If only the Time-Turner existed in real life. You know, the time-traveling necklace Hermione used in the third Harry Potter book to take more classes. This spring, Brandeis is offering an array of interesting, underrated courses focusing on the arts. Students can play the first modern instruments created; examine the role of visual art in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; study one of the most significant literary families in history with Prof. Kathy Lawrence (ENG); and learn why, out of the eight women in history put on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted List, two of them were Brandeis students. The only problem, of course, is deciding which course to take.

Many of these courses engage students in experiential activities, such as performing. They are also frequently the culmination of the professors' identities, their lifelong studies and their passions. Whether you want to fulfill your Creative Arts requirement or get the most out of your education, try these courses in the next week. It might lead to a new major or artistic passion. 
 
THA 142B: "Feminist Playwrights: Writing for the Stage by and about Women" 
Professor: Alicia Hyland
Current enrollment: 12
Prof. Alicia Hyland's (THA) brand-new course in feminist theater represents a new venture by the Theater Arts department to offer more literature-based and interdisciplinary courses to theater majors and non-majors alike. Themes such as motherhood, reproduction and sexuality will form the focus of the course, as well as the role of theater in social activism and human understanding. Why did these authors write these plays and how can their works be interpreted from a feminist perspective? Like Prof. Joyce Antler's (AMST)course, (bottom right) students will immerse themselves in an exciting genre of theater, and will be expected to produce works of their own. 
Hyland, who teaches theater lab courses at Brandeis, has always been interested in feminist playwrights. But having spent the past four years raising a daughter, her own ideas of feminism have changed. 
"I am learning that for women to have an equal and respected place we must allow men more freedom to grow beyond the roles they have been assigned as well," said Hyland in an interview with justArts. "I think that is why in so many of the plays we will be reading, I am even more interested in hearing from the students about how the men are portrayed and how, or why, the playwright chose to assign certain attributes."If only the Time-Turner existed in real life. You know, the time-traveling necklace Hermione used in the third Harry Potter book to take more classes. This spring, Brandeis is offering an array of interesting, underrated courses focusing on the arts. Students can play the first modern instruments created; examine the role of visual art in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; study one of the most significant literary families in history with Prof. Kathy Lawrence (ENG); and learn why, out of the eight women in history put on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted List, two of them were Brandeis students. The only problem, of course, is deciding which course to take. 
Many of these courses engage students in experiential activities, such as performing. They are also frequently the culmination of the professors' identities, their lifelong studies and their passions. Whether you want to fulfill your Creative Arts requirement or get the most out of your education, try these courses in the next week. It might lead to a new major or artistic passion. 
 
FA 68A: "Israeli Art and Visual Culture: Forging Identities Between East and West" 
Professor: Gannit Ankori
Current enrollment: 8
Prof. Gannit Ankori's (FA) credentials speak for themselves. Prior to coming to Brandeis, Ankori was the chair of Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Art History department and published several papers about Frida Kahlo and Jewish and Palestinian art. She served as visiting professor at Harvard and Tufts Universities. In 2006, she wrote an award-winning book titled Palestinian Art, which is distributed around the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press and forms an important part of her course's syllabus.
"In a region subsumed by turmoil and conflict," she writes in an older version of the course's syllabus, "Israeli and Palestinian artists have been tenaciously engaged in the creation of vibrant and innovative works of art. Characterized by diversity and boldness, these paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, films, performances and videos both reflect and transcend the violent contexts in which they are being produced."
The course will address issues such as home and exile, national identity, war and peace, the role of artists in the peace process and the historic events of 1948. 
 
ENG 77A: "Screening the Tropics"
Professor: Faith Lois Smith
Current enrollment: 12
If you're taking Prof. Faith Lois Smith's (AAAS) course, which focuses on the role of "the tropics" in film, photography and fiction, you might notice that certain locations appeal to an "exotic, picturesque, primitive [and] irrational" model. 
"Whether it is a James Bond film or a representation of Duvalier's regime in Haiti, the screen is always compelling," Smith said in an interview with justArts. "As part of my teaching and research, I think about how popular culture appeals to some of our deepest fears and pleasures, and this film course will allow me to explore this."
Students will study films such as Y Tu Mamá También, Island in the Sun, Wide Sargasso Sea and The Constant Gardener and learn how the theories of Hegel and Gianluigi Buffon help explain what it means to screen the tropics. 
Smith, who specializes in literature of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora, will be teaching this course for the first time. This could be an eye-opening chance to fulfill that Non-Western requirement with a fascinating course, or simply an opportunity to explore foreign film. 
 
ENG 156A: "Local Rebels: Cambridge Authors Against the Grain"
Professor: Michael Gilmore
Current enrollment: 4
This course finds inspiration in the historic and exciting city of Cambridge. A resident of Cambridge, Prof. Michael Gilmore (ENG) has always been interested in the city's authors, particularly ones who rebelled against popular thought. While most people think of Concord and Boston as hotspots for political and social unrest, the Harvard-dominated Cambridge is commonly seen as "arid and academic," Gilmore says. 
"I think that view is mistaken," said Gilmore in an interview with justArts. "In the 19th century, Cambridge was a stronghold of dissent, for reasons that will come out in the course." 
Students will learn how the Cambridge community fostered a dynamic collection of writers, including Margaret Fuller and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the roles these writers played in a larger American discourse. 
"[The course] helps us to see how a nearby community stood firm against the American grain on issues like slavery, feminism, racial justice and imperialism. In my opinion, that's an inspiring story," Gilmore says.
In light of recent protest movements such as Occupy Wallstreet and the Arab Spring,  it would be interesting to learn how figures of the past rebelled against injustice.
 
ENG 156B: "When Genius is a Family Affair: Henry, William, and Alice James"
Professor: Kathy Lawrence
Current enrollment: 5
If genius runs in the James family, then a passion for teaching runs in the Lawrence family. University President Frederick Lawrence's wife, Kathy Lawrence, will be leading a course on Henry James, the forefather of literary realism and modernism, and his two influential siblings, William and Alice. Lawrence is an expert on James and an editor of the upcoming Cambridge Edition of the Complete Works of Henry James. She has published various articles on James and will offer students a literary, historical and experiential context of the American-born author. 
A friend of fellow Bostonian Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James spent much of his time in Boston pondering the American paradox: How can a country bent on capitalist growth maintain its constitutional promise of liberty? In what ways does progress undermine equality? Students will visit the very sites where he wrote on such subjects. In fact, Lawrence spent much of her life following in the footsteps of Henry James, from staying in the Venice hotel room where he wrote the final chapters of The Portrait of a Lady to visiting James' social clubs in London. Class trips to James' former Boston residencies will be an integral, though not required, portion of the course.
"Henry James is my great passion," Lawrence said in an interview with justArts. "But the reasons for teaching the class go much deeper than my own expertise and passion. James … represents the culmination of the 19th-century American literary tradition. Even more important, his work explores the subtle secrets of the human soul and heart."
 
MUS 80B: "Early Music Ensemble" 
Professor: Sarah Mead
Current enrollment: 7
After joining a Renaissance dance troupe in high school, Early Music Ensemble director Prof. Sarah Mead (MUS) decided to dedicate her life to the study of 16th- and 17th-century music.
Mead arrived at Brandeis in 1982 as the leader of the viola da gamba group, and over the years the ensemble expanded its instrumentation to voice and horns, taking the form of the Early Music Ensemble. The ensemble has come to fill an entire room filled with instruments such as the crumhorn, the vielle, the recorder and the rauschpfeife, an ancestor of the bassoon. Standing inside the space feels like being in a museum where you can touch and play everything on display. 
This summer, Mead will be in Delaware organizing a group of 300 viola da gamba players, the largest group ever to play together. This feat will be recognized by the Guinness World Records. 
Students in the Early Music Ensemble will be presented with challenges that aren't present in a modern-day orchestra, from reading music in its original 16th-century notation to figuring out the instrumentation of pieces themselves.
"Often, people assume the modern violin is the pinnacle," Mead said in an interview with justArts. "Each instrument in its own time was its pinnacle. The instruments in the 16th century weren't unfinished or unsophisticated instruments. Just as the painters of the time were at the top of their form, so were the musicians."
 
AMST 128B: "History as Theater" 
Professor: Joyce Antler
Current enrollment: 9
"Documentary theatre is not only a technique; it's a way of thinking and above all an instrument for acquiring knowledge about the world," wrote Polish playwright Pawel Demirski. What is documentary theater? This quote, which appears at the beginning of a draft syllabus of Prof. Joyce Antler's (AMST) course, is a first step in explaining the role of this theatrical form in understanding events of the past. 
The topic of this semester's project is more relevant than ever, with the U.S. still tangled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Students will act as both historians and playwrights, and delve into the anti-war protests of Brandeis' most radical students in 1970. As a result of their violent protests, which caused the death of a police officer during an armed robbery, Susan Saxe and Katherine Power became two of eight women in history ever put on the FBI's Most Wanted List. 
"They were decidedly a fringe group of radical students here and elsewhere who turned to violent means in their opposition to the Vietnam War," explains Antler. "It was a difficult moment for the majority of Brandeis activists whose approach was non-violent."
To recreate these events, students will interview faculty and alumni as well as access FBI reports and materials from the National Strike Information Center from Brandeis' Special Collections. The Saxe trial transcript was also specially made available for the course. 
Prof. Antler is a published documentary dramatist and has been teaching this course since the 1980s. However, this is the first time this course has been offered for several years. "The process of research and writing this play will enable [students] to understand how documentary theater engages multiple, interacting, historical perspectives and complicates our knowledge of what is ‘fact' and ‘truth,'" she said in an interview with justArts. "This process will also allow the class to contemplate the changing meanings of social justice ideals and activism on the college campus."