakes genres will develop your understanding of how genres function in different discourse communities. You will complete inquiry-based projects to examine different genres and reflect on your evolving understanding of writing. Your learning will be evaluated based on course assignments and in-class activities, specifically contributions to class discussion, engagement with course material, written projects, and peer-review workshops. Activities will facilitate the development of transferable writing skills to other courses, genres, and contexts. Overall, the course serves to facilitate academic and professional discourse and literacies to support the transition to college. Note that this course is not a literature or creative writing course

Instructor: Muller, Brook
Location: Center for Human Ecology - Drawing Studio/ 208

This course investigates an ecological design approach that centers on water and water systems as a means of achieving community development goals in an equitable and environmentally responsive manner. Participants will investigate contemporary water challenges facing communities (the combination of which varies from location to location): scarcity, poor water quality, downstream ecological impacts associated with processes of urbanization, climate change and sea level rise, and others. We will examine and reframe these challenges through the lens of the “hydro-social,” a term geographers use to describe how cultural perspectives shape our relationships to water (in other words, water is more than simply H2O). Through use of case study project examples, we will explore how combinations of age-old (premodern and vernacular) water systems design strategies and cutting-edge approaches can lead to projects of greater resilience, ecological responsiveness, beauty, and civic identity than more conventional, engineered, “end-of-pipe” solutions. We will lastly explore how these strategies might apply to a case study watershed that we will investigate in the last portion of the class. The course does not require previous experience in design; rather it is intended to engender greater awareness of how systems-based design thinking can allow us to address contemporary hydro-social challenges holistically. Evaluations will be based on participation and sustained engagement with course content; responses to this material in the form of short, illustrated essays that combine written narratives with simple diagrams, photographs, and sketches; analysis of case study projects through a framework we will introduce in the first part of the class; and a “final synthesis” assignment that involves speculating about the application of strategies and approaches discussed throughout the class to the case study watershed.

Instructor: Saba, Alexis
Location: Dorr Museum of Natural History – Museum Classroom

Museums play a powerful role in shaping how communities understand history, culture, science, and the environment. Far from neutral spaces that display objects, museums construct narratives about what matters, whose stories are told, and how knowledge is interpreted and trusted in public life. Situated within the field of Educational Studies, this course examines museums as institutions that influence how knowledge is created, framed, and experienced beyond the classroom. Drawing on critical and sociocultural approaches to education, the course examines learning as a social and institutional process that extends into cultural and civic spaces. Students investigate how exhibitions, collections, educational initiatives, and interpretive practices shape public understanding and how questions of power, representation, ethics, and community voice emerge within those processes. We will ask: What counts as public knowledge, and who decides? What is the purpose and role of a museum within society? Which knowledge, histories, and ways of knowing are centered in public institutions, and which are marginalized or erased? Through close reading, case study analysis, site visits, and conversations with practitioners, students will examine how theoretical perspectives on learning and power operate in the everyday practices of cultural institutions. Students will engage in work including argumentative writing addressing ethical dilemmas or speculative re-imaginings of institutional purpose, as well as final project options such as interpretive interventions or educational program design proposals. We will explore multiple frameworks for evaluating museums and practice translating critical analysis into context-responsive practice. The course may be of interest to students pursuing work in education, public history, environmental communication, nonprofit and cultural organizations, for example, and anyone concerned with how knowledge is produced, interpreted, and shared in public life. Assessment will be based on active participation; ongoing written or multimodal responses to readings and site-based work; analytical and argumentative essays; and a final collaborative project in which students will have the option to either design an interpretive intervention or educational program. Evaluation will emphasize sustained engagement, critical reflection, and the application of theory and inquiry to institutional practice.

Instructor: Khor, Su Yin
Location: Thorndike Library Seminar Room

This course is about the craft, theory, and practice of interviewing primarily for research projects, but it’s also relevant to other interview-based projects like documentaries, journalism, and podcasts. Craft: Asking questions is a fundamental component of human interactions, but interviewing requires more than basic interactional ability. It takes thought, intention, empathy, and presence to build a relationship with interviewees and to create a space where they feel safe, seen, and heard. How do interviewers orient to the speakers and navigate power dynamics while humanizing the interview process? Theory: You will be introduced to the ways that interviews and the interviewer-interviewee relationship have been theorized and conceptualized by researchers. Recent efforts to humanize research methods have raised questions about the use of interviews, as well as the positioning and treatment of interviewees. What ethical considerations do we have to make when people trust us with their stories? Practice: A great deal of preparation is completed prior to interviewing and more labor awaits post-interview. You will learn about practical aspects, such as question design, recording methods, transcription practices, and analytical methods (discourse analysis). Basic aspects of developing a research/project will be introduced and ethical considerations will be discussed. As risks can’t be eliminated, how do we navigate, assess, and manage them? Skills like project development and an understanding of ethics, informed consent, and risk assessment are transferable to projects such as documentaries, journalism, podcasts, and many more. The course provides an overview of Ethical Research Review Board (ERRB) processes and human subjects research. Submitting an ERRB proposal isn’t required, but the proposal development skills are important to other genres, such as senior project proposals, fellowship applications, grant proposals, and graduate school applications. This course draws primarily on scholarship in the social sciences, specifically applied linguistics, discourse studies, and linguistic anthropology. You will develop an interview-focused project to explore a topic of your choice and present your findings in an appropriate genre, such as a research paper, journalistic piece, podcast or other genre. Evaluation is based on discussions, written assignments, labs, individual and group work, peer-reviews, data sessions, and interview and transcription practice. The readings are interview-focused and address many areas, including but not limited to food, identity, language, discourse, gender, race, and class. You must have completed your writing requirement and completed at least three terms at COA (or one academic year elsewhere) to enroll in this course.

Instructor: Rand, Kendra
Location: Center for Human Ecology - Flexible Seminar Room 202

Consider all the ways that public speaking could be a part of your academic and professional paths: presenting your research, sitting on a webinar panel, speaking up at ACM, advocating for an urgent cause or policy, preparing your senior project presentation, delivering a formal address at a special occasion, or even deciding to perform spoken word at an open-mic. This course will prepare you to thoughtfully analyze your audience, research and organize relevant information, and deliver the critically important, well-prepared presentation that you’re capable of. Along the way we will be guided by, and critically analyze, three varied and sometimes contradictory premises: that it’s imperative to master the art of formal, standard presentation/speech delivery, that it’s equally important to respect and refine your own unique, authentic voice and speech communication style, and that important change happens when we both listen carefully and speak up loudly. This class will be conducted as a workshop with an emphasis on students producing increasingly advanced speeches for public performance and/or consumption. Students will complete three graded, “formal” presentations while also considering additional creative approaches and formats for public communication. Students will work with a variety of short texts and videos to generate new ideas and helpful public speaking habits. The real benefits of this course come from the positive, supportive, environment in which students can practice new public speaking skills and learn from each other. This class emphasizes a fun, dynamic, “hands-on” approach to constructing speeches. Students who feel that they are less proficient in the area of public communication should not be worried that this would somehow disadvantage them in terms of their overall evaluation. All students, regardless of their levels of comfort, experience, or and English-proficiency are encouraged to consider this course. This workshop is designed to help you improve your public presentation skills regardless of whether you are a complete novice to public speaking, or already have many years of practice. Your final evaluation for the course will be based on your engagement with the process, not on some objective standard of who gave the best speeches.

Instructor: Null, Carol
Location: Turrets - Gower Room - 1st Floor

This course is a broad overview of children's literature and its place in the elementary school classroom. It examines the range and trends in literature for children that includes all genres, prominent authors, illustrators, awards, critical evaluation, and integration into instruction across the curriculum. Students participate in and design lessons which incorporate or extend children's response to literature. They survey poetry and media appropriate for elementary students. Students read an extensive amount of children's literature, keep a response journal, develop an author study, and create a teaching unit using children's literature.

Instructor: Ialeggio, Anna
Location: Studio 7 (Pottery Shed)

This is a ceramics tutorial for intermediate or advanced practitioners and requires foundational skills in hand building and/or wheel-throwing. It is designed to support students’ continued development of ceramic technique. Students enrolling in this tutorial must prepare an individualized work plan outlining their goals and objectives before the start of the term. Each work plan will blend studio work with research, including but not limited to global, historical and contemporary frameworks. There will be three required group check-ins over the course of the term, plus individual meetings at the discretion of each student. As always, we’ll share the joy and responsibility of running a communal studio. Students who successfully complete this course will gain experience following through on an arc of independent research and study; communicating and experiencing ideas through ceramic forms in real time and space; and giving and receiving both practical and creative feedback in real time, in response to the unique efforts and ambitions of peers. In addition, students will learn to act confidently on a thorough understanding of the material and chemical transformations present in mid-fire ceramic processes and confidently contribute to the management of a community clay studio. Evaluation will be based on follow-through of independent studio and research plan, substantial studio time, timely completion of all projects with corresponding group feedback sessions, and consistent involvement with studio maintenance.