Acting, documentaries, aesthetics: BAI courses offer an interdisciplinary study of the arts

For students hoping to further both their academic and artistic passions this shopping period, the Brown Arts Institute is offering a selection of courses that straddle theory and practice. The Herald spoke to the professors of three of these courses about their plans for the semester.

In ARTS 1011: “Acting for the Camera,” Professor of the Practice of the Arts Kate Burton ’79 will guide students through auditioning for the camera, acting for the camera and playing the villain. Beyond her Emmy Award for her role in “Notes for My Daughter,” Burton’s acting and directing career includes appearances on TV shows “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “Law and Order,” among others.

The course will “cover the broad spectrum” of her teaching at Brown, encompassing her past courses, TAPS 1500R: “Auditioning for the Camera” and ARTS 1006: “Playing The Villain On Camera,” both of which she taught last semester, Burton said. 

The students enrolled in her course reflect a wide array of academic interests, including engineers, neuroscientists and architects.

She encouraged students who don’t have previous acting experience to register for the class, as balancing the levels of experience among enrolled students can help less experienced students grow.

“We’ve had students who have never acted before, who have never picked up a script, come into class and make us cry,” said Maiya Ramsaroop ’25, a former teaching assistant for ARTS 1011. “Acting is living and life is multitudinous, so it’s so wonderful having a variety of different perspectives.”

Ramsaroop also emphasized the value of Burton’s perspective as an industry professional. Burton “will tell us about her (past) experiences on various sets, but then she’ll also come in from having just shot a film or a TV show and give us her fresh perspective,” she said.

Students who prefer the other side of the camera can shop ARTS 1013B: “Finalizing Your First Documentary Feature: Content Creation from Script to Screen.” In the course, students will create short documentary films about women’s intercollegiate athletics at Brown in celebration of its 50th anniversary this academic year. 

The course enrollment will consist of returning students continuing their films from last semester’s ARTS 1013A and new students, who will begin films on spring sports, including softball, baseball, lacrosse and swimming and diving.

Roughly half of the students are student-athletes, according to Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice Theodore Bogosian.

“They’re able to stand on the shoulders of the people that came before them and get a vista onto where Brown’s women’s athletics has come from and where it might be going,” he said.

Students will cover major games, interview current and former athletes and conduct archival research. Every step will be “a learning opportunity for students to develop their skills in terms of producing,” Bogosian said.

The production process is “not unlike a sculptor looking at a piece of marble and saying, ‘there’s a statue in there waiting to get out,’” he said. “Once the media emerges, we begin to see how the story is developing. Gradually, we put a finer and finer point on it, until we have a story that we want to tell.”

For those looking for a more theory-based lens into the arts, ARTS 2004: “Theorizing Blackness” hopes to offer exactly that.

Professor of Modern Culture and Media Alexander Weheliye noted the course will consider Blackness in relation to “power and aesthetics.” Students will engage with a variety of art forms, from texts by mid-20th century writer Frantz Fanon to a contemporary art exhibition by French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet at The David Winton Bell Gallery. 

In his teaching, Weheliye seeks to include “different perspectives, not only through his syllabus formation or structure, but also through (his) students, who came from really different walks of life,” said Luvuyo Nyawose GS, a doctoral student in Modern Culture and Media who has taken Weheliye’s classes.

Weheliye said that his courses — undergraduate and graduate alike — often draw “a very interdisciplinary crowd,” ranging from students in music composition to the public humanities.

“If you’re interested in how aesthetics intersects with questions of the environment, with questions of race, gender and sexuality, with questions of ontology, you should take a BAI class,” Nyawose said.