1998-1999 Culture Text and Language Program OfferingsReturn to Index
Aesthetics: Music as Discourse
This group contract will combine listening to music of a particular time and place with study of concurrent developments in the aesthetics of music, both theory and practice. Together the group will investigate music that developed during three periods of rapid and profound change in Western sensibilities - perhaps Ars Nova during the emergence of relatively widespread literacy in the 13th and 14th centuries, then Romanticism in music during the political and economic upheavals of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, concluding with the attack on tonality in the unsettling first decades of the 20th century. In addition, each student will carry out her or his own study of how musical activity was transformed during a period of broader change, defending a point of view on how music both responded to and contributed to larger cultural developments. Results of these projects will be presented to the group. Credit awarded in music aesthetics, music history and cultural studies.Total: 16 credits. Students may enroll in a four-credit course with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for further studies in the humanities, cultural studies and music.This program is also listed under First-Year Programs.
American Fictions
Travel Component: NoneIn American Fictions, the students and faculty will read, discuss and write about some of the best novels and short stories written by Americans in the last 150 years. We will read selections from such authors as: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Katherine Anne Porter, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Eudora Welty, John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Donald Barthelme, Cynthia Ozick, Joyce Carol Oates, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy. We will also read fiction by contemporary authors who are not yet as well known. We will read and discuss these works of fiction in historical context. To do this we will read biographies of American authors, study the history of American thought and social institutions and, for a comparative perspective, read selected works of French and Russian authors who either influenced or were influenced by American writers of fiction. We will also examine perspectives of other commentators on these works by reading literary criticism and reviews. For each author we take up in American Fictions, our starting point will be the fiction itself: our experience of reading it and the craft of analyzing it. As students of fictional technique, we will ask, "How does the author do that?" We will pursue this question not in the spirit of an autopsy but in ways that take us into the artist's perspective on his or her art, society and experience. Our aim is to learn how prose fiction comes into being and speaks to us in the many ways that it does. Most writers of fiction hope their work will be honored by this kind of intelligent, informed, passionate appreciation. Most of them also would like to see some cash for their efforts. Yet it has always been extremely hard to make a living as a writer of fiction in America. Why has this been so? What does this fact say about American society? About the vocation of writing in this country? Pursuing such questions should help us uncover the writer's role in our society and clarify the purpose of fiction in our lives. Credit awarded in American novel and short story and American intellectual history.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies, including graduate study, in humanities, teaching, journalism and law.
Black Literary Beacons: Essayists
This advanced study in African American literature will focus on major essayists, likely W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, bell hooks and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The aim will be to give students an in-depth introduction to the works and lives of major African American writers. In addition to expanding students' background in Black writing generally, the studies will also aim to clarify the significance of the writers under consideration and demonstrate their influences on other American writing. While the foci of these studies will be limited to a few authors/works, students will have opportunities to do research into the works and lives of other African American writers. This program will require lots of reading, serious research, careful writing and at least one public presentation. Credit awarded in African American literature, history and expository writing.Total: 16 credits.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in arts, teaching, research, and politics.
Celebration: Myth, Ritual and Culture, Quebec-Häiti
This two-quarter coordinated studies program will draw from literature, music, film and folklore as well as myth, religion, psychology and French language studies. We will explore the roles of myth and ritual in the creation and survival of cultures. We believe that in folklore, in the music, tales and celebrations of a people, the essential underlying structures of culture can be found. Myth, we believe, can reveal not only a culture's primordial moments, its origins and ancestors, but also a culture's desired future, its projected ideal. We will study the importance of performance; in performance the separation of actor and spectator, past and present, is transcended. The telling and retelling of folktales reinforces cultural continuity and demands individual virtuosity. Our study centers on three culture groups: the French-Canadians of Quebec and northern New England, the Cajuns of Louisiana and the Haitians of the Caribbean basin. These cultures are unified through their experience of French Colonialism and its impact on their language and cultural identities. All these cultures are rich accretions, cultures that celebrate the diversity of their origins. They provide us with living, vital examples of the process of syncretism, the meshing of disparate elements and emergence of a vital new entity. The integrating of the French cultural experience of rural southwest Louisiana with the structural form of southern hillbilly music yields the curious cultural phenomenon of Cajun music. In Haiti, the worshipping of African gods under the camouflage of Catholicism resulted in voodoo, a rich and intricate new religion. When Cajuns warn, "Lache pas la patate," they mean more than "Don't drop the potato." They invoke the rich tradition, and the responsibility of each Cajun to find self-identity in the repository of cultural traditions. When Cajuns say, "Laisse le bontemps rouler," they invoke the cyclical re-entry into Celebration; into those periods of time outside of time, of mythic time, when creativity and power well up and meet present needs. The meaning and origins of carnival, Mardi Gras, for example, exemplify this celebration. Students will practice image and textual analysis, using such models as R. Barthes and M. Elaide. In this program, we will study cultural richness and diversity using the French experience as focal point. We will study the Acadian exodus to new England and Louisiana, life in Quebec, the Caribbean, et cetera, paying particular attention to the music, the stories and folklore that both unite and separate us. The practical component of our work will concern learning folkloric field observation techniques and ethnography in preparation for field study. Options for Study This program consists of three distinct but related parts. In the fall, all students in the program will study the literature, poetry, folklore and stories of Quebec and Haiti with Tom and Marianne. Upon completion of fall quarter, students who are interested in developing independent projects in cultural awareness and who wish to study the Louisiana and the Cajun experience and perhaps to undertake ethnographic field research will branch off with Tom. Some students may prefer to carry out their research by traveling to another culture while others may opt to stay in the immediate area and tap into a local cultural subset. Those students interested in literature and cultural syncretism of the Caribbean may pursue this course of study with Marianne Bailey and Evelia Romano de Thuesen. Integrated into this program will be four quarter hours of French language study to prepare students for possible fieldwork in French speaking cultures or for continued work in Francophone literature. Credit awarded in folklore, literature, French, history and religion.Total: 16 credits each quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course each quarter with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities and cultural studies.
Contested Realities: Power and Representation in Nations and Communities
This program will examine the contested terrain of "reality" - who defines it, which views are dominant and how we can redefine reality by making alternative images. We will examine how narratives of collective identity are constructed through literature, film, history, the mass media and other representational forms. While paying critical attention to mainstream media and alternative representations, we will explore the development of national and community identity, the power relations underlying representations of these identities and the forms of conflict they create. Finally, we will learn skills in video production, oral history and political analysis with the goal of working with community groups struggling to represent their own sense of identity, history and reality. Our approach will be international, national and local, developing case studies of local communities and national movements. The study of Jewish, Arab, Latin American and United States nationalisms exposes the ways narratives of identity construct and manipulate representations of gender, class and ethnicity. By analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese War and U.S.-Latin American conflict and tensions, we can understand how power relations are deployed to "construct contested realities." We will also look at contested realities within social movements, as, for instance, in struggles over gender relations within Arab and Jewish societies. Finally, we will look at class, labor and ethnic struggles within Washington state, exploring how social movements have historically been represented and how those forms of representation shape community identity and experience today. Some major goals of this program will be developing critical skills in viewing and reading mainstream media and developing the skills necessary to make images that challenge dominant forms of representation. We will look closely at films and other media forms that support dominant versions of reality, as well as films, literature, histories and analytical texts that resist these "master narratives." We are interested in documentary and experimental forms of representation that question accepted notions of reality and singular historical perspectives, and that are actively constructing alternative versions of history and collective identity. Central to our work will be a focus on community activism. Students will engage in long-term collaborative projects within communities that enable those communities to participate in producing their own representations. These projects may take the form of a documentary or experimental video, an oral history, a research report, a community-based project or another appropriate form of representation. Credit awarded in cultural studies*, community research*, video production, media studies, comparative literature, political economy and oral history.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in video production, community organization and graduate work in political economy, media studies, gender studies and cultural studies.This program is also listed under Expressive Arts and Social Science.
Fictional Sociology
We will begin this program by suggesting that various kinds of therapy and social theory in the late 20th century have succeeded not by reducing suffering but by enlarging suffering's scope. In pursuing this suggestion, we will look closely at how we construct knowledge about people, institutions and social phenomena - marriage, family, school, sexuality, crime, child development, gender, etc. We will devote our initial studies to the range and penetration into people's lives of the Therapeutic mentality. In this program, we will address the Therapeutic by searching for truth and
social justice through particularistic or fictional responses. We intend to
invent a discipline called "fictional sociology." We will enlist Beyond their reading of theory texts, students will focus on modern satire from the 18th century to the present, a body of work that constitutes a distinctively untherapeutic response and which reveals, instead, how base, violent, and selfish impulses tend to take on respectable social forms. The literary and visual background for our work is rich in historical and contemporary models, from Fielding, Swift and Hogarth to more recent writers and photographers who use satiric techniques, among which irony is the major literary trope. In general, our reading of visual and discursive satires will become the background for creating a late 20th century aesthetic that tries to interrupt the wash of standardized, mass-produced images that constitute our reality. Our critique of scientific and popular culture will focus on the idea that social forms lend themselves to re-presentation through the affective knowledges of imaging/art and literature. Students will be asked to integrate their knowledge of literature and their theoretical work with skills in writing, story-telling, photography, or digital imaging. Throughout the two quarters, students will publicly present their work. Our goal will be to interrupt the usual course of our contemporary enthusiasms while resisting the therapeutic turn. Like Foucault, we will attempt to "fiction" a present that, in the tradition of satire, shocks one's audience rather than suggesting humanitarian reforms. This program is intended for advanced students who know they are lost intellectuals, or for photographers looking for a narrative framework, or for creative writers who are tired of sincerity and appealing for sympathy, or science students in search of culture, or sociology buffs who have caught a whiff of possibilities. Credit awarded in cultural studies, literature, social theory and creative writing or imaging or photography.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in writing, social science and humanities.This program is also listed under First-Year Programs.
Field School to Chile
This program's interdisciplinary curriculum will allow participants to study, research and experience political, cultural, artistic, economic, environmental and agricultural concerns currently affecting Chile and South America. This field school will provide practical opportunities to evaluate the neo-liberal model being applied in Chile at the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations. Workshops, conferences and discussions with political and community leaders and grass-roots organizations will explore the direct impact this polemic model is having on the various social sectors of the country. Participants will be immersed in the socio-political and economic reality of a country struggling to overcome underdevelopment. Students are expected to learn about the social, artistic, folkloric and intellectual life of Chile and the different expressions they assume according to class structure. Backgound of Chile: One of the oldest democracies in Latin America - democracy was abruptly interrupted by a military coup d'état between 1973 and 1990 - Chile is rapidly trying to insert itself into a new international world order under the leadership of an elected civilian government. The national economy is proudly exhibited by international organizations as one of the most effective and successful in the Third World. Chilean exports reach all markets around the world and investments in Chile's economy have grown significantly. Programs and projects at all levels are being developed by governmental, private, international and non-governmental organizations. For these reasons the country is changing very fast, not only economically but culturally and politically. Though many Chileans are of European extraction, indigenous traditions are strong in several parts of the country. The desert north, once part of the Inca Empire, preserves important archaeological remains, while Aymara Indians still farm Andean valleys and terraces. South of the heartland are Mapuche Indian communities whose symbolic importance in Chilean life greatly exceeds their political and economic significance. Until the end of the 19th century, the Mapuche maintained an effective and heroic resistance to the southward advance of Chilean rule. Chile's tremendous geographic diversity, and surprising cultural variety, have made it an important destination in its own right. Logistics: The first weeks of the quarter will introduce students to the culture, politics and geography of the country. Also, working groups will form to undertake research projects that reflect the interests of the participants. Once in Chile, the group will travel around the country visiting governmental, nongovernmental, private and church development projects in urban and rural areas. Trips to the Andes, rural, urban and mining sectors, the National Congress in the Port of Valparaíso, and meetings with governmental authorities, political leaders and grassroots organizations will be held. Students will have the opportunity to interact with a wide range of the Chilean population to learn and evaluate the effects of economic and cultural changes. Classes, conferences and workshops about this and other topics will be available at University of Chile and other educational and research institutions. Requirements: Students are expected to keep a journal and to work in a group research project (individual projects may be approved after discussion with the faculty). To conduct research, students can travel around the country, consult with people, visit libraries and universities. Students must submit research proposals to the faculty no later than week three of spring quarter. Knowledge of Spanish is not a requirement, but it is highly recommended that students gain familiarity with this language. Though most program activities will be enhanced by knowledge of Spanish, lectures and workshops will be in English. Students may stay in Chile for four or eight weeks. Those who return earlier can complete their work at TESC using material gathered in Chile. Field School Cost: The base price of this field school is approximately $2,700 for those staying for eight weeks, and $2,300 for four-week stays. The field school includes: airfare (round trip Seattle to Santiago to Seattle); tuition and fees in Chile; room and board in the city of Santiago; on-site orientation; program-related expenses; and transportation in the country. The field school costs do not include TESC tuition and fees. Participants must pay a $150 deposit (refundable in certain circumstances) by February 16, 1999. Credit awarded in Latin American studies, cultural studies, conversational Spanish and individual study.Total: 16 credits.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in social sciences, international studies, television production, art, folklore and education.This program is also listed under Culture, Text and Language.
Great British and Irish Moderns: Poetry and Fiction
We will read seven of the principal figures of the modern period in England and Ireland: the collected poetry of Yeats, Eliot and the "English" Auden; and three books each by Conrad, Lawrence and Joyce. Each student will read a different seventh figure in independent study. During poetry seminars each student will deliver one 10- to 15-minute oral presentation per week. Evaluations will focus on the presentations, the student's general contributions to seminar discussion, a paper resulting from independent study and an examination on the novels. Credit awarded in the English novel, poetry and independent study (all upper-division credit).Total: 16 credits.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities and literature.
Hispanic Forms in Life and Art
Hispanic Forms explores the inextricable cultural, historical and linguistic links between Spain and Latin America. During fall and winter quarters, students will be involved in intensive Spanish language classes and seminars conducted in English on the history and literature of Spain and Latin America. Spring quarter, all program work will be done in Spanish, and students will have the opportunity to study in Spain or Ecuador, or to do internships in Olympia-area Latino communities. The program is organized around points of contact between Spain and Latin America, beginning with the Spanish Conquest. During the first half of fall quarter, we will analyze the perspectives from which indigenous people and Spaniards viewed their contact, and the ideas and cultural practices of both groups during the Conquest and the colonial period. For the rest of the quarter, we will return to the medieval period in Spain to gain an understanding of cultural interactions among Christians, Muslims and Jews, and of the ideas and institutions growing out of the Christian "Reconquest" of the peninsula. We will attempt to relate the Reconquest world view and the rise of the Inquisition to the subsequent conquest of the Americas. Winter quarter, we will turn to more "modern" times, with particular attention to Spaniards' and Latin Americans' struggles for indigenous identity: collective and individual notions of "self" and "nation." As Spain's empire had declined in the 17th century and Spanish American viceroyalties moved beyond independence from Spain and into the 20th century, questions arose. The novelists we will read ask: What does it mean to be Spanish in a post-imperial age? How might Latin America, with national identities no longer based on being a colony of Spain, understand its place in the world? How might Latin America determine its own history while struggling with capitalism and modernity, with dictatorships and revolution, and with remaining tensions among indigenous, mestizo and mulatto communities? Readings may include Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes; and novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Luisa Valenzuela and others. Spring quarter, students may opt to study abroad. In Spain, students will attend language school and explore various questions related to that country's present-day view of America and its own colonial/imperial past. In Ecuador, students will live with Ecuadorian families, attend language school and examine indigenous survivors of that past. Some students will choose to do internships in the Olympia area, thereby creating an opportunity for practical interaction with local Latino communities. The group on campus will hold all its seminars in Spanish. First, we will examine the cultural and social impact of the Spanish Civil War. Then we will return to the Americas and explore U. S. Latino and border identities as expressed in literature. Credit awarded in Spanish language, history and literature of medieval Spain, history and literature of colonial Spanish America, contemporary Latin American literature and culture, research and writing and additional equivalencies depending on the country of travel and student projects or internships completed during spring quarter.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in languages, history, literature, writing and international studies.
Horizon: Where Land Meets Sky
This is a two-quarter study of sky, land and the place where the two meet. The study is anthropological, historical and artistic. Together we will read texts that describe the way in which people of many cultures have used the horizon line to create place, time, season and a romance between the celestial and the terrestrial in art, poetry and the imagination. We will understand how the horizon line creates points along which constellations, planets, the sun and the moon appear to rise and set and how buildings and stones have marked these points and now image-makers have celebrated them. During spring quarter we hope to study on site in Northern New Mexico where we will give attention to Anasazi cultures as a part of our group research. Faculty will provide workshops in cultural anthropology, research methodology, drawing and journal writing. Credit awarded in cultural anthropology, anthropology of prehistoric Southwest United States, drawing, art history and research methods.Total: 12 or 16 credits winter quarter and 16 credits spring quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course winter quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in arts and humanities.This program is also listed under Expressive Arts.
Images in Context
Images in Context is a three-quarter program that examines artistic images in painting, literature, photography and film within their social and historical contexts. This program will emphasize the ways a given historical moment impacts the images produced and the stories told within it. Fall quarter we will look at these artistic media at one historical moment when their interactions were most dynamic: Western European Modernism from the 1880s to the 1920s. During this period, painting and photography were freed from the dictates of representation while literature and film reconceptualize space and time. In the second half of the quarter we will examine modernism outside of Europe, assessing the impact of history, politics and social change on representation. Our texts may include Mexican murals, Afro-Cuban poetry and Japanese Western-style painting of the early 20th century. Winter and spring quarters we will consider a particular visual art form at a particular time: specifically, the postwar "cinema of new possibilities" in Japan, Cuba and the United States. In Japan, film was the best medium for simultaneously expressing the existential anxiety and sense of liberation following the defeat and devastation of the war. In Cuba, film captured the exciting possibilities and burning social issues of a post-revolutionary society. In the United States, filmmakers faced McCarthy-era repression while challenging the hegemony of the studio system and its production code. In the spring, we will ask what follows modernism. Are we currently experiencing a paradigm shift as post-industrial societies transform themselves into information societies? What happens to art in the age of information technology and digital reproduction? In the era of globalized dissemination of United States popular culture? Spring projects will be organized around these questions. An important aspect of our work together will be the development of our critical reading and writing skills. We will also acquire or improve our visual literacy skills by examining the ways in which "seeing" is culturally conditioned. We will hone our skills as readers, writers and seers in workshops and through group and individual exercises. Throughout the three quarters there will be weeks set aside for student presentations. Credit awarded in film history and interpretation, literature history and interpretation, visual art history and interpretation and expository writing.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities and expressive arts, cultural studies, art history, media studies and literature.This program is also listed under First-Year Programs and Expressive Arts.
Interpreting English Literature: The Bible, Donne and Milton
In English intellectual history, the practice of interpreting difficult texts written in the vernacular (English, as opposed to Latin) began, flourished and possibly reached its zenith in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The greatest and most often interpreted text was the Bible, in the translation authorized by King James I and published in 1611. This Bible decisively shaped the language, thought, feeling and writing of English-speaking people. It shaped not just our phrases but our images of person, God, community, time, love, hope, fear and salvation. Two of the English Bible's closest and most creative readers were John Donne and John Milton, masters whose prose and poetry is also worthy of close reading and careful interpretation. The first purpose of these studies is to learn to interpret difficult passages in important texts, exemplified by the King James Bible and works by Donne and Milton. The second purpose is to learn how authors carry forth and transform what they read. Credit awarded in English: The Bible as literature; seventeenth century English literature. In post-modern jargon: Influence, misprision and intertextuality.Total: 16 credits. Students may enroll in a four-credit course with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities.
Japan Today
"It is not very often that Westerners get to see the Japanese just as they are. The difficulty we have when we look at Japan - the layers-of-the-onion problem - can be so frustrating that we tend to raise our own screen of assumptions and expectations, or we content ourselves with images of the Japanese as they would like to be seen," wrote Patrick Smith in his "Letter from Japan" for The New Yorker five years ago. Granted that the "layers-of-the-onion problem" is not necessarily confined to the problem of understanding Japan or Japanese people - indeed, most of the problem of knowledge may be rooted in the nature of multifaceted or multilayered reality as well as in the nature of our ultimately subjective perceptions - Smith's pronouncement probably strikes many people as particularly applicable to our knowledge concerning Japan, its culture and its people. Japan Today is a full-time interdisciplinary program devoted to understanding Japan, its culture and its people as they are. This program combines study of the Japanese language with study of Japan through books, films, seminars and workshops. In fall quarter, we will examine postwar Japan. We will emphasize international relations and contemporary society and culture, particularly its popular culture. Winter quarter we will study classical Japan up to the end of World War II. Special emphasis will be placed on the significance of historical legacies in contemporary Japanese society and culture. Credit awarded in Japanese language, film studies, Japanese history and culture, Japanese literature and Japanese society.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in Japanese language and culture, cross-cultural understanding and international relations.
Latin American Short Story
This course will consist of a panoramic study of the development of the short story in Latin America. We will explore the literary movement and its principal authors through readings of the most representative examples. Our topics will progress in chronological order up to the last 20 years. All readings, lectures and seminars will be in Spanish, and throughout the quarter we will be reviewing advanced aspects of Spanish grammar, syntax and vocabulary with particular emphasis on writing and reading skills. Credit awarded in Spanish, Latin American literature and literary theory.Total: 12 or 16 credits. Students may enroll in a four-credit course.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in Latin American studies and literature.
Love/Violence
This coordinated, interdisciplinary program inquires into a central characteristic in the human condition: The ways we think and act, our relationships with each other, institutions in and among societies are grounded in love and violence. These two concepts, rich in meaning and cultural-historical implication, are inseparable even if they trigger psychological disruptions that challenge a person's perceptions and expectations. For that reason, love and violence are the creative forces expressed in arts and literature, and behind all social, political and philosophical systems. In this study, we will use all these cultural constructs to probe at the Core of love and violence and how they have taken shape in America. Texts may include: Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy; Eichmann In Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt; Reel to Real, bell hooks; and more. Films include Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, Birth of a Nation and more. Mass media and popular entertainment will also come under our scrutiny. Students are expected to respond to these critical word/sound/image texts in writing and seminar participation. Additionally, students will carry out independent research that illuminates the nature of love and violence in America. Credit awarded in the relevant areas of American studies, literature, cultural studies, popular culture, political economy, social psychology, sociology, writing, research, social work and human services.Total: 16 credits each quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in American studies, literature, cultural studies, political economy, social psychology, social work and human services.This program is also listed under First-Year Programs.
May I Have This Dance?
Our title has two meanings. It could mean the standard social invitation, but it could also mean: Can I take and own a particular behavior as an expression of my own emotions, feelings, needs? We will inquire about these multiple meanings through the disciplines of psychology and dance. We will use the metaphors of the stage - onstage, offstage - and of the dance - movement through time and space between people - as a way of looking at life and art. We will look at human development as it involves the "dance" of self and society. We will do dance and movement in a studio space regularly. No previous experience in dance is necessary. Students who want more concentrated work in human development/psychology can obtain it in a workshop component of this program. Others may take a course outside the program, with faculty approval. Credit awarded in performance theory*, dance aesthetics*, dance/movement, human development*, psychology and cultural studies.Total: 16 credits each quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course each quarter with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in dance, human development, psychology and performing arts.This program is also listed under Expressive Arts.
Mexico's National Character
Mexico in its own eyes and in the eyes of others is the theme of this Group Contract. The emphasis is on the long, often violently dramatic emergence within Mexico's people of a national character, a national temperament and an awareness of Mexico as a distinct nation, not only politically independent but morally legitimate in its own sense of origins. This emergence has been a protracted birth marked by bloody yet transient victories, pride in past glory, a touching but intransigent faith in imported utopianism, recurrent failure in the face of intractable barriers to self-realization and unquenched conviction in a flawed destiny. It was Mexico's tragic destiny to break with its roots in founding cultures, both aboriginal and European, and to awaken to a problematic ethnic legacy as a nation of complex regional subcultures: aboriginal Mexican, Asian, African and European. With this in mind we will consider broad patterns in the Mexican historical experience, beginning with the feudal centuries following the Spanish Conquest and continuing through the 19th century era of Independence and civil wars; the defeat by the United States; the triumphant popular war against the French; the deceptively peaceful Porfirio Diaz dictator-ship; the Revolutionary Crusade of 1910 to 1940; and finally the materialism and dis-illusioned abandonment of moral idealism that marked the half-century after the Revolution. We will examine the mixture of detachment and sympathy with which Mexicans themselves have viewed their own society, as well as the peculiar ambivalence toward Mexico among Spaniards, French, English, Americans and others as revealed in travel accounts, memoirs, novels, short stories, biography, autobiography and the historical record. This group contract will emphasize the application of concepts in psychohistory and metahistory in examining the influence of race, cultural myth, religion, language, history and geography in determining the cultural identity of Mexico. We will strive toward a realistic assessment of both Mexico's historic path and its present capacity to resolve the traditional tendency toward renewal of civil conflict and find a practical, though perhaps only temporary, solution to ancient social and political dilemmas stemming from a national character forged in the distant past. Credit awarded in history, psychohistory, literature, writing and biography.Total: 16 credits. Students may enroll in a four-credit course with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in education, history, literature, psychology politics and biography.
Natural Histories: Botany, Biography, Community
Travel Component: Overnight field trips.This program uses the naturalist approach to explore patterns of people's lived experience of place, especially in our region. Natural histories are accounts of the lives of humans and other organisms, described in detail and situated in a time and place. They take the form of species accounts, life histories and the stories of a place. We will study stories people tell about themselves, their communities and nature. We will examine how collective prac-tices shape and are shaped by local landscapes and institutions. We will assess current social and environmental conflicts in light of prospects for a sustainable future. During the fall, students will study a piece of land, inventorying plant species, documenting changes and recording oral history of people who've lived there. In winter, the research will involve conversation with practitioners of crafts that can help ground communities in place. Library research skills will be a significant focus in winter. In spring, students will do field projects. Natural Histories will pay close attention to cultural dimensions of inhabitation, including Native American outlooks, bioregionalism, gender, class and religious consciousness. Readings will span community studies, environmental studies, literature and social thought. This program offers students (1) training in ethnographic and ecological research meth-ods; (2) experience writing in journal and doc-umentary forms; (3) a foundation in social theory and communitarian philosophy with concern for morally responsible action. Work will be challenging and time demanding. We welcome first-year students who are ready for intensive engagement in their studies. Natural Histories is ideal for upper-division students who want to specialize in humanistic or ecosystemic inquiry while studying both as an integrated whole. Credit awarded in social theory, community and cultural studies, botany, literature, oral history and environmental history.Total: 16 credits each quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course each quarter with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in teaching, natural resource management, community planning, social work, history, environmental policy and the humanities.This program is also listed under First-Year Programs and Environmental Studies.
Odyssey
Travel Component: Yes, seven- to eight-week odyssey.This program is for people who are literate, self-directed, responsible, energetic, resourceful, imaginative and adventurous. It is a two-quarter, interdisciplinary, advanced group contract for people who want to read, write about and discuss Homer's Odyssey with others, and who want to plan, undertake and complete an individual, self-directed odyssey of their own. During winter quarter, each person will read and write about Homer's Odyssey, will participate in two book seminars a week on Homer's Odyssey and will do independent, self-directed research, writing and speaking on Homer, Odysseus, Troy, oral traditions, Penelope, Mediterranean geography and ancient Greek Gods, Goddesses, men, justice, women, poetry, royal families, art, children, weapons, cities and villages, work, sex, sailing ships and/or other topics that strike the person's interests. Each person also will participate in one workshop a week on planning, undertaking and completing an individual odyssey to a distant location. During the first week of spring quarter, each person will participate in program meetings of farewell, and then will begin and complete his or her seven- to eight-week, individual, self-directed odyssey. Each person's odyssey will begin at the person's Puget Sound area home, will be to a destination at least 300 miles from the person's Puget Sound area home and include the person's return to his or her Puget Sound area home and each person will travel to his or her destination and return by foot, skate board, roller blade, ski, dog sled, bicycle, horse, wheelchair, boat and/or bus, and each person will travel without a human companion. During the ninth week of the program, each person will make, in one form or another, an account of his or her odyssey, and then, during the tenth week of the quarter, each person will present his or her account to the program. Credit awarded in studies in literature and philosophy and independent field project.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities, arts and social sciences.
Other Minds, Other Bodies: From Sappho to Jupiter
Other Minds, Other Bodies: From Sappho to Jupiter is a one-quarter, full-time program for students who want to conceive, design, research, work on, complete and present an individual or small-group project, in any medium, on the nature of an other mind and/or an other body, and who want to do this work in the company of others. The program faculty will support student individual and small-group project work by offering weekly individual conferences with students; by offering a weekly, all-program intensive journal workshop, book seminar and critique workshop; and if an appropriate opportunities arises, by leading field trips and welcoming guests. Credit awarded depends on the nature of each individual's final project.Total: 16 credits.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities and arts.
Russia
This program explores Russia from the ninth century to the present. Fall quarter covers Russian history, literature, and culture from their beginnings to the end of the 18th century; winter quarter focuses on the 19th century; and spring quarter concentrates on the 20th century, including the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Readings may include chronicles, epics, saints' lives, historical texts, folklore, tales and the literature of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Herzen, Gorky, Blok, Zamiatin, Mayakovsky, Esenin, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Ginzberg, Yevtushenko, Petrushevskaya, Tolstaya and Rasputin. Intensive elementary Russian may be offered during summer 1998. Less-intensive elementary and intermediate Russian will be offered as modules during fall, winter and spring quarters 1998-99. Students may register for the modules apart from the Russia program. All students are encouraged to enroll in a language class appropriate for their level; however, the Russia program will also be open to students who do not wish to take language classes. The Russian language classes will be open to qualified students outside the program if space is available, but students who intend to enroll full-time in the Russia program will be given first preference. Students enroll each quarter for 12 credits. To earn full credit, a student must regularly attend weekly lectures, participate in weekly book seminars, complete required readings and submit assignments in a timely manner. Russian language modules provide an additional four credits and related modular workshops may also be offered for four credits on subjects such as Russian cultural history, an individual author such as Chekhov and Russian and Soviet film. Given sufficient interest, the faculty will arrange, or direct students to, study programs in Russia during summer 1999. Credit awarded in Russian history, Russian literature and Russian culture.Total: 12 credits each quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in diplomatic service or international business and trading corporations, as well as graduate studies in international affairs and in Russian and Slavic studies.This program is also listed under First-Year Programs.Take a Look!: A Study in Perception
Take A Look! is a one-quarter group contract for intermediate and advanced students interested in perception in general and visual perception in particular. We proceed from the premise that most people are taught at an early age to curb their perceptual abilities; that is, they learn to look without learning to see. Our goal is to restructure that concept. Students in the program will undertake exercises in systematic observation that will teach them to become more fully cognizant of their environment. They will document these exercises in their field journal, paying particular attention to how their perception of, and relationship to, their environment is changing as they move through the process. To achieve these goals we will undertake a number of activities. Through a series of readings, workshops, lectures, films and field trips, students will be exposed to topics as far-ranging as figure drawing and sociolinguistics, birdwatching and geology. Students will be required to keep a journal chronicling activities and observations about the program and about personal progress with perceptual skills. Students will work in teams and over the course of the program conduct field observations that they will document in their journals. At the end of the quarter, teams of students will give presentations based on their field work to the entire program. Credit awarded in drawing, journal writing, field research and studies in visual perception.Total: 16 credits.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in journalism and humanities.This program is also listed under Expressive Arts.The French-Latin American Connection: Arts and Literature
Since the beginning of the 19th, the resonance of French culture, aesthetics and philosophies has been strongly heard in Latin American artistic contexts. French poetic and narrative models still influence contemporary Latin American writers. However, during the past several decades we have witnessed the transformation of that unilateral dynamic of influence into a more mutual exchange that has allowed French thinkers like Foucault to find their theories predicted and motivated by Latin American artists. French thinking has been enriched and modified from the 1930s onward through the development of Latin American artists' identity and voice. A good example of this exchange is how the "marvelous real" movement defined by the Cuban writer Carpentier, and best represented by Gabriel García Márquez, became one of the primary models of contemporary French and French Caribbean narrative. Did Latin America adopt or adapt the French trends? How did processes of cultural syncretism impact the arts? How have the connections between France and the cultures of Latin America evolved during the past century? Which parallels can be established between the 19th and 20th centuries' fins de siècle? We will proceed chronologically by analyzing examples from literature and the plastic arts along with studies of their informing theories and philosophies. Students will choose between a French language module and a Spanish language module that will be taught within the program. The language modules will maintain thematic relationships with program content, while emphasizing the development of the four basic language skills: listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing. Credit awarded in Latin American intellectual history, French intellectual history, art history, French and Francophone literature, Latin American literature, Spanish language and French language.Total: 16 credits each quarter. Students may enroll in a four-credit course with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in Latin American studies, literature, French and francophone studies and art history.
The Meaning of History
This is a group contract in the philosophy of history and the history of ideas. Its concern is not with history but with the patterns of history. Its aim is to survey the great theories of interpretation in the European tradition concerning the origin, structure and meaning of time, causation and events; to examine the significance of the individual in history; to determine whether there is progress or cyclic recurrence in history, or if there is a purpose in history that transcends the fortunes and misfortunes of a particular generation; and to reflect on the theme of the rise and fall of nations that has preoccupied historical thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will not be directly concerned with the history of great events, such as the barbarian invasions of the ancient world, the fall of Rome, the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution or the First World War, but with the insights they provide concerning historical destiny. In other words, events themselves will be of less concern than their mythic, metaphysical or metahistorical meaning. In this connection we will read both religious and secular views on historical causation and the roots of vast trends in historical development such as the liberation of the individual from traditional sources of authority; the advent of rationalism, materialism and egalitarianism; the emergence of the nation-state; the disappearance of religious faith; the birth of mass movements; and the beginning and end of civilizations. In addition to studying modern critical assessments of explanatory theory, we will strive toward philosophical insight which accounts for the fate of the individual in relation to the destiny of civilization in order to meaningfully place ourselves within the context of the historical moment. Readings may include The City of God, St. Augustine; The Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun; Discourse on Universal History, Bossuet; The New Science, Vico; On Sovereignty, De Maistre; The Tragedy of Man, Madach; On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, Carlyle; Reflections on History, Burckhardt; Reason in History, Hegel; Pattern and Meaning in History, Dilthey; The Decline of the West, Spengler; The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega; and The Idea of History, Collingwood. This group contract is intended for third-year and fourth-year students in humanities and social science. It will be structured around lecture, reading, discussion, writing and short student presentations. Students in this group contract should have a strong background in historical studies and be prepared for a rigorous exchange of ideas in seminar. Credit awarded in philosophy, history of ideas, literature and writing.Total: 16 credits. Students may enroll in a four-credit course with faculty signature.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in history, philosophy, education and law.
Victim Rhetoric: Chained, Choice, Change
Are citizens who suffer from injustice and inequality victims of our political-economic system, our institutions or our public policies? Or could people be victims of their own irresponsibility, failed creatures who lack the strength to be successful in life's enterprises? Or might they just be victims of circumstance, pawns in some senseless, random, yet hostile cosmic game? Legions of politicians, pundits and scholars line up behind a range of viewpoints in this debate, usually trying to portray others as villainous or at least woefully ignorant. All the while, ordinary people struggle to make their way through circumstances of poverty, family disintegration and addiction. During fall quarter, this program examines the debates that contain a range of rhetoric mounted by key players within the arenas of welfare reform, family values, gambling and political campaigning. A fall quarter module on survey research methodology teaches the skills necessary to undertake the winter quarter research project. In winter, students conduct their own surveys on some aspect of fall quarter's social issues. Then in spring quarter, students participate in internships where they see the real world process and outcome of the rhetorical skirmishes they studied. Probable seminar readings include: The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families, Stephanie Coontz; Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society, David Popenoe; The Luck Business: The Devastating Consequences and Broken Promises of America's Gambling Explosion, Robert Goodman; Keeping Women and Children Last, Ruth Sidel; Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, Richard Kluger; All's Fair: Love, War and Running for President, Mary Matalin and James Carville. Credit awarded in American studies, contemporary American issues, social science research methods and public policy analysis.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in law, public policy, human services and campaign management.
Victorian Studies: British Culture and Society 1837-1901
The years during which Queen Victoria was the titular head of the British Isles and Empire were exciting, challenging and fertile almost beyond belief. There were vast changes in society, mode of life, faith and meaning, art and music, politics, emancipation, manufacture and commerce, philosophy and value, living and work, population and demographics, science and technology, literacy and learning. Along with change came conflicts and crises, as prosperity, unrivaled material success, and vast world power were shadowed by slums and impoverished workers (including children), challenges to world markets, political upheaval, and the sounds of war. Like the United States a century later, England was the model of prosperity, growth and power for the 19th century; it was a culture moving from the zenith of greatness to the beginnings of decline, both internal and external. Victorian England was not only a culture of change and crisis, it was also a culture of creativity; there was a veritable explosion of activity in poetry, science, history, architecture, essays, art and fiction. Because of technological advances in papermaking and printing, the sound of huge presses running around the clock were common, and the era of mass readership with books, journals, papers and magazines to serve them ushered in the world of modern communication. The documents that we will read, consider and study pose central human questions about the consequences of prosperity and power and propose a far more central role for literature and art than in any previous culture. Many students of culture see in these artifacts the foundations of our modern world; most see one of those rare times when we have a rich vein of documents of unusually high artistic merit, so that our historical needs and our love of great writing can be jointly served. The unusually extensive reading list will include: Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus essays; Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte; Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte; Shirley, Charlotte Bronte; John Ruskin, selected writings on art and society; Charles Darwin, selected writings on biology and science; The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Edward Fitzgerald; The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, "George Eliot" (Mary Ann Evans); Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, "Lewis Carroll" (Charles Dodgson); Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope; Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte; Essays in Criticism, Matthew Arnold; Sybil, Benjamin Disraeli; The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling; The Well at the World's End, essays, Robert Louis Stevenson; Pygmalion, essays, George Bernard Shaw; The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler; The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad; The Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Studies in the History of the Renaissance, essays, Walter Pater; essays by Mill, Macaulay, Wallace and others; poems by Browning, Arnold, Rossetti, Swinborne, Yeats and others; and the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition Illustrated Catalog. Activities will include: large amounts of reading, study, thought; weekly seminars, lectures, presentations; independent study of an author, critical or cultural movement; spring quarter focus on student presentations/papers; quarterly exams/essays. Pre-reading during the summer is strongly advised. Students wishing to apply for this program should submit their best essay to David by the May 13, 1998 Academic Fair. David will post a program membership on his door by May 18, in time for registration. Credit awarded in British literature, social and cultural history and the student's area of independent study.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities, teaching and the professions.
Weird and Wondrous
Some things are weird. Some fill us with wonder. In our world, it sometimes seems that it's much rarer to be filled with wonder than to call things weird. In this program we will be both creating and thinking together about some special situations in which experiences are simultaneously weird and wonderful. The program's activities will include studying, discussing and writing about literature, art and theory from psychology, philosophy and other social sciences. We'll also spend a considerable amount of our time creating collaborative projects about the program's themes, sharing them with one another and reflecting on them. Activities will include lectures, seminars, case studies, studio work, experiential exercises and a film series. Throughout, we'll be using the issue of the weird and wondrous as a way to explore some enduring questions about convention and creativity in the arts, the interactions between language and experience, crosscultural illuminations and misunderstandings, normal and extraordinary experience, pity, disgust, the uncanny and the sublime. We'll be reading books like Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders, Weschler; Alice in Wonderland, Carroll; Slowness, Kundera; and Black Sun, Kristeva; we'll see films like City of Lost Children, Smoke, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould and Trobriand Cricket. We plan to work slowly and thoughtfully. We hope to increase our own capacities for wonder as well as developing, together, some categories for understanding this special kind of experience and its relations to other aspects of our lives and our historical situation. Credit awarded in art theory, cultural anthropology, literature and studio art.Total: 12 or 16 credits each quarter. Students may enroll for a four-credit course each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in arts, humanities and social sciences.This program is also listed under Expressive Arts.
When Words Lose Their Meaning: An Essay Writing Community
This program is intended for students with a serious desire to write nonfiction works who are looking for the opportunity to spend six months devoted to sustained writing as part of a community of writers. The program's title alludes to a famous passage in Thucydides describing the impact the Greek civil wars had on language: "Words had to change their ordinary meaning and take that which was now given them." When Words Lose Their Meaning is also the title of a fascinating book by James Boyd White. White assumes that "whenever we speak or write we define ourselves and another and a relation between us." Using language is indispensable to our lives, because we are "perpetually telling [our] story to [ourselves] and others, trying to shape things so that the next step fits with what has gone before." Yet if we live at a time when the culture is rapidly changing, when words have lost their ordinary meanings, this process becomes problematic. "How can such a process be coherent when there is no stable self, no stable culture to rely on?" White's answer to this question is that we must create a "ground of judgment on which we can rely" and that we do so when we speak and write. He examines a series of classic books to show how each author's use of language reconstitutes both character and community. "Each of these texts," he says, "teaches us how it should be `read,'" and each in turn "teaches us much about what kind of life we can and ought to have, who we can and ought to be." In this program we will study each of the texts White examines: works by Homer, Thucydides, Plato, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, Edmund Burke, as well as several key American political documents. We will also read White's analysis of each text as a means to develop our own interpretations. But most important, we will constitute ourselves as a community of essay writers and attempt to create "a ground of judgment on which we can rely" by writing to each other, reading each other's essays and writing back in response. Credit awarded in essay writing, non-fiction writing, and advanced studies in humanities.Total: 16 credits each quarter.Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities, law, journalism, writing and community studies. |