Engaging with Boston Culture and History

All first-year seminars share an emphasis on navigating the Berklee experience, building a foundation for success as a student and an artist, and creating a sense of community among students and faculty. This seminar’s unique focus is on the city and institutions that we call home. Students will explore Boston including their immediate surroundings, and will learn how historical and contemporary issues inform the city and its citizens. In addition, students will learn about the history of Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, so that they can better appreciate the institutions and how they weave into the city’s fabric. This course helps students discover the city in which they are living and advocate for issues facing students, residents, and artists. It creates a safe, reflective space for discourse and debate. It gives students tools to put their own and their classmates’ beliefs and values in context, and expose their own biases. Students will draw upon their skills and concerns as artists to reach for a more informed, nuanced, and open-minded grasp of connections between a city, its people, history, and culture.