The role of the artist has always varied from performer, composer, author, and scholar, to administrator, community organizer, social entrepreneur, and activist. From John Cage to Kendrick Lamar, artists and their work both inform and reflect the joys, dreams, nightmares, and horrors of our ever dense and intermingled world. This course will offer students a survey and analysis of selected works by major artists and activists, and the complex artistic, social, and cultural impact of the artist as activist. The works of Bach, Beethoven, Nina Simone, Bjork, Bill T. Jones, and others, will provide examples for analysis, discussion, and class-modeling. Students will have the opportunity to engage in open, public panel discussions with distinguished, internationally recognized artists and activists, such as Lord Jamar Allah, founding member of the activist rap group, Brand Nubians, and Opal Tometi, founding member of the Black Lives Matter movement; learn how to contextualize their own work within a personal, appropriate, activist dialogue; and perform in a culminating concert, conceived by all of the participants, towards a mutually selected activist program of works and multi-disciplinary presentation. This course will be taught by Dr. Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR). Roumain's acclaimed work as a composer and a violinist has spanned more than two decades, and has been commissioned by venerable artists and institutions worldwide. Proving that he's "about as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets" (New York Times), DBR is perhaps the only composer whose collaborations span the worlds of Philip Glass, Bill T. Jones, Savion Glover and Lady Gaga.