Spring 2021
Approved
Constraints: Storytelling in the Digital Age
This cluster is based on the theoretical and interdisciplinary work that suggests that humans think in the form of stories. If experiences are understood and communicated through storytelling, understanding their structures and how they work is integral to the human experience. Should narratives be limited only to words? As story readers, we become better equipped to understand the lives and experiences of others; as story tellers, we become better equipped to share our perspectives and experiences with others. This course cluster focuses on a broad variety of storytelling mediums, including memoirs, short stories, films, documentaries, essays, comics, songs, novels, murals, and performances that are all examples of how we tell stories in the digital age. It is often assumed that advanced communication technologies have made our possibilities endless, but we are equally interested in how constraints, whether bodily, geographic, linguistic, or stylistic, help to produce these stories. Participants will not only analyze these media, and think about how the constraints of form affect how a story is told, but they will participate in creating narratives using some of these forms to engage directly with the idea of constraint as an essential ingredient of creativity.
Courses:
- EALC 310: Form and Meaning in the Graphic Narrative (Kwa, East Asian Languages and Cultures)
- FREN 2XX: Diasporic Voices: Boundaries, Constraints, and Identity Narratives (Peysson-Zeiss, French and Francophone Studies)
360 Course Units: 2 units
Field Component: Residency and workshops exploring comics (on location at Bryn Mawr)
Special Programming: Guest lecture series, Philadelphia field trips
Prerequisites: None
Open/Closed: All courses available to 360° students only
Approved
Textiles in Context: Byzantine Textiles from Late Antique Egypt
This cluster provides a multidisciplinary approach to the technical analysis and historical interpretation of early Byzantine textiles from Egypt. Students will undertake hands-on technical analysis of materials and engage with historical production techniques. Students will learn how to relate technical evidence to questions of early Byzantine textiles' function, social meaning, and public display in both the late antique and contemporary periods. This cluster introduces students to the shifting uses of these objects in early Byzantine life and death as well as the changing ways in which scholars have interpreted and displayed these objects over time. Equipped with this background, students will produce original research on previously unpublished early Byzantine textiles in the Jefferson University (Philadelphia) Textile and Costume Collection and will have the opportunity to contribute to that institution’s publicly accessible online collection catalog. Students will also present their knowledge and interpretations through public presentations to the Bryn Mawr College community.
Courses:
- CHEM 208: Analysis of Art: Early Byzantine Textiles (Weldon, Special Collections; Walker, History of Art)
- HART 218: Byzantine Textiles in Life, Death, and Afterlife (Walker, History of Art)
360 Course Units: 2 units
Field Component: Hands-on textile analysis and production, multi-day field trip to regional museums (tentative), contribution to digital, public facing collection catalog
Special Programming: Guest speakers
Prerequisites: none
Open/Closed: All courses available to 360° students only
