School of Art + Art History + Design
ARTS 180: Power of the Arts
VLPA, 2 credits
As an Arts student, this course will guide you to make the most of your student academic experience. Through conversations with faculty, staff, alumni, and employers, you will develop a professional network and gain a deeper understanding of your value.
ART 191: Color Studies
VLPA, 5 credits
Examine color as a distinct visual phenomenon, investigating its practical, theoretical, and illusionary aspects. You will employ various media and materials in exercises and compositions that demonstrate properties of color structure, symbolism, and perception as well as the potential application to art and design. This course lays an excellent foundation for further studio coursework in art and design.
ART H 209: Art Now
VLPA, 5 credits
Contemporary art today confronts viewers with a bewildering array of images, objects, and processes. In this class, we will explore how contemporary art connects artists and viewers in forms of creative engagement with pressing social and political issues. We will see how artists use diverse strategies to help us consider who we are, how our world is changing, and how we can best inhabit it together. We will discuss how today’s art speaks to both individual and collective life.
ART H 311: Arts of Imperial China
VLPA/I&S, 5 credits
Learn about the arts produced during China’s imperial period, from the third century BCE to the eighteenth century. Buddhist sculpture, painting, and calligraphy will be examined in depth.
ART H 312: Art and Empire in India, 1750–1900
VLPA, 5 credits
Examine transformations in visual culture between the Mughal and British empires in India. We will consider changes in artistic production, patronage, publics, and viewing protocols in the contexts of the court and bazaar. We will examine the emergence of new technologies and their impact on visual forms, media, and genres, focusing on the interplay of photography, print, and painting. We will explore the role of institutions — the art school, museum, and archeological survey — and the professions and practices they engendered.
ART H 361: Italian Renaissance Art
VLPA, 5 credits
The Italian Renaissance (approximately 1300–1600 CE) was a period of extraordinary artistic and cultural production and complexity, the implications of which still impact our thinking about art, the body, and the self. We will explore the Renaissance and its implications through the themes of "Vision and Transformation," demonstrating how the period both transformed the way we think about art and laid unprecedented stress on the centrality of the visual for human culture and thought.
Department of Dance
Dance 240: Street & Club Dances
VLPA/I&S, 3 credits
Learn about dances that originated and continue to evolve from Hip Hop culture through studio and lecture/discussion. We will explore the aesthetic, social, and cultural differences between styles rooted in clubbing, battling, cyphering, and sessioning.
Dance 287: Capoeira
VLPA, 2 credits
Practice-based instruction in the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira, including movement, music, culture, history.
Dance 490: Embodied Ecology for Creative Practice
VLPA, 3 credits
This interdisciplinary creative process class draws on concepts from landscape ecology, philosophy of lived experience, and site, specific dance making to investigate the relationships between art, humans and the environment. While dance experience is not required, one must be willing to take artistic risks physically and creatively. Relying on nature as our teacher we will model choreographic practices after ecological systems. We will consider the process of making art as a method for understanding the world around us and building meaning for ourselves and our communities. The class consists of seminars, studio practice and field work.
School of Drama
DRAMA 171: The Broadway Musical
VLPA, 5 credits
This historical and cultural study of the Broadway Musical examines how this uniquely American art-form was largely created by people marginalized from mainstream society and explores how musicals have both reflected and shaped American culture -- especially in regard to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, social justice, and equality. Visit drama.uw.edu to learn more and register.
SIGN UP FOR COURSE IS CLOSED (more info. about course)
School of Music:
MUSAP 389/589: World Music: Gamelan
I&S/VLPA, 2 credits
Take a class that will introduce you to the Indonesian music and dance form with Javanese master musician Heri Purwanto, the School of Music’s spring quarter Ethnomusicology Community Artist-in-Residence. There will be weekly rehearsals on the UW’s extensive set of gamelan instruments, with a culminating performance on June 4 at the UW’s Gelrich Theater. No prior experience is required.
MUSEN 100B: Gospel Choir
VLPA, 1 credit
Learn songs and methods of the Gospel tradition with the UW’s resident Gospel music expert, Phyllis Byrdwell, a giant of Seattle’s Gospel music community. Byrdwell led the music ministry at Seattle’s Mount Zion Baptist Church for more than 50 years. This course includes a final performance on June 3 at the UW’s Gerlich Theater. No prior experience required.
More Stories
Dancing Across Campus
For the dance course "Activating Space," students danced in public spaces across the University of Washington's Seattle campus this spring.
Celebrating Contemporary Indigenous Music
Markus Teuton, a musician and citizen of Cherokee Nation, explores contemporary Indigenous music through his academic work and as host of “Indigenous Jazz,” a radio show.
All the World's a Stage — and a Game
Students in DRAMA 480 learn how techniques used in game design can be adapted for interactive theater productions.