Liberal Arts

Interdivisional Liberal Arts

Faculty

Juilliard actively promotes a liberal arts education that provides the humanistic, ethical, social, critical, and aesthetic background essential to personal development and professional excellence. Studies in literature, philosophy, history, social sciences, arts, and languages, foster in students a deeper understanding of themselves and the complex world in which they live.

All students in the B.F.A. and B.M. degree programs are required to complete a minimum of 24 credits in the Liberal Arts. Qualified students begin a three-semester core-curriculum program in their first year by taking “Ethics, Conscience and the Good Life” and “Society, Politics and Culture.” In the following year students enroll in “Art and Aesthetics.” Students who place into “Writing Seminar” enroll in that course their first year and in “Ethics” their sophomore year, completing the three-semester sequence as above. This core curriculum in the humanities introduces students to a cross-cultural range of texts, traditions, and issues and emphasizes critical thinking and writing throughout.

Students pursue electives in such fields as art history, creative writing, literature, African-American studies, American and European history, gender, philosophy, and the environment. Juilliard also offers courses in four modern foreign languages: French, German, Italian, and Russian. Most students take electives in the third and fourth years but may take them earlier. All Liberal Arts coursesare conducted in small seminars to foster participation and a spirit of inquiry. Eligible students may also cross-register for certain courses at Columbia and Barnard Colleges.

Through their work in the Liberal Arts, students refine skills in reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking, learning to communicate with greater clarity and effectiveness. This program equips them to become active, well-informed citizens; develops their awareness of the social and humanistic dimensions of professional work; and lays the basis for a fulfilling cultural and intellectual life.

Courses

Liberal Arts Core

• LARTS 101-2 — Writing Seminar

  6 credits
  Full Year
  Faculty
  
  This course is a prerequisite to LARTS 111. Emphasis is placed upon reading and writing skills, verbal expression, and critical analysis of texts. Successful completion satisfies six Liberal Arts Elective credits. Students are expected to receive a grade of “C” or higher in the second semester in order to receive credit and continue in the Liberal Arts Core. Students may qualify out of this course on the basis of a diagnostic exam which evaluates their preparedness.
• LARTS 111 — Ethics - Conscience and the Good Life

  3 credits
  Fall
  Faculty
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 101-2 . Students read and discuss works of ethicists, philosophers, religious figures, and literary authors on the nature of the ethical life. Students will be encouraged to think critically about personal responsibility, responsibilities to others, the good life, the problem of evil, and human nature. Authors and traditions that may be included: Classical Greek and Roman, Buddhism, Taoism, the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, Hume, Kant, Utilitarianism, Mary Shelley, and Shakespeare, as well as contemporary readings that address the ethical questions arising in a scientific, technological and global age.
• LARTS 112 — Society, Politics, and Culture

  3 credits
  Spring
  Faculty
  
  This course is an introduction to the seminal issues, methods, and traditions that inform historical and contemporary conceptions of politics, society, and culture. Drawing from classical to contemporary readings in political theory, philosophy, the social sciences, literature, and gender studies, the course encourages students to explore such topics as why people live in society; how social life influences personhood; how society regulates and institutionalizes power and authority; and how societies are transformed. Authors who may be included are Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Marx, Mill, Wollstonecraft, and Woolf.
• LARTS 212 — Citizenship, Art, and Politics

  3 credits
  Fall, Spring
  Faculty
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112 . From the moment that creators share their work with the public, these works take on new meanings. Students enrolled in Citizenship, Art, and Politics will consider problems of abiding interest and frequent disagreement: Who gets to decide what is art, and what sort of conclusions have been reached? When appraising a performance, should audiences take an artist’s personal qualities into account? Are artists obligated to consider for whom a performance is given, or where it is performed, or should artists simply focus on the performance itself? What are governments’ interests in creative expression? During times of social or political conflict, what are the limits and possibilities of cultural diplomacy?

   

Liberal Arts Electives: Humanities (Art History)

• LARTS 340 — Frozen Music: On Interrelating the Arts

  3 credits
  Fall
  Greta Berman and Samuel Zyman
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  Architecture has sometimes been called frozen music. This course begins in 16th-century Venice, where the architecture and opulent setting help illuminate Venetian music, and especially the blossoming of opera in that city. We will start by looking at Palladio’s architecture, the paintings of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, and the music of Gabrieli and Monteverdi. We will continue through the mid-19th century in France. The course focuses on important art and music of the periods. Using slides, musical demonstrations, and recordings, we will examine many moments in time and places where art and music come together.
• LARTS 343 — Art of the 19th Century

  3 credits
  Fall
  Greta Berman
  
  In this class we will study painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Topics include Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, and Art Nouveau. Students will be introduced to the works of David, Ingres, Delacroix, Turner, Goya, Courbet, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others.
• LARTS 346 — Art of the United States

  3 credits
  Spring
  Greta Berman
  
  This class will examine some of the reasons for the artistic progress of the United States from British colony to leader of the avant-garde. In doing so, we will take a chronological look at paintings, sculpture, and architecture. This nation began its existence by looking to Europe for its inspiration, but after World War II, New York City replaced Paris as the center of the art world. We shall take advantage of New York City’s thriving and ever-changing status as leader of the avant-garde in the visual arts as well as our physical location in this city to visit museums and galleries, and supplement our knowledge by means of digital slides.
• LARTS 348 — Opera: Music and the Visual Arts

  3 credits
  Spring
  Greta Berman
  
  This team-taught course will focus on a selection of operas, exploring a few of the many connections between that art form and the visual arts. Among the operas we will examine are Monteverdi’s Orfeo, one or two of Handel’s numerous works, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, as well as operas by Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Richard Strauss’s Salome, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, and Hindemith’s Mathis der Mahler — unique in that the composer based it on the life and work of the 16th-century German painter, Mathias Grünewald — all have special relevance to visual art. We will look at these through a variety of approaches: thematic as well as stylistic. Some of the painters whose work corresponds to the composers include Nicolas Poussin, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky.
• LARTS 349 — Art of the Renaissance

  3 credits
  Spring
  Greta Berman
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  This class looks at painting, sculpture, and architecture of the Renaissance. By means of slides, lectures, and class discussions, we explore the meaning of the Renaissance and its manifestations in Italy and Northern Europe. Major artists include Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hieronymus Bosch.

Liberal Arts Electives: Humanities (Literature and Creative Writing)

• LARTS 315 — Writing Poetry and Flash Fiction

  3 credits
  Spring
  Ron Price
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  Designed to help students recognize options rather than flaws in what they write, this course will focus on how language works at its most evocative — in poetry, prose poems, and short stories. The aim is to generate material and to find appropriate forms to contain that material by identifying the musical and rhythmic shape of words. The semester comprises writing exercises, critiques, and discussions of related issues: the image, spoken language, syntax, music, tone, story, and form. Students will develop writing, editorial, and performance skills — the emphasis being on how to use those tools to enhance the expression of experience.
• LARTS 357 — War and Literature

  3 credits
  Spring
  Ron Price
  
   

  This course explores the history of warfare, collective violence, religious and military strategies for conducting war, and efforts to wage humane wars. After an introduction to warfare in the ancient world, we will consider “just war” theories and changing representations of war up to the 21st century in essays, films, letters, memoirs, novels, plays, and poetry. The course is chronological and thematic, dealing with a variety of issues: What are the lures of war? How have other cultures thought about war? What drives a soldier? Can war be controlled or eliminated? What strategies have been brought to the table to answer these questions? Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will investigate these and other issues through the works of writers from differing historical eras, regions of the world, and cultural perspectives. There will be, as well, an ongoing discussion of what constitutes a canon of texts in such an area of study: why do these texts matter? Texts include The Iliad, The Art of War, and more contemporary literature.

   

• LARTS 359 — English Romantic Literature of the 19th Century: Sublime, Gothic, Heroic

  3 credits
  Spring
  Jo Sarzotti
  
  This course takes as its subject the literary art generated by English and American writers in the years 1780 to 1830, known as the “Romantic period” and characterized by enthusiasm for the imagination, the power of nature, and belief in boundless possibility for human achievement, including the supernatural. We will start in the 17th century with the origins of the Gothic tradition, reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and poetry by Coleridge, Byron, and Keats. Then we take up Burke’s idea of the Sublime, reading parts of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the first Vampire story, and poetry by Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and others. We finish by reading stories by E.A. Poe and Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as looking at contemporary versions of the supernatural in film.
• LARTS 361 — Creative Nonfiction

  3 credits
  Fall
  Ron Price
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  Creative Nonfiction tells a story. The story might have a political or an ecological, an economic or a racial focus. It might be about the art of glassblowing or animal husbandry, anything from a narrative history of the U.S. Civil War to a coming of age memoir — stories about what real people do, what happens to them, how they respond. The genre employs a journalist’s focus on facts; the dialogue and scenes of a novelist or playwright; the analytical thinking of an essayist; the images, musicality, and wordplay of a poet. Creative Nonfiction writers use literary techniques when facts alone cannot adequately render the truth of a subject. They aim for the truth as they understand it. Strategic analysis of work by Jonathan Swift, Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oats, John Hersey, Truman Capote, Annie Dillard, Tom Wolfe, Isabella Allende, Joan Didion, Gay Talese, and John McPhee will serve as models for student writings to culminate in a manuscript of original essays.
• LARTS 378 — Comedy Tonight

  3 credits
  Spring
  Roger Oliver
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  After a brief consideration of some theories of comedy and laughter (Aristotle, Henri Bergson, Freud, Suzanne Langer) this course will explore great comic dramas from Classical Greek drama to contemporary farce. Among the playwrights whose work we will explore are Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Moliere, Congreve, Sheridan, Wilde, Feydeau, Kaufman and Hart and Michael Frayn. A good sense of humor is not required for the course but is highly recommended.
• LARTS 380 — Shakespeare and the Performing Arts

  3 credits
  Fall
  Roger Oliver
  
  Shakespeare has not only shaped the theater that has followed him, but has profoundly influenced major artists in music, dance, and film. This course will focus on several of his plays (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello) and the musical compositions, operas, ballets, and films that have been based on them. Landmark productions of the plays will also be discussed.
• LARTS 381 — The Bible as Literature

  3 credits
  Fall
  Anthony Lioi
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  
• LARTS 382 — African American Literature – The World and Works of Toni Morrison

  3 credits
  Spring
  Renée Baron
  
  In describing what propelled the former book editor to write her first novel at the age of 39, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  This semester, we will read and discuss that book, The Bluest Eye, and the subsequent works that Morrison added to the American literary canon, including Sula, Song of Solomon, and Tar Baby, and selected later novels, such as Beloved. We will appraise Morrison’s essays and her collaboration with Richard Danielpour on the opera Margaret Garner and examine major influences on her work, including William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez. Throughout the semester, we will consider the cultural and literary significance of Morrison’s oeuvre while investigating the socio-political context of her work and the literary world to which she responded.

   

• LARTS 385 — Modern European Drama

  3 credits
  Fall
  Roger Oliver
  
  This course will explore the evolution of modern drama in Europe from the rise of realism and naturalism in the late 19th century through the main experimental movements of the 20th century to the present day. Among the playwrights studied will be Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, and Churchill.

Liberal Arts Electives: Humanities (Philosophy)

• LARTS 321 — Humanitarianism & Philosophy

  3 credits
  Fall
  Jeffrey Flynn
  
  

  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  We are all familiar with aid agencies asking for donations to support their life-saving work. Often these appeals aim to stimulate compassion for the suffering of distant strangers in ways that prompt us to act. This course takes humanitarian action – broadly construed as organized attempts to alleviate the suffering of distant strangers – as a point of departure for analyzing a range of issues using the tools of moral and political philosophy. We will attempt to better understand the nature and scope of our moral obligations to distant strangers as well as the nature and value of moral sentiments like compassion and their relation to justice. We will engage different frameworks for evaluating various modes of humanitarian action by non-governmental organizations, governments, and international bodies. We will also critically examine the modes of representation used to portray the suffering of distant strangers. 

Liberal Arts Electives: History and Social Sciences

• LARTS H310 — Honors: Studying New York City

  3 credits
  Fall
  Lisa Andersen
  
  New York City will be our subject and classroom for this interdisciplinary, writing-intensive course. By visiting archives, traveling to diverse neighborhoods, and analyzing census tables, community health surveys, and other data, we will explore our city, its past, and its possible future. We will also read the work of historians, anthropologists, scientists, and psychologists to learn about their approaches. What have these researchers discovered about New Yorkers’ public health, politics, ecology, and culture? As a capstone assignment, students will design an independent study course, research program, or service-learning exercise of their own. Interested students may apply to continue developing their project in the second semester, mentored by a faculty advisor.  
• LARTS 330 — Totalitarianism

  3 credits
  Fall
  Gonzalo Sanchez
  
  Totalitarianism is a political program of absolute control over state, society, and individual life that was born in 20th-century Europe and which led to wars, campaigns of mass extermination, and the subsequent loss of millions of lives. This interdisciplinary Academic Honors course will examine the two most fateful examples of totalitarianism in the 20th century, the Leninist regime in Soviet Russia and Hitler’s Nazism in Germany. Our approach is both historical and theoretical, trying not only to define what sort of “ism” totalitarianism is, but also to determine whether it is a dying phenomenon or still has a future. We will address questions of political ideology, culture, group identity, technology, violence, human rights, resistance, and conformity. Readings—by Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, and other writers—include works of history, political science, social theory, fiction, and memoirs. 
• LARTS 377 — United States History from 1877

  3 credits
  Spring
  Lisa Andersen
  
  America’s religious leaders, politicians, freed people, workers, women’s rights advocates, moral reformers, capitalists, and intellectuals explored the meanings of massive transformations in the wake of Civil War and emancipation. This course will explore Americans’ debates about the changing nature of work, expanding state capacity, popular politics, immigration, race and racism, family roles, industrial economy, and the nation’s standing as a world power. Students will gain familiarity with a wide variety of historical documents “” military reports, political speeches, court records, personal correspondence, and campaign memorabilia “” as well as classic and recent historical scholarship.
• LARTS 470 — The Arts and Society

  3 credits
  Fall
  Damian Woetzel
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  This survey course examines the intersection of arts and society, looking specifically at the role of arts and artists in addressing issues facing the world today. Through extensive reading lists, case studies, individual and group projects, and conversations with distinguished guests, we will explore areas including but not limited to law, health care, education, science, and civic participation to consider our ideal version of a collective future and how we might use arts, creativity, and culture to help get us there. Past guests have included Elizabeth Alexander (poet, memoirist, and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), Vijay Gupta (violinist, social justice advocate, and 2018 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow), Mitch Landrieu (lawyer, author, and former New Orleans mayor), Sarah Lewis (author, curator, and Harvard University Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Department of African and African American Studies), Caroline Shaw (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, vocalist, violinist, and producer), and Jeannie Suk Gersen (Harvard Law School John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law). Open to 3rd and 4th-year undergraduates and cross-listed as graduate elective; preference given to graduate students.

Liberal Arts Electives: Languages

• LARTS 151-2 — Russian I

  6 credits
  Full Year
  Gina Levinson
  
  Introductory language courses provide basic reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Students also study the culture and history of the language and the countries where it is spoken.  Students may not enroll in courses involving the study of their native languages.
• LARTS 161-2 — English and Communication

  6 credits
  Full Year
  Harold Slamovitz, Robert Wilson
  
  May be required as a result of language assessments. This course is designed for emergent bilingual English speakers to advance their academic language skills. Working with periodicals and literature, this course fosters the comprehensive development of language skills including reading, writing, listening, speaking, and grammar. Undergraduate students are expected to pass this course with a grade of at least “C”. Graduate students are expected to pass this course with a grade of at least “B”.
• LARTS 171-2 — French I

  6 credits
  Full Year
  Harold Slamovitz
  
  Introductory language courses provide basic reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Students also study the culture and history of the language and the countries where it is spoken.  Students may not enroll in courses involving the study of their native languages.
• LARTS 181-2 — German I

  6 credits
  Full Year
  Harold Slamovitz
  
  Introductory language courses provide basic reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Students also study the culture and history of the language and the countries where it is spoken. Students are expected to pass the first semester with a grade of at least “C” in order to continue to the second semester. Students may not enroll in courses involving the study of their native languages.
• LARTS 191-2 — Italian I

  6 credits
  Full Year
  Faculty
  
  Introductory language courses provide basic reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Students also study the culture and history of the language and the countries where it is spoken. Students are expected to pass the first semester with a grade of at least “C” in order to continue to the second semester. Students may not enroll in courses involving the study of their native languages.
• LARTS 561-2 — Graduate English Seminar

  4 credits
  Full Year
  Robert Wilson
  
  May be required as a result of language assessments. This course is designed for emergent bilingual graduate students to advance their academic language skills. Working with popular, academic, and scientific articles, along with literature, this course cultivates the rhetorical knowledge and compositional skills required for participation in postgraduate education. Students are expected to pass this course with a grade of at least “B.”

Liberal Arts Electives: American Studies

• LARTS 392 — Democracy at the Crossroads

  3 credits
  Spring
  Anita Mercier
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112 . Members of Western societies tend to assume that democracy is the best form of government. Yet today, many democratic countries are sliding toward authoritarianism, and others are struggling to maintain stability. What conditions are necessary to establish and maintain democracy? What are democracy’s vulnerabilities? Does democracy have a future? 

  To answer these questions, we will trace the intellectual foundations of democracy from its origins in the ancient world through the Atlantic republican tradition and through the emergence of modern liberal democracies worldwide.  We will examine the ideas of both proponents and critics of democracy. Finally we will focus on some of the pressing problems facing contemporary democracies, including populism, the persistence of illiberal and anti-democratic ideologies, skyrocketing economic inequality, and sweeping technological changes.

• LARTS 393 — Culture 2022

  3 credits
  Spring
  Anthony Lioi
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  

  The year 1922 was a watershed for literary modernism, witnessing the publication of major works by T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Thus, the course of modernism and the practice of anthropology were intertwined using the concept of “culture:” both “the best which has been thought and said” and “the everyday lifeways of a people.” Beginning with Victorian anthropology, this course will trace the rise of the culture concept through classic modernist works by Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Hurston, Auden, and Brooks. It will then examine what became of “culture” in our own time using contemporary anthropology and art to understand the legacy of modernism today.
  
   

Liberal Arts Electives: Gender Studies

• LARTS 304 — Feminist Philosophy

  3 credits
  Spring
  Aaron Jaffe
  
  Prerequisite: LARTS 112  

  This class explores feminist philosophy, beginning with Diotima’s response to Socrates, with the aim of reconstructing an historical arc of the concerns informing contemporary feminist thinking. Though starting with the “Western” tradition, the class will problematize the largely White and upper-class feminisms of the so-called “global north” with challenges from the “global south” as well as Black, Chicana, and working-class feminisms. This process will generate not only a sequential, but a comparative and critical approach to different possible feminisms. The class will examine the nature of women’s oppression and the structuring role of gender and orientation, and highlight the conceptual resources to reflect upon and resist domination developed by people not traditionally identified as “men.”