Hello! My name is Chase and I am a '25 from South Carolina. I'm currently considering studying more film scoring and video game composition to learn about writing music for movies and games! But when I'm not hanging out with friends or doing classwork, you can find me composing music. I'm involved in the Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble (DCWE), Dartmouth Chamber Orchestra (DCO), and the fraternity Zeta Psi.
As someone who did not know the ins and outs of marine policy, I loved learning about aspects of the blue economy. This class encourages us to be aware of the human aspect of marine problems regarding coastal erosion, pollution, and climate change. Professor Webster is the coolest!
I could not recommend this class enough to anyone who goes to this school! Professor Beaudoin has truly influenced me as both a musician and a student. We learn the music from the 1800's to present day including famous composers like Tchaikovsky, but also music by Beyonce and even the music of Dartmouth's professors. This is much more than a music history class. It is a class about music, our lives, and exploring the concept of sonder through musical lens.
If you're scared of coding or have a love for music, this is the class for you. This computer science class is cross-listed with music to teach students how to code using a language called processing to learn the basic principles of design through coding. We created several projects throughout the term, but Professor Casey really taught me that there is more to music than I think. For my final, I created an interactive keyboard which created a visual effect for each key that created music which made it a musical instrument! Genuinely such an amazing and fun class that I think people should consider.
Although this class is only offered during the F.I.R.E. study abroad program, it was such an amazing class. I absolutely adored having Professor Canepa teach us about Italy from its politics, music, food, and much much more. This class taught me hands on what Italian culture is through visits to famous landmarks, food tastings, or tours of Italian regions. If you don't want to study abroad, I suggest taking a class with Professor Canepa because she truly is one of my favorite professors I have had yet.
FallHanover, New Hampshire
I was on an off term, but decided to live on campus to join a fraternity and work in town. I took the time to write music for one of my friend's short films and learned a lot about the film music industry.
Dr. Moseley has been one of my most favorite professors by far. I have loved taking this class to divulge into my musical passion through creating music and learning about ways to create music. If you are interested in taking a music class, I highly recommend Dr. Moseley if you find a class with him that interests you!
I took this class with composer Miguel Kertsman who was incredibly knowledgeable in every type of compositional technique that I wanted. I studied electronic music composition with him to understand music digital signal processing better.
Although I'm not a fan of reading literature for the classroom, this class completely changed the way I perceive literature. I adored this class with Prof. Hollister as it engaged with the dissections of film, novels, and short stories regarding how humanity views the end of the world.
I took an off-term this Fall, but I decided to sit in on a class on how to arrange music for strings and woodwinds! After many hours of long work, I had a piece performed and recorded by professional musicians that I worked on in the class!
This has to be arguably one of my favorite classes I have taken at Dartmouth with one of the most qualified and talented professors! Throughout the term, I mixed eight different songs of all different genres and learned the ins and outs of sound engineering. This means figuring out the best ways to create and produce music in the industry. Now, I feel confident publishing my own music and have started helping others publish theirs too by working on their projects!
Jodie Mack's "History of Visual Music" truly changed my Dartmouth career. In their class, students learn about the ways artists has dealt with the intersection of sound and sight through film, sculpture, and live performance. Throughout the term, students present two films or performances of their own creative works. Now, Professor Mack is one of my advisors for my thesis which is a long-form piece of visual music!
SummerGreer, SC
During this Summer, I spent time at home with my parents while teaching at a high school marching band. I took a lot of time to write music to prepare my composition portfolio for grad school applications and took time to visit friends before we graduate!
Throughout this year, I am working on a film entitled "Queer Idyll." You can read more about the senior fellowship and my project on the blog, or at the link on above. My favorite part of my research and project this term has been visiting farms owned or cared for by queer individuals. I have witness so many amazing stories, beautiful locations, and friendly people!
For those of you who do not know me, I am a music major with the intention of composing music for film and media or teaching. That means I take music classes almost all the time so that I can better prepare myself for creating interesting, polished music. However, Dartmouth is a liberal arts college which has distributive requirements to help create a general knowledge for its students to improve their intellectual capabilities. So, this term I decided to take another distributive class to help me fulfill my graduation requirements.
Currently, I am taking Comparative Literature 18.04: Climate Change, Fiction, and the Apocalyptic Imaginary—a comparative literature class on the essence of our existence with regards to climate change and our futures. The course is taught by Professor Lucas Hollister of the French and Italian Languages and Literatures Department whose areas of specialization focus on 20th/21st-century French literature, ecocriticism, and theories of popular culture. To keep in mind, it is only week four in the Summer term right now, so I definitely love this class to write specifically about it. The course description and syllabus show that the class will focus on apocalyptic imagery of environmental degradation in the contemporary genre of fiction. With this, it seems we are going to become increasingly interested with how the arts generate and imagine future possibilities of our existence.
Three books I will read in the next five weeks for the class!
In our first two weeks, I have mostly read academic, theoretical articles for the class focusing on what it means to have climate anxiety and having a reaction towards death. As of now, the class has started to read fictional short stories based on disasters and reactions towards the implication of death. Although it is a literature class, we are watching several movies to help us understand and compare themes related to the course. I am most excited about the film we are watching this week: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) directed by Hiyao Miyazaki. It is an animated film about a pacifist who attempts to prevent war from destroying their planet.
With my two weeks of knowledge in this course, I have already started to associate a lot of the art I studied in high school with the ideas of the noir and imaginative futures that this class has taught me. I'm glad that I decided to take my literature distributive class this term, as this class has made me incredibly excited about finding a new academic excitement of mine.
One of the staple characteristics of the D-Plan is the off-term, a term in which you are not taking classes! Most students at Dartmouth will take at least one off-term, and this winter happens to be my turn! What will I be doing?
It's hard to believe that it has been a year since I wrote my first end-of-fall-term reflection. It felt like only yesterday that I stepped into my dorm room this September, eager to reunite with my friends.
