Curriculum

The Berlin program is comprehensive in every aspect: students should be willing to involve themselves with the material, the city and their colleagues. We will be actively seeking out the arts and our place in them, continually on-the-go, making our own art and engaging with those who live from the arts. The program is designed for practicing artists.

Required Courses

• An Introduction to Modern Germany and Berlin (3 credits)
  This course, taught by faculty member Roland Dollinger, is a core requirement. Students will be introduced to the history and culture of modern Germany with an emphasis on its capital, Berlin.

Students also select one of the following courses:

• Dance Practice and Study (3 credits)
  All dance students will begin their day with technique and composition class under the guidance of two of Germany's leading college-level faculty, Professors Ingo Reulecke and Helge Musial. The afternoon academic course will be taught by Jacalyn Carley, and includes lectures, films and visits to archives and other dance institutions—exploring the very unique history of German modern dancers and their contributions to world dance. Our visit to the Tanzkongress will place students in a German tradition. The first three dance congresses took place during the Weimar Republic, and brought together major dance professionals of the period, among others, dance legends Rudolf von Laban, Gret Palucca and Mary Wigman. They propagated modern ideas of the body and proclaimed a new epoch of dance—until the National Socialists brought it to an abrupt end. Recently revived as a means to enhance an international dance community, the Tanzkongress places students in the middle of a vibrant and growing global dance community. While in Berlin, dancers will attend performances at InTransit Festival at Haus der kulturen der Welt, as well as having the opportunity to view Central University for Dance masters students’ final choreography presentations at the Ufer Studios, where they can meet Berlin-based choreographers and dance-artists.

• The Practice and Study of Visual Arts & Architecture in Berlin (3 credits)
  Visual Arts & Architecture students will begin their day with fine arts instructor Lara Lu Faroqhi. Afternoon lectures and instruction will be held at various venues. Students will be on-site for critical investigations and dialogue that examine art and architectural developments in Germany and Berlin. Architectural walking tours take us through Bauhaus, Stalinist, and other modern architectural styles in Berlin. We will also visit museums, galleries, and studios. In the historical town of Leipzig, students will visit one of the most extensive and exciting collections of former DDR modern art, as well as attending current exhibitions comparing painting, theatre and writing of the early 1920s to artists working today in Saxony. Rennaisance and Wilheminische architecture abounds. We will visit the Museum of Contemporary Arts in the heart of the city and the Baumwollspinnerei arts center for our focus on the New Leipziger School (Neo Rauch and others), a major European art movement that revived figurative painting and impacted modern art in Europe and America. We will visit the Academy of Visual Arts, one of the most popular places to study art in Germany today, which runs regular exhibitions in its own gallery as well as in cooperation with in the cutting edge Baumwollspinnerei.
• German Language Studies in Berlin (3 credits)
  This program is open to students who have completed at least two semesters of college level German, and who have a strong interest in the arts and contemporary German culture. Language students will place in either Intermediate and Advanced German at DIE NEUE SCHULE in Berlin. Classes meet every morning for five weeks, and twice a week afternoons (four weeks) for intensive comprehension and speaking.