CCP Curriculum

Courses foreground theories and methods of creative production within a narrowly defined subject area. The course is not a survey class, but rather uses a set of theoretical and disciplinary texts to frame specific objects of study, giving students a bounded space for their individual explorations of and inquiries into cultural production. The course places these specific objects—for example, films and other visual arts, performances, fashion, music, literature—within global, theoretical, formal, and/or historical contexts. The course should facilitate complex understandings of a cultural work from both creator and interpreter perspectives. More acutely, it engages students in questions regarding the global contexts in which creative works are produced and interpreted.

Past CCP Approaches courses have examined the art of dissent, the essay-film, and imaginative forms of art criticism.

Courses addresses hybrid and multiple forms of creative production within a global context. The course accounts for a variety of cultural and/or creative practices either within a specific historical moment or across time periods. Attention is paid to the interpretation of creative works in the context of their circulation, adaptation, remixing, or reinventing across cultural borders. The course invites students to engage with creative productions at their junior year study abroad sites. These works might be studied as products or progenitors of, for example, colonial encounters, commercial appropriation, the global circulation of raw materials, or the ghettoization of particular art forms, among other forms of globalization.

Past CCP Global Topics courses have examined internet identities and digital cultures, photography and image cultures in global context, translation, celebrity, and addiction.

This course is for makers and storytellers who are interested in creating original artistic work rooted in the place and culture of their junior year abroad. Students are required to gather primary and secondary research at their abroad sites and to create an art based final project of their choice, such as a graphic ethnography, memoir, novella, documentary short, audio narrative, collection of oral histories or folklore, performance piece, etc. methodology, craft and theory readings will be assigned to support students’ independent investigations. Students are expected to submit a written prospectus along with multiple drafts of their ongoing projects online; to provide regular written peer feedback in the shared course Google Folder for their classmates’ project drafts; to write an annotated bibliography of research compiled during the semester; to write a detailed meta-cognitive essay about their creative process; and to submit a robust final project.

Standards for Thesis Excellence

The GLS Critical Creative Production (CCP) concentration offers two senior thesis options: the creative thesis, which may take any form and is submitted along with a creative process document; and the traditional written thesis, a less common but equally valued CCP thesis form. Whether creative or traditional, the most successful CCP theses present innovative perspectives on objects, arts, places, institutions, practices, phenomena, and/or ideas. These theses examine how such subjects are shaped or challenged by social, cultural and/or cross-border exchange and conflict; identity; intersectionality; and/or other forms of globality.

While creative and traditional CCP theses share several standards for excellence, there are also notable differences between criteria for assessing each.

In general, a successful CCP creative thesis and accompanying creative process document do most if not all of the following:

• Critically engage a clear question or problem concerning a clearly defined subject or set of subjects. These might be objects, arts, places, institutions, practices, phenomena, and/or ideas.
• Demonstrate an innovative, deliberate formal approach. The form of creative theses tends more often than not to be an essential aspect of the perspective the thesis communicates.
• Address, if not in the thesis itself then in the accompanying creative process document, how globality and its exchanges, collaborations, conflicts, and/or identities have influenced the form and content of the thesis.
• Show awareness, perhaps in the thesis itself and certainly in the creative process document, of the student’s own positionality in relation to the subject or subjects to which the thesis responds.
• Discuss or demonstrate most if not all of the following in the creative process document:
  • the question or problem at stake in the thesis; 
  • the process by which the thesis was created;
  • the rationale for the form the thesis takes and understanding of the craft employed;
  • the role of cross-disciplinary research in shaping the thesis;
  • familiarity with ongoing discussions about the clearly defined subject(s) to which the thesis responds;
  • the role globality plays in the thesis and its production; and
  • the place of the thesis in an intellectual lineage and/or thread of learning in Global Liberal Studies.

In general, a successful traditional CCP thesis does most if not all of the following:

• Critically engage a clear question or problem concerning a clearly defined subject or set of subjects, usually works of creative and/or cultural significance. These might be objects, arts, places, institutions, practices, phenomena, and/or ideas.
• Address how globality and its exchanges, collaborations, conflicts, and identities have influenced the form and content of the thesis.
• Show awareness of the student’s own positionality in relation to the subject or subjects to which the thesis responds.
• Demonstrate a deliberate, cross-disciplinary research process.
• Make unexpected, innovative, and productive connections between subjects and between subjects and ideas.
• Demonstrate familiarity with ongoing discussions about the clearly defined subject(s) to which the thesis responds.
• Address the role globality plays in shaping the subject(s) to which the thesis responds and the student’s response to these subjects.
• Communicate if not an answer or solution to the question or problem the thesis sets out to explore, then a new way of considering the question or problem at stake that leaves room for further research and contributes new ways of thinking to relevant ongoing discussions.
• Places itself in an intellectual lineage and/or thread of learning in Global Liberal Studies.