In this undergrad course, students will learn to help a community recognize, value, and plan to use its own arts to meet local needs and goals. The course provides a compact overview of the Creating Local Arts Together (CLAT) model of community engagement. The CLAT process consists of seven flexible steps grounded in ethnographic and appreciative inquiry approaches: meet a community and its arts; specify goals; select communication genre and content; analyze the genre; spark creativity; improve new works and creative systems; and integrate and celebrate for continuity. Students will work with the model through three pedagogical cycles. This course is also available at the graduate level by registering for WA5381.
Global gatherings with a focus on world arts and cross-cultural work provide an outstanding opportunity for connecting with new resources, new practitioners and scholars in the field, and new ideas to invigorate service. In this course, students will leverage their attendance at one of several conferences specializing in World Arts into a learning experience, interacting with a community of fellow students as they begin to develop their abilities and plans for working with communities.
This is a foundational course introducing key principles of ethnodoxology that will help students serve worshipping communities more effectively, whether overseas or in multi-ethnic North American contexts. Students will experience a corpus of songs and other artistic liturgical expressions from around the world, developing a vision for multicultural worship. In addition, students will explore appropriate ways to incorporate these artistic expressions into the worship life of their communities.
This course is also available at the graduate level by registering for WA5380.
Registration for a workshop version (no credit) is available in partnership with the Global Ethnodoxology Network (GEN) – see here.
This course entails acquiring the performance and artistic skills needed for cross-cultural participation in one of the artistic traditions of a community. Emphasis is on developing an understanding of how to perform within the context of a chosen tradition, including researching this tradition and how it functions artistically and socially in its community. The choice of ethnic ensemble or mentoring relationships will vary depending upon the artistic tradition chosen for study and availability of local mentors.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
This course looks at various artistic traditions from communities around the world, showing how these artistic expressions perform important cultural functions and serve as markers of identity. The course uses experiential activities and media resources to expand the students’ appreciation of the complexity and significance of various world art traditions.
Through this course, students will develop preliminary skills for researching and analyzing artistic genres within their cultural context. Student research will focus on an ethnolinguistic group of the student’s choice, including diasporic groups.
Techniques and skill development for researching and writing a thesis. Strongly recommended for all students writing a thesis at the master’s level in World Arts.
Note: This course is graded P/F. Completion of this course will count as equivalent to WA5191 Thesis, but will not trigger the requirement for continuing registration.
In this course, students will investigate, describe, and interact with the people and processes involved in a community’s creativity and performance. Course assignments include daily readings, class discussions, and reflective and academic writing. Students will also be assigned an in-depth field research project with local arts practitioners, offering opportunities to improve skills in planning and performing research tasks, interviewing, participant-observation, note-taking, and audio- and video-recording. These field methods lead students to find answers to questions such as: What kinds of arts exist locally? What are some solutions to common difficulties in field and library-based research? How have scholars and practitioners conceptualized artistic expressions? In what ways do arts communicate within and beyond a community? How are new innovations in established traditions developed and integrated into a society?
Global gatherings with a focus on world arts and cross-cultural work provide an outstanding opportunity for connecting with new resources, new practitioners and scholars in the field, and new ideas to invigorate service. In this course, students will leverage their attendance at one of several conferences specializing in World Arts into a focused learning experience, interacting with a community of fellow students as they hone their abilities and plans for working with communities.
Fall: EMS, Spring: Worship Symposium, some Summers
This course explores the biblical, historical, and cultural principles of ethnodoxology for cross-cultural workers, community leaders, and worship facilitators, helping them to serve worshipping communities more effectively, whether overseas or in multi-ethnic North American contexts. Students are prepared to design the introduction of new artistic expressions into their own worshipping communities, undergirded by the use of relevant research methodologies and multicultural worship approaches.
This course is also available at the undergraduate level by registering for WA3380.
Registration for a workshop version (no credit) is available in partnership with the Global Ethnodoxology Network (GEN) – see here.
In this course, students will learn to help a community recognize, value, and plan to use its own arts to meet local needs and goals. The course provides a compact overview of the Creating Local Arts Together (CLAT) model of community engagement. The CLAT process consists of seven flexible steps grounded in ethnographic and appreciative inquiry approaches: meet a community and its arts; specify goals; select communication genre and content; analyze the genre; spark creativity; improve new works and creative systems; integrate and celebrate for continuity. Students will engage with the model through three pedagogical cycles, culminating in applying it to a real-life context. This course is also available at the undergraduate level by registering for WA2381.
This course prepares students to work with a local community to catalyze the creation of new vernacular Scripture-based and community-development messages in indigenous forms of artistic communication. Students learn to encourage sustainability and integrate these expressions into local community life by designing interactive, dialogue-based learning activities for arts-discovery and arts-creation workshops; mentoring local artists; promoting the dissemination of indigenous Christian works; and encouraging the positive self-identity that these forms may engender.
UK – Spring semester with two-week INTENSIVE on campus at All Nations Christian College in the UK from March 20 – March 31, 2023. DALLAS – May-extended semester with two-week INTENSIVE on campus in Dallas from July 10 – July 21, 2023.
This course teaches a holistic, interactive approach to engaging Scripture and relevant arts in the healing process for people who suffer from the mental, emotional, and spiritual effects of trauma. The course combines biblical truths with basic mental health principles expressed in ways that can be easily applied in many contexts. Students learn to address both beliefs and emotions damaged by trauma in their own lives and in the lives of others through participatory learning methods as well as through engaging with their fellow students in a small group context. In particular, this course will emphasize the importance of expressive arts in trauma healing. Students will understand and be able to articulate and demonstrate the role, the value, and the effectiveness of using relevant arts in trauma healing from a historical and contemporary perspective. Students will be able to promote emotional and spiritual healing in traumatized communities through the use of local expressive arts existing in those communities.
Crafted as a “blended” course, a required two-week period of on-campus participatory classes is preceded and followed by online reading and writing assignments.
The course is offered during Spring with a two-week intensive in the UK or during May Extended with a two-week intensive on campus in Dallas.
Note: This course is offered in collaboration with the American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing Institute (THI) and the Trauma Healing Alliance. In addition to earning DIU course credit, students who demonstrate readiness and complete two approved ATH healing groups according to ATH guidelines will be considered for certification by THI as Apprentice Facilitators in trauma healing.
This course trains students to perform initial structural analysis of musical, verbal, dramatic, dance, and visual features of an ethnolinguistic community’s artistic genres. Such analyses contribute vitally to local communities’ efforts to address their needs and aspirations. Instructional methodologies include participation in these arts.
This course involves learning the performance and artistic skills needed for cross-cultural participation in one of the artistic traditions of a community. Emphasis is on developing an understanding of how to perform within the context of a chosen tradition, including researching this tradition and how it functions artistically and socially in its community. The choice of ethnic ensemble or mentoring relationships will vary depending upon the type of student need and availability of instructors. The student will take initiative in choosing and engaging with their mentor, in consultation with the course head. This course may be retaken if the genre studied is completely different from a previous session.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
This course will guide the student through rigorous investigation of an active artistic tradition, exploring the distinctive features of the tradition through ethnographic and form analysis. By engaging in analytical methods appropriate to the chosen art form, students will produce an ethnographically-grounded analysis of a work or works from that artistic tradition.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
This course builds on the foundations established in the Arts and Trauma Healing course. It explores culturally appropriate approaches to trauma healing, including contextualized arts, community/collective healing, and the role of spirituality in healing. It focuses on developing and honing facilitation skills and provides ongoing practice in class as well as leading two healing groups.
This course has a unique World Arts topic and syllabus for each offering. It may be repeated when topic changes with permission of your graduate advisor.
This course is used for an individual student/s to study with a professor outside of the regularly scheduled course offerings. An Independent Study Permission form must be completed and submitted to Academic Affairs.
The X in the course number will be replaced by a number from 1-6 specifying the number of thesis credits taken in the term for which you are registering. Students cannot register for thesis credits on their own. Communicate with the Registrar, either directly or via your academic advisor, and the Registrar will register you for the number of thesis credits you want to take.
By permission of graduate advisor; graded P/F; may be repeated.
Students will confront a selection of theories that are important to current research and fieldwork in the arts and humanities. The course readings will include primary sources and current engagements with relevant theories. Students will engage with these readings, seek out related resources in their own areas of specialty, and demonstrate synthesis of these ideas with their area of focus.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
This course looks at World Arts through five lenses: scriptural foundations guiding arts engagement; cultural analysis for valuing the complexity of artistic expression in multi-cultural and diaspora settings; historical perspectives demonstrating how artistic traditions have responded to power, politics, resources, and agency; missiological reflection on communication models employed by faith communities exhibiting creative embrace of the arts; and liturgical implications of this study for integrating arts in the church’s worship.
This course explores the biblical, historical, theological, and cultural principles of ethnodoxology for cross-cultural workers, community leaders, worship facilitators, and academic leaders. Students are prepared to analyze current ethnodoxological trends and perform original research, thereby expanding the boundaries of this emerging discipline.
This course requires a 2-week INTENSIVE on campus during the May-Extended period.
Training people in the principles of world arts, whether in primarily monocultural or cross-cultural contexts, requires an understanding of effective teaching methods. In this course, students will explore the theories, methodologies, and philosophies of effective community arts engagement models. They will learn how to apply ethnographic research methods to demonstrate how teaching and learning can be adapted for particular social contexts.
This course requires a 2-week INTENSIVE on campus during the May-Extended period.
Religious faith is expressed through language and artistic communication. In this course, students will investigate some of the major themes in the interaction between religion and the arts. They will then look at a selection of case studies of religious traditions and their use of artistic communication genres. Having looked at the use of music, visual art, drama, dance, oral verbal arts, and other arts domains as applied by practitioners of various religious traditions, students will then investigate the use of the arts in the religious life of their chosen research communities.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
The focus of this class is the artistic genres in evidence within the student’s chosen research communities. Students will be mentored through a process of discovery, organization, and analysis, emerging with a more comprehensive picture of the artistic activities and their formal characteristics within a community or region. This process will result in the formulation or refining of a dissertation research question.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
This course will guide the student through rigorous investigation of an artistic tradition, exploring the distinctive features of the tradition through ethnographic and form analysis. By engaging in analytical methods appropriate to the chosen art form, students will produce an ethnographically grounded analysis of a corpus of works from that artistic tradition, expanding the currently available knowledge about that tradition.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
Scholarship demands clear planning and structure for research projects, along with effective writing and communication skills. Students in this class will hone their abilities in designing good research topics, questions, and data-gathering strategies. They will also learn to write with greater precision and clarity, making an in-depth study of style and usage in English through selected readings and rigorous practice and coaching. Through this study, students will gain skills in communicating with a wide range of audiences, furthering the contribution their research makes.
Note: This course requires access to an internet connection capable of supporting Zoom class meetings that will be scheduled around students’ availability.
