Please note: Due to on-campus construction projects during summer 2012, there will be no Hollinsummer program in 2012. Hollinsummer will be back in 2013!

What classes are offered?

 

You'll take two different classes during Hollinsummer — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. No matter what your interests might be, you'll find something to both challenge and delight you. Choose two classes from the following list.

Sample classes:

For middle school and high school students

(note: high school and middle school students will be in separate classes)

Acting Classes
If you love the spotlight, step right up. These classes are designed to give actors training in a range of skill sets, including basic acting, auditioning, voice, movement, and improvisation. Our goal is to give students the tools they need to expand their vocal, emotional, and physical range in order to create dynamic characters on stage. You’ll participate in exercises that not only build ensemble and trust but also infuse confidence in your acting ability.

Creative Writing
Hollins' creative writing program is among the best of its kind in the nation. Working alongside other bright and talented students, you'll gain greater insight into the ways writers develop ideas into a finished product. You'll have the chance to write both poetry and fiction in workshop-based classes. Exercises are designed to prompt you to write original works in your own voice with an understanding of techniques. You'll also keep a journal and do free writing, revision, and rewriting, always working toward finished pieces. All writing students contribute to an anthology that is published at the end of the program.

Exploring Pottery
You'll have a chance to make useful and decorative objects as you experiment with constructing pinch pots, slab pots, and coiled pots. You'll also explore the basics of wheel throwing. Work will be fired in the kiln and ready for you to take home at the end of the class.

Finding Hidden Meanings: Politics and Literature
Is there a political message in the story of Chicken Little? Stuart Little? How does The Lord of the Rings differ from Harry Potter? Most works of fiction contain ideas about human nature that have immediate and obvious political implications. We’ll search for these ideas and critique them, in works from the Western tradition and elsewhere. We’ll even try our hand at fiction writing. By the end of the summer, you’ll never read fiction, or even watch TV commercials, in the same way.

LEADership for Life
This class is for the sarcastic and sassy, the shy and reserved, and everyone in between. What works and what doesn’t in handling conflict? How can you do it better? How do you speak to be heard and what do you listen for to come out ahead in your conversations? Need to assert yourself more? Need to rein it in and refine your existing leadership skills? This class will give you the push to be a better you, however you define that. They don’t call us leadership boot camp for nothing!

Modern Dance
Here's your opportunity to put your ideas in motion. Through visualization, imaging, and imagination studies, you'll explore using your body as an expressive instrument. Both experienced and inexperienced dancers are encouraged to improvise, make their own dances, and perform.

Painting
This class will be an introduction to oil painting, emphasizing proper use of materials, and skills of observation. You'll learn about color dynamics and how the properties of value, hue, and intensity contribute to making a painting. Open to beginning or experienced painters. A lab fee of $100 will cover oil paints, brushes, and canvases.

For high school students only:

Explorations in Forensic Chemistry
How would you like to be a crime scene analyst or a forensic lab scientist for two weeks? If you enjoy watching the hit "CSI" TV shows, then you'll enjoy this course. Collect the evidence! Use the equipment! Solve the crimes!

A French Childhood: Une enfance française
What makes a French child’s experience different from that of an American child? Did you know that Babar and the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Mother Goose fairytales were all of French origin? In this class, we immerse ourselves in the world of French children’s literature, animated films, nursery rhymes, songs, and games. We act out scenes from the Countess de Ségur, write our own children’s story, and learn how French children’s literature has evolved from 17th-century fairytales to 21st-century comic strips. And how can we understand a French childhood if we do not learn to make and eat petits pains au chocolat and other French gastronomical delights? Taught in French.

Her Ideas in Motion: Film Camp (maximum of 9 students)
This class fosters creativity through documentary and narrative filmmaking. You’ll be introduced to the various stages of production: script writing, interviewing, camera techniques, and video editing using industry-standard software. You’ll go on scouting excursions and star in your own productions. You’ll edit using real footage, mark and trim clips in a timeline, add music, filters, transitions, titles, and credits—and upload it to YouTube.

Her Ideas in Motion: Web Camp (maximum of 12 students)
Web designers have to be part artist, part programmer, and part technician. In this Web design course, you’ll storyboard and design effective Web site layouts, learn about efficient file structures, learn to code in raw HTML, and discover emerging Internet technologies. You’ll build a Web site from the ground up, taking into account factors such as image optimization, page load speed, cross-browser compatibility, Flash animation, cascading style sheets, and more

Intelligence, Creativity, and Politics
In this class we’ll investigate some of the current ideas concerning how to detect and measure "creative" high school students, who are often not the same students who score well on the SAT, ACT, and other so-called cognitive tests. Will these original thinkers be different from students who get high grades and do well on standardized tests? Using case studies, games, and simulations, we’ll examine these thinkers’ ways of looking at, thinking about, and acting toward politics and government. And we’ll talk about what this would mean for the U.S. government in action.

Photography
Here's a chance to immerse yourself in traditional black-and-white photography. You'll learn how to develop negatives, make high-quality black- and-white prints, and mount prints for presentation. You'll use a Holga camera, an inexpensive "toy" camera that uses medium-format film. When combined with good darkroom technique, the results can be very sophisticated. $100 materials fee.

Psychology: The Human Mind
How do you think? How do you learn? How do you dream? "The Human Mind" is an owner's manual for the brain. Find out about the effects of drugs, the causes of schizophrenia, the ways that music can affect moods. Does hypnosis really work? Can you learn happiness? We'll investigate memory, intelligence, biofeedback, the ways you deal with others, and the ways others deal with you.