Culture, Text and Language: 1999-2000 ProgramsReturn to IndexAll Over the Place: Stories in a Multicentered Society All Over the Place: Stories in a Multicentered SocietyFall/Group Contract A place is a story happening many times. ... Over there? We say ‘blind
woman steaming cloverroots become ducks.’ We tell that story for you at
place of meeting one another in winter. But now is our time for travel. We will
name those stories as we pass them by. In the absence of shared past experiences in a multicentered society, storytelling and old photography serve as our separate imagined communities. Narratives and images describe relationships between the teller and told, here and there, past and present. What’s up? The answer is story? Stories once detailed shared experiences. Now it may be that only stories themselves offer us common ground. Once you start hearing certain stories and retelling them, you gain membership in a group and community. You become related, since the story is, as Terry Tempest Williams says, “...the umbilical chord between past, present, and future.” When most governments and educational institutions are no longer trusted, authority
shifts to the storytellers. Often the most valuable local cultural resources
are the grandmothers or young people with tape recorders or the man by the creek
on the outskirts of town who can spin tales about the old days. The sense of
place often outlasts the place itself. We will study writings on place by a diverse group. These writings will include: The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard; The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes As Public History, Dolores Hayden; The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places, Gary Paul Nabhanard and Stephen Trimble; Through Navaho Eyes, Sol Worth and John Adair; On The Road, Jack Kerouac; Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience; Yi-Fu Tuan; Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard. We will also look at an eclectic group of visual artists and film makers such as: Norval Morriseau, Ken Burns, Spike Lee, Olivia Gude, May Sun and Wim Wenders. We will begin genealogies, explore symbolic and “real” land/cityscapes, and examine the role of the storyteller/writer/visual artist as social/cultural witness through workshops, seminars, readings, performances, research, writing and student-originated projects. We all need to get good at looking at, listening to and telling stories, our own and others. Stories are our homes. “Finding a fitting place for oneself in the world is finding a place for oneself in a story,” as Jo Carson explains.
American CommunityFall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study A public philosophy for the twenty-first century will have to give more weight to the community than to the right of private decision. It will have to emphasize responsibilities rather than rights. It will have to find a better expression of community than the welfare state. It will have to limit the scope of the market and the power of corporations without replacing them with a centralized state bureaucracy. Historian Christopher Lasch’s words invoke a vital, complex debate about competing visions of democracy in America. Do democratic ideals point toward a classless society where the good life flows from self-reliance, mutual respect and active citizenship? Or does democracy demand upward mobility, great wealth and poverty, and elites leading all spheres of society? Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King embraced the first view, Lasch argues. But the second has proved ascendant. We believe more in consumerism, the state and fulfilling personal needs than in our capacity to live well in communities. This program will explore the past course and present prospects of the democratic experi-ment. We will examine Americans’ changing consciousness about life, focusing on the last hundred years, with attention also given to the 19th century. At the center of this inquiry will be intensive reading of novels, history, docu-mentary writing, social criticism and poetry. This reading will lead to sustained research projects: in fall, a library-based historical study; in winter, gathering oral histories in the local community; in spring, advanced ethnographic, historical or literary research and writing. Our purpose is to work toward a public philosophy for citizenship in the new century. Students and faculty will honestly face enduring dilemmas of self and community, matters involving equality, morality, diversity, faith, class, place and progress. Program faculty will provide a stimulating intellectual context: guidance on writing, re-search methods and approaches to challenging texts and ideas. In turn, we have high expectations. We welcome first-year students ready to be seriously engaged in their studies and offer strong support to upper-division students.
The Balkans in Our Times: Land, People and MythosSpring/Group Contract This program will explore the history, culture, and literature of the Balkans since 1800. This is an area where cultures have met and clashed for more than 500 years, where East meets West, where Christianity meets Islam. The Balkans has recently become, as it has been so many times before, the cockpit of Europe, where ethnic identities and historical experiences of different peoples are extraordinarily important. The area is of great world historical importance. Through the reading of historical accounts, literature, folk tales and epics and anthropological studies, we will attempt to project ourselves empathetically into the life experiences of the Balkan peoples in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will question and try to counter many stereotypes about the peoples of this area that have recently been cultivated in the Western press. Areas of concentration will include: Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania and Slovenia.
Bilingual Education and TeachingFall, Winter/Group Contract During fall quarter we will explore several theoretical issues related to and preparatory for the study of bilingual education and teaching in the following order: first and second language acquisition, the relationships of language, culture and society, and a historical introduction to bilingual education and the politics of bilingualism. A three-hour workshop each week will be devoted to the study of second language teaching, with particular consideration of different theories and methodologies. During winter quarter, we will study the historical, political and social connotations of bilingualism in the United States and language policy as it relates to the concept of the nation/state. Students will be introduced to bilingual education in elementary and high schools, program design and assessment. We will visit bilingual classrooms throughout the state and conduct ethnographic observations during field trips. We will continue with the weekly workshops on teaching methodologies, emphasizing connections between theory and practice. Students will have the opportunity to go out into the community (elementary schools, high schools, etc.) to acquire practical experience and apply theories discussed in class. A four-credit intermediate/advanced Spanish module will be an optional part of the program throughout fall and winter quarters. This program is aimed at upper-level students and will require full-time dedication. Requirements include two short response papers and a comprehensive midterm exam each quarter plus a two-quarter research project culminating in an oral presentation. During spring quarter, Evelia will sponsor internships for students from the program interested in furthering their practical knowledge and experience.
Black and Green 2000: The Struggle for Community and Equality in the United StatesSpring/Coordinated Study Most of us have become aware that the official story of our nation’s past, as told in the history books of our primary and secondary schools, is just one version of what happened, a socially constructed version designed to serve certain purposes. We may also have become aware that this official version is too narrow or exclusive to serve the democratic aspirations of our increasingly multicultural democracy. This program, drawing upon the experience of the two instructors, will focus in its readings and lectures on the “hidden histories” of two peoples in the United States: the African American and the Irish American. In terms of time periods, the foci will be (1) the so-called “founding” or colonial era; (2) the afterbirth of the nation, with attention to such topics as post-famine migration from Ireland, minstrelsy, the American Civil War and Reconstruction; and (3) the post-World War II era in which the American “community” is consolidated in the face of civil-rights struggles, the labor movement and the emergence of North-South conflict. Special attention will be given in a quarter-ending conference to the often strained relations between peoples like Irish Americans and African Americans whose shared experience of catastrophe might have yielded (and may yet yield) a more cooperative struggle. Student work in this program will build on work of students in previous offerings of the program and will be shelved in the library as contributions to the creation of the new multicultural narrative vital to the future of the nation. Program activities will include the lectures, films and videos, and twice-weekly seminars, and weekly written work will be required. But in addition and most importantly, all students will be required (1) to do extensive research into some aspect of hidden histories (e.g., of Chinese American settlements in the 19th century New York City or the participation and leadership of Native American women in tribal governance), (2) to enter into collaborative dialogue with differently focused students in the program, (3) to present one’s own research and respond to the research of others in end-of-the-program public conferences, and (4) to assist us all in framing the inclusion of those histories in an ultimately comprehensive multicultural narrative that enables us to live together with respect for and appreciation of our differences.
Bones and Stones: The Roots of Society, the Achievements of Our Prehistoric AncestorsWinter/Group Contract In this program we will be reading the “prehistoric library” of bones, stones and ancient artifacts. Our goal is to develop an understanding of the world of the earliest humans and to ponder the achievements of all of our ancestors through reading texts of bone, stone, ivory, paint, metals and ancient cities. Our major activity is research. Our program of exploration and discovery will utilize the tools of history, archaeology, anthropology, art history and mythology. We will read several secondary texts in order to survey current opinions; however, our investigations will involve a great deal of research, careful interpretation of evidence and speculative reasoning. We will explore the dim past of our human species, the formation of the continents and of the earliest societies. From the Olduvai Gorge to Lascaux, from Ur to Ife, from Nagarjunakonda to the Nile Valley, from Guilá Naquitz to Monte Albán and from Catal Hüyük to Mohenjo-Daro, our research will help us seek to understand the roots of social order. This program will use books, writing, evaluation of primary evidence and analytical speculation in search of understanding. Our texts are often to be found in the surviving artifacts of various cultures. Books used will include L. Cavalli-Sforza, Great Human Diasporas; History of Diversity and Evolution; C. Gamble, Timewalkers: The Prehistory of Global Colonization; J. Lester, Writing Research Papers; C. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson, Promethean Fire; Reflections on the Origin of Man; S. Mithen, Prehistory of the Mind; C. Renfrew and P. Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and practices; W. I. Thompson, Coming Into Being; and Colin Tudge, Time Before History. Our activities will include lectures, seminars, research presentations, field trips, image workshops and films. Reading, writing and discussion are central to all of these.
Creative Non-Fiction: Reading and Writing the Literature of RealityFall, Winter/Group Contract Writers have come to realize that non-fiction can be as colorful and gripping as any piece of fiction. The difference is that non-fiction writers are not burdened with inventing characters, plot and description as everything they write about actually happened. Creative non-fiction writers assemble facts and events and array them artistically and stylistically using the descriptive techniques of the fiction writer. They immerse themselves in a venue, set about gathering their facts while demonstrating scrupulous accuracy, and then write an account of what happened in their own voice. Students will become facile with the form through intensive field work, research and writing. This program combines journalism, field research and investigation of literary techniques. We will study folklore and field research to learn to pay attention to detail, and journalism to learn how to construct a fact hierarchy and write a lead. Students will be introduced to the focus structure format, where the writer proceeds from the particular to the general. This is an excellent feature writing tool and we will spend some part of the quarter writing feature stories. A main emphasis in fall quarter will be the diligent pursuit of venues for field observations in preparation for writing the substantive final piece in spring quarter. In the winter we will continue the study of creative non-fiction, as well as hone our sensitivity to literature techniques, and students will begin work on the first draft of their major non-fiction piece. The form allows the use of first-person narration and literary conventions ordinarily forbidden in the writing of news copy. It requires the writer to be immersed in a subject area over an extended period of time and demands careful attention to detail to assure accuracy. John McPhee says, “the piece of writing has a structure inside it. It begins, goes along, and ends in a manner that is thought out beforehand.” That being the case, all the writer has to do is find that architecture and the piece practically writes itself. This helps to define and describe the form of creative non-fiction. The story and structure are already there and all the writer has to do is take the mallet and chisel and chip away the unnecessary marble encasing it to see the artistic form emerge. Richard Rhodes, creative non-fiction writer, assembled the following list of descriptors of the form: historical sweep, attention to language, participation and immersion, symbolic realities, accuracy, sense of time and place, grounded observations, context and voice. Mark Kramer, noted writer and teacher in the genre of creative non-fiction said, “It is like a Steinway piano. It’s good enough for all the art I can put in into it. You can put Glenn Gould on a Steinway and the Steinway is still better than Glenn Gould. It’s good enough to hold all the art I can bring to it. And then some.” We will continue to study the form and discuss representative pieces written by noted authors like Joseph Mitchell, Jane Kramer, Susan Orlean and Tom Wolfe. Following a period of redrafting and corrections, students will finish the polished piece and make a presentation to the group in the last week of spring quarter.
Crescent, Cross and Cupola: Islam and Christianity of the East and WestFall, Winter/Coordinated Study Our entry into the new millennium has stimulated a powerful upsurge of interest in spiritual experience. In confronting our spirituality, we are asking new and tough questions about death and salvation, mystical and ecstatic experience, sex and gender, violence, morality, the direction of humanity, the end of the world, the identity of the Creator. How do Islam and Christianity in the East and West approach these questions? What are some significant differences between Eastern and Western Christianity on these and other issues? What are the historical, theological, and cultural roots of these faiths? How does each of these faiths view itself in relation to the others? As participants in the program, we will work to replace our sometimes vague impressions and assumptions with a more accurate, sensitive and grounded comprehension of these traditional faiths. In lectures and seminars we will explore these questions historically and as they unfold in the contemporary world. We will read the history and sacred literature of these faiths, studies of controversial issues, and novels and short stories that deal with our questions in imaginative ways. Students will engage in individual and group research. Finally, we will acquaint ourselves firsthand with the varieties of Christian and Islamic worship through field trips to churches and mosques and in discussions with both Christian and Islamic clergy. Welcome to the feast!
Cultural Crossings: Labor and Migration in the AmericasFall, Winter/Coordinated Study Over the last 150 years, the Americas have become increasingly intertwined economically, politically and culturally. Using multiple perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences, this program will study aspects of the historical and contemporary experiences of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, both in their countries of origin and in the United States. In particular, we will explore how the uneven colonial, class, ethnic and gender relationships within and between countries have played themselves out in a series of displacements. These displacements have ranged from the more literal pushes and pulls of migration patterns and labor relations to the more metaphorical transformations of cultural forms and group identities over the course of time. In the fall, we will focus on the interconnectedness of economics, politics and culture in Mexico and Puerto Rico, in the context of phenomena as diverse as: 1) economic “development” models such as Puerto Rico’s Operation Bootstrap and Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program; 2) political and cultural resistance movements such as Puerto Rico’s Independentista and Mexico’s Zapatista movements; and 3) migrations both to and from the United States, with their indelible effects on families and communities. In the winter, we will cross the borders into the United States, where Mexican Americans and mainland-born Puerto Ricans, as well as recent migrants, have created vibrant synthesizing forms of political, economic and cultural action and protest. Topics may include: 1) the history of United States immigration and recent congressional efforts to regulate it; 2) the farmworkers’ movement and recent labor struggles, and 3) the emergence of distinctive Chicano and Puerto Rican literary and theatrical forms (e.g., Teatro Campesino, border art and Neyorican poetry). Over the course of the two quarters, students will gain an in-depth ability to interpret literary and visual texts in their social contexts and to use political economic and legal models to address specific social questions. In addition, each student will carry out a research project over the two quarters on a topic related to program themes; this project will hone skills in prospectus- and report-writing, library and community-based research, and oral presentation. Because this is conceived as an integral two-quarter sequence, no new students will be accepted in the winter.
Down and OutWinter/Group Contract In this one-quarter humanities group contract we will study prose fiction, poetry, autobiography, memoir and social history. The central theme is the determination of individuals to survive, spiritually and physically, against the odds they face in a variety of hostile social, cultural and historical settings. The primary aim is to acquaint students with the many dimensions of a universal theme as expressed in novels, poems and plays, and to provide the opportunity for intellectual growth through reasoned, moral assessment of the conflict between the demand for social conformity as a reflection of communal value-consensus and the individual’s struggle for personal integrity and self-preservation. Seminar readings will focus on the writings of individuals who have left us a record of their hopes, dreams, pain, disillusionment and courage in their battle for existence outside the margins of respectable society. Works to be studied include Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree; Guzman’s Lazarillo of 16th century Spain (in English translation); the experiences in the 1920s of George Orwell in his Down and Out in Paris and London; Jerzy Koscinski’s tale of war-time survival in Eastern Europe, The Painted Bird; the pathos of Tennessee Williams’ Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton, one-act plays about people just barely hanging on; and the hard-edged compassion for the urban underdogs of the late 20th century Los Angeles in Ham On Rye and Love is a Dog From Hell, the stories and poems of Charles Bukowski. Students will have the opportunity to refine informal discussion skills through seminars on the interpretation of literature, develop critical reflection skills through theme-related journals and strengthen formal exposition skills through the composition of short essays. Seminar will include oral presentation of writing. An additional four credits are possible through a related independent project or additional course.
Education: Beyond High SchoolSpring/Coordinated Study This program examines the history and future of U.S. colleges and universities. Topics may include: • Debates about access and quality. Access to college and university education expanded significantly following World War II. Accompanying that change was the argument that the quality of education diminished. We are currently engaged in another period of expanded opportunity for students, and the questions about quality have again risen. • Technology: Current technology challenges old assumptions about education — that education happens only on a campus, that a library is an essential ingredient of education, that education occurs around books, that professors are the source of all knowledge. • The purpose of university education: Universities have served many purposes over time-conservation of culture, promotion of ethnic identity, protection of linguistic heritage, creation of gentlemen. What is the purpose of the modern university? To promote excellence? To train workers for the 21st century? Who gets to ask these questions? Who gets to judge the answers? • Expertise and the state: Might not the university be just a source of cheap knowledge for the state? (And do students and society subsidize this relationship?) • Community colleges: Washington ranks high in college attendance but exceptionally low in four-year college and university attendance. What is the history and present role of community colleges? There are three offerings under the title Education. Each requires a separate registration.
Education: PhilosophyWinter/Group Contract What is education? What is the aim of education? How is it done? This program provides an overview of issues in educational philosophy by considering both the questions and the ways in which they have been answered over time. Texts may include: Plato, Republic and Meno; Locke, On Education; Dewey, Democracy and Education; and works by Maria Montessori, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Paulo Freire, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Ivan Illich and Carol Gilligan. The program will include a quarterlong reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or On Education. There are three offerings under the title Education. Each requires a separate registration.
Education: Politics of Public SchoolingFall/Coordinated Study This program covers the history and politics of public schooling. Topics may include: origins and expansion of public schooling in the United States, school financing and vouchers, testing and national or state standards, race, class, gender and the schools, the deschooling-alternative schooling-home schooling-no schooling movement, the “dumbing down” of the curriculum, moral education/literacy education. All students will do a research project on the history of a contemporary political issue. There are three offerings under the title Education. Each requires a separate registration.
Field School to ChileSpring/Group Contract This program’s interdisciplinary curriculum will allow students to study, research and experience firsthand political, cultural, artistic, economic, environmental and agricultural concerns affecting Chile and South America at the end of the 20th century. 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 grassroots organizations will explore the direct impact this polemic model is having on various social sectors of the country. Participants will immerse themselves in the sociopolitical and economic reality of a country struggling to overcome underdevelopment. They are expected to learn about the social, artistic, folkloric and intellectual life of Chile and the different expressions they assume according to class structure. Background of Chile: One of the oldest Latin American democracies — 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. International organizations proudly exhibit its economy as one of the most effective and successful in the Third World. Chilean exports reach all world markets and investments in Chile’s economy have grown significantly. At all levels, programs and projects are being developed by governmental, private, international and non-governmental organizations. For these reasons, the country is changing 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 Indians 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 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. 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, non-governmental, private and church development projects in urban and rural areas of the country. 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 take place. Students will have the opportunity to interact with a wide range of the Chilean population to learn and evaluate the effects of the new 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 about their experiences in the country and to work in a group research project (individual projects may be approved after discussion with the faculty). For research, students can travel around the country, consult with people, visit libraries and universities. Students must submit their research proposals by the third week of the spring quarter. Although knowledge of the Spanish language is not required, it is highly recommended that students gain familiarity with this language. Most program activities will be enhanced by knowledge of Spanish; lectures and workshops will be in English. Students can stay for four or eight weeks in Chile. Those who return earlier can complete their projects on campus using material gathered in Chile. Participants of this field school are required to pay a deposit of $150 (refundable upon certain circumstances) by February 16, 1999. 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 costs include: 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 Evergreen tuition and fees.
Great English NovelsWinter/Group Contract Students will become familiar with its history, main lines of the form’s
development, styles of the major writers and ways of talking and writing about
the novel. We will read Richardson’s Clarissa; Fielding’s Tom Jones;
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy; Smollett’s Humphry Clinker; Austen’s
Emma; Scott’s The Heart of Modlothian; Dickens (an early and late novel);
Thackerary’s Vanity Fair; E. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights; C. Bronte’s
Villette; Eliot’s Middlemarch; Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles;
James’ The Ambassadors; Conrad’s Nostromo; Lawrence’s Women in
Love; and Joyce’s Ulysses.
The Great Russian NovelWinter/Group Contract Participants in this group contract will explore, in considerable detail, several of the great novels of Russian literature. Above all, we will determine why they are considered great by the Russian people and why they have taken their rightful place among the annals of great world literature. We will also examine the novels for what they reveal about Russian cultural and social history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Russians have tended to look to their great writers for moral and, in some cases, spiritual guidance. They regarded Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, to cite two famous examples, not only as great writers, but also as philosophers and social critics. We will thus consider the novels as works of art, moral statements and social documents. The reading will include the works of the following novelists: Lermontov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bely, Bulgakov and Pasternak.
KazantzakisFall/Group Contract This group contract will focus on the life and work of Nikos Kazantzakis (d. 1957), the preeminent Greek novelist of the 20th century. Kazantzakis’s writings reflect the philosophical vision of a great postmodern artist who was deeply engaged in the most vital moral and intellectual quest of our time: the search for spiritual meaning to anchor personal commitment as both an individual and a participant in the human community. The group contract will be structured around cooperative seminar, informal lecture, in-class writing, small-group discussion, brief reports and informal oral presentation of papers in seminar. Students enrolled for 16 credits will prepare and present orally an independent research topic related to course themes. Students will read Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based On His Letters, Helen Kazantzakis; The Cretan Glance: The World and Art of Nikos Kazantzakis, Morton P. Levitt; Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friederich Nietszche; What The Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula; selections from the Old Testament and the New Testament; as well as the following works by Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba The Greek, Freedom or Death, The Greek Passion, Journey To The Morea, Report To Greco (autobiography), The Saviours of God: Spiritual Exercises and The Last Temptation of Christ.
The Making of the Modern WomanFall, Winter, Spring/Group Contract The goal of this group contract is to understand the changing concepts and definitions of womanhood as they developed in European and American cultures. We will study the social, political and cultural history of women from the 18th century to the postwar era, exploring women’s interaction with the state, the workforce, men and with one another. We will focus on primary sources, both historical and literary, to get the story of women through women’s voices as much as possible. Here is a sampling of some themes we will discuss: origins of feminist thought, the private versus the public spheres, suffrage politics, representations of female sexuality, the female artist and her male critic, women, war and pacificism and women in health and medicine. We’ll read classic texts by writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, and Virginia Woolf; we’ll read fiction by George Eliot, Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman; and autobiographies and biographies. And, we will study theoretical and interpretative works by current scholars. The questions always will be, “How do women get defined and how do they define themselves?” and “What does it mean to be a ‘modern’ woman?” We will study historical methods by delving into the ways historians select evidence from and then make inter-pretations about the historical past. And we will work to understand current literary theory as it is used to explicate women’s experience. There will be opportunities for serious debate, for discovering keys to the current conversation about women and gender and for forming a small scholarly group of people who can support one another in pursuing questions of personal interest. Students will each do a major literary or historical research project using primary sources, which should extend over the whole year. Students will learn to frame useful research questions and carry out a substantial piece of research themselves. This program is designed for serious students of history and literature who consider themselves well-read, good writers, highly motivated and genuinely curious about the changing roles and definitions of women.
On Interpretation: Foundation Work in the Humanities and Interpretive Social SciencesFall, Winter/Coordinated Study What does it mean to understand a poem, or a picture, or what happened a hundred years ago, or why someone keeps acting in a stupid way? Is it just a matter of opinion or somebody else’s guess? Do some people really see and know a lot more than others about such things? This program involves ongoing practice in trying to answer questions like these better, as well as careful exploration of theories about what, if anything, can be known about the meaning of others’ actions. This program prepares students for sophisticated work in the humanities and interpretive social sciences (fields like anthropology, sociology, history and some types of psychology). Such disciplines attempt to understand human acts — from slips of the tongue to religious rituals, sonnets to political choices, cartoons to painted church ceilings. They all involve the same fundamental intellectual process-interpreting situations that have multiple sources of meaning, including the intentions of the actor, what some audiences make of those actions and other contexts as well. We will pay close attention to the methods and tools of various disciplines, to ideas about the functions and values of art and to analyzing and critiquing philosophical arguments about what is involved in claiming to understand someone else’s actions.
The Paradoxes of RomanticismFall, Winter/Coordinated Study This program will draw from literature, music and art in pursuing the paradoxes of Romanticism. The Romantic movement in Europe, the British Isles and America was born out of the American and French political revolutions, the Industrial Revolution and the shift from mechanism to organicism in the Western world view. It generated some of the most powerful works of art — especially in literature and music — and powerful idealistic thoughts in the history of Western culture. But it also led to self-indulgent Bohemianism and sowed the seeds that were to produce the cult of the hero, resulting eventually in totalitarian Fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain. Romantic artists idealized communal belonging, but also megalomanical individualism; connections with the medieval past and folk traditions, but also highly self-conscious innovations; freedom for all, but also fervent nationalism. They explored the heights of human aspiration, but also the depths of human despair. Often Romantic artists lost or abandoned their functional places in society to become “alienated geniuses.” To appreciate the greatness and understand the tensions in Romanticism, we shall concentrate our focus fall quarter on William Blake, S. T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Goethe. We will also look at the musical figures of Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Schuman and perhaps Wagner and Verdi. During winter quarter, our focus of study will most likely focus on Carlyle, Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne and Melville in an attempt to understand how European thought influenced the development of American thought, and how the Americans brought their own experience to bear on this European influence. The program, at least for fall quarter, will provide an optional part-time, four-credit module in a foreign language or other subject related to the program’s themes and areas of study. Additionally, modules will be offered internally by the program faculty. Faculty approval will be required for the inclusion of outside modules.
Paris, Dakar, Fort de France: Voices of Revolution and TraditionFall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study The French-speaking world offers a veritable crossroads of cultures; its literature, history, film and visual arts provide the voices of revolution and tradition our program will explore. We will trace the history of aesthetic, social and political developments within France and in the Francophone cultures of Africa and the Caribbean from the contemporary world back as far as 1789. Fall quarter we will study revolution through the parallel historical examples of the French and Haitian revolutions and through literary and artistic figures whose words caused upheaval in a tradition-bound society. We will read Rousseau and Voltaire, who laid the foundations for revolution, and study the romantic, symbolist, decadent and naturalist aesthetics through such authors as Hugo, Sand, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Jarry and Zola. We will read Césaire and James on the Haitian Revolution and compare the ideals and expectations of that revolution with the concurrent one in France. Winter quarter we will consider the Cubist, Dada-Surrealist, Existentialist and Négritude movements. We will emphasize the voices of writers from Africa and the Caribbean who use the colonizer’s French as a tool of their liberation and discuss such concepts as religious and cultural syncretism, culture building and ritual. Students will learn about colonialism from the viewpoint of the colonized and the colonizer, and study the war for liberation in Algeria. We will read Césaire, Maximin, Condé and Schwarz-Bart from the Caribbean; Abouzeid and Chraibi from North Africa; Sembene, Senghor and Laye from West Africa; Sartre, Genet, Artaud, Nin and Iriguaray from France. During spring quarter we anticipate a travel option to Rennes, Paris and Lyon, France. Spring quarter students remaining on campus may continue language study at beginning, intermediate or advanced levels (for four credits). More than half of the work we will do in this program will be in French; however, students will choose one of the following module offerings (conducted in English) each quarter: (1) seminar in French and Francophone texts in translation; (2) seminar in historical texts and historiography.
Perspectives from The QuarterdeckFall, Winter, Spring/Group Contract While afoot and afloat, rain or shine, we will examine some of Puget Sound’s most inter-esting waterfront communities, their history, economy, politics and demography, tailoring our studies to the interests of you, the crew of the Resolute, Evergreen’s 44-foot yawl. While exploring Puget Sound, we will often conduct classes on the deck of one of the last of the Annapolis 44s. Crew members will learn power cruise and sail seamanship, how to get along with crewmates, rules of the road, about tides and currents, weather, boating safety and regulations, the use of the compass and nautical chart and various sailor’s arts. All decisions on board will be made by the skipper and strict rules of discipline will be followed. In addition to specific assigned duties, crew members are expected to help with vessel maintenance. This may involve several hours a month of hard work. Each crew member will develop his or her own research proposal (in coordination with the faculty and other crew members) for community study and possible community activities, focusing on the way things are now in the context of the past, and particularly from the perspective of the Water Link, the Puget Sound. Class activities will include field trips to organizations and shore-side installations to observe and learn how Puget Sound inhabitants participate in the regional and global economy. These trips may require appropriate apparel and other digressions and deferrals commensurate with and respectful for the environs and individuals visited. Students may develop part-time internships during the winter and spring quarters as they become more focused on a specific activity. Students should plan on at least one very long day per week on board the vessel. Applicants must pass a swim test and the requirements and judgment of the skipper for building a balanced crew. Applicants will be interviewed by John Filmer and should be willing to contract full time for the entire academic year. Admittance will be based solely on the determination of the skipper.
Philosophy of ReligionSpring/Group Contract This program will pursue questions about religious belief that can be answered with the use of unaided (by faith) human reason. This is not an inspirational offering, nor does it support any particular position on religious belief. It focuses exclusively on Western philosophy and religion. There will be four principal foci: • We will examine some of the classical arguments of natural theology, i.e., some of the best known proofs and disproofs of God’s existence. • We will study the philosophy of religion of some of the followers of the distinguished 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. • We will examine the moral and religious philosophy of Simone Weil. Both Wittgenstein and Weil offer profound reflections on the place of religion in human life, which are quite at odds with the mainstream tradition in Western philosophy. • In contemporary American culture, religion plays an important role in political discourse. The theological fundamentalism of the “religious right” is a significant force in discussions of social, political and economic issues in this country. In other parts of the world “liberation theology,” a left/progressive religious orientation, is alive and well. We will study both left and right political uses of religious beliefs and practices. This academic and predominately analytic program emphasizes the careful and detailed study of demanding texts. This program is geared to juniors and seniors only.
Politics and Ideologies From the AmericasFall, Winter/Coordinated Study Rich and industrialized nations from the North assert that capitalism brought progress and welfare to many nations. People from Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean argue that capitalism was based on primitive accumulation rooted in the primitive violence, pillage and genocide of the inhabitants of the Third World. Accordingly, they claim that rich nations exist today because their ancestors plundered other nations for centuries. First Europe and then the United States of America, after they expropriated Third World people of their right to life, have created and imposed structures and laws that allowed them to decide the destiny of these continents. These conditions have permitted historical oppressors to behave like creditors and judges who dictate sentences forcing Third World countries to continue funneling their wealth toward the developed economies, according to this interpretation. Through these mechanisms, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean were converted into secondary chapters of the European history, it is argued by the Third World. Besides the rules of European capitalist markets, their culture, religion and identity were imposed upon them. Peoples from these continents were forced to be ashamed of themselves because they were Indians or Blacks, to renegade their cultures and to accept living under eternal conditions of exile in their own lands. This group contract will study the above processes in the Americas from pre-Columbian times until today from a multidisciplinary approach that includes history, politics, economics, religion, culture, folklore, literature, theater, media, art, etc. Within this context, the process of underdevelopment, which characterizes the region today, will be historically analyzed and evaluated in light of the formation and expansion of the capitalist system in Europe first and the United States later. This program will utilize Latin American approaches and interpretations, as opposed to Eurocentric studies and models from Europe and the United States of America. This group contract will also include a component that applies social research methods to the subjects described here. Projects, including video production, cultural journalism, folklore, theater, alternative media and Spanish language, will be developed by students working in small groups. During winter quarter the program will offer interested students a chance to prepare for spring quarter travel to Chile. Participation in research projects and production of several short documentaries about relevant topics studied in this program will be the focus of the Field School to Chile, a separate program.
Postmodern Fiction: John Barth and Haruki MurakamiSpring/Group Contract Postmodernism is a term that is frequently mentioned in academia as well as in popular culture today; it is the term that nobody seems to be able to define unequivocally. Post-modernism means different things to different people. For instance, it may mean an eclectic mixture of many traditions for some people, or it may mean the negation of canonical values for others, depending on their intellectual premises or their academic fields. In any case, what we get from these multifaceted definitions of postmodernism is a realization that we are at a sometimes confusing, sometimes exhausting, sometimes exhilarating point in history when everything is up for grabs. In 1921, Yeats wrote in the first stanza of his poem “The Second Coming,” Is Yeats’ premonition a mere feverish nightmare inspired by a momentary
sense of powerlessness?
PropertySpring/Group Contract Property will explore the origins and present nature of property in private and public contexts. The program will include an examination of the relationship of property to personal identity, justice and power. Other topics that might be explored include property rights, intellectual property, entitlements, ownership of one’s body, money, living without property and the role of government in legitimizing the acquisition and distribution of property. Students will be encouraged to lead the way. Forms for program work will include lectures, large and small book seminars, small group projects, oral presentations and writing, in class and out. The small-group projects will concern local property disputes. The oral presentations and writing will be largely self-directed.
Self, Gender and Culture: Japanese and American Literature and CinemaFall, Winter/Group Contract This group contract is designed for students interested in crosscultural exploration of the concepts of self and gender. It is often said that American and Japanese cultures represent the mirror images of human values. For instance, while American culture emphasizes the importance of individuals over groups, Japanese culture dictates group cohesion; while Japanese women are valued most as wives and mothers, American women feel more valued as wage earners. Certainly, the reality is not as simple as these stereotypes indicate; nevertheless, this dichotomized comparative cultural frame presents an interesting context in which we can explore many human issues. Thus, in this program we explore the concepts of self and gender represented in American and Japanese literature, cinema as well as popular media. During fall quarter, our focus will be on film. At the beginning of the quarter, students will be introduced to the rudiments of film technology and the basic concepts of film theory through texts and lectures. With these analytical tools in hand, students will then examine images of individuals and genders produced in American and Japanese films through seminars and critical writings. In addition to critically viewing film, students will engage in weekly readings concerning culture and gender. Students will also acquire rudimentary experience in video production during fall quarter. They will learn how to use a camcorder and how to edit VHS videotapes. By the end of the quarter, groups of four or five students will produce media works that deal with gender issues in specific cultural contexts. In winter quarter, our focus will shift to literature, but film viewing will continue. At the beginning of the quarter, students will be introduced to the major critical theories to familiarize themselves with varied approaches to literature; then, students will examine representations of individuals, genders and cultures in American and Japanese literature through seminars and critical writings.
Social Work PracticeFall,Winter/Group Contract This is a two-quarter, upper-division group contract to explore social work as both a social movement and a helping profession. During fall quarter, our focus is on the philosophical and historical evolution of social work from a social movement to a contemporary professional community practice. During winter quarter we explore two fundamental professional skills used by social work practitioners: social work research methods and social work counseling methods. Both skills are examined from a generalist, multicultural, interdisciplinary perspective.
SouthFall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study South will be a yearlong advanced program in the humanities, primarily history and literature. It will cover the history and culture of the Southern United States from the earliest white settlements through the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement. Fall quarter will take this history through the Civil War. Winter quarter will move from Reconstruction through the Great Depression. Spring quarter will cover the region from the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement to the present. Topics to be explored in each quarter include: • Fall — settlement patterns; ethnic differences among settlers; the Revolution in the South; drafting the Constitution and the debate about its acceptance; the development of slavery; Indian removal; Jeffersonians and States Rights; Jacksonianism and the Nullification Crisis; pro-slavery and abolition; the causes of the Civil War; the conduct of the Civil War; why the South lost. • Winter — the Reconstruction governments in the various states; the policies of the Radical Republican Congress; the Redeemer governments; the rise of “The New South”; crosscurrents in African American leadership; the Populist Revolt; the creation of legal segregation; the revival of the Ku Klux Klan; the agrarian critique; the share-cropping system; Southern Industrialism; the New Deal; Southern Liberalism and Southern demagogy. • Spring — the Emmett Till case; the Montgomery Improvement Association; the Citizens’ Councils; SCLC and SNCC; integrating the universities; white support for integration; black militancy; the black migration north; the Southern Strategy; the rise of the Sunbelt. Students will be expected to carry out extensive library research and writing in preparation for program-sponsored public symposia on “The Peculiar Institution”; “The Populist Revolt, the New South, and Jim Crow”; and “The Great Depression.” In addition, students will write short research papers for fall and winter (two for fall, three for winter) and undertake an individual project for spring for one third of that quarter’s work. There will be lectures and seminars each week. Some seminars will be “issues seminars,” which will look at a specific problem or issue. Others will be history seminars. Adequate preparation for seminar will require the student to choose a state to investigate in preparation for the common work. Typically, the students will represent their states in discussions so that, for instance, in discussions of Indian removal the situation in Florida or Louisiana would be adequately detailed. Students may wish to investigate and represent a particular figure or person — a delegate to the constitutional Convention, a major historian, a key figure during the Civil War. At least one seminar each week will explore the development and elaboration of Southern Literature. Additionally, the program will have monthly dinners to prepare and experience Southern cooking and will have a weekly video or film showing that will feature such series as the Burns Civil War and the Eyes on the Prize documentary about the Civil Rights Movement.
Staying Put: The Story As HomeSpring/Group Contract Some have settled down. Some have fashioned a life that is firmly grounded — in a home, within a community, inside a long-term relationship. They use the same tools, have a deep know-ledge of place, and know their neighbors and neighborhood. Their lives are a radical rebuke to Western consumerist/throwaway culture. When vagabond winds blow, some bundle up and stay put. What does it mean to be alive in an era when the earth is being devoured, and in the country that is mainly responsible for the process? What are we called to do? What are we up against, those of us who want to become grounded in one place? How strong, how old, is the impulse we are resisting? And if you stick in one place, won’t you become stuck — won’t you become narrow, dull, backwards? The song of the open road is America’s song, after all; how can and why should anyone resist it? How can we harness our restlessness? This group contract is concerned with the sense of staying put and with storytelling as it is written or told in the landscape or place by the people who live or lived there over time. We will study writings on place by a diverse group such as: Russell Sanders, whose book names our program and animates our approach; The Real Work: Interviews and Talks 1964-1979, Gary Snyder; A Year in the Country, Sue Hubbell; Dakota: A Spiritual Biography, Kathleen Norris; The Wooing of Earth, Rene Dubos; and writings by Wendell Berry, Henry David Thoreau and Anne Dillard. We will also look at the indigenous wisdom of American Indians and Australian Aborigines. We will begin genealogies, write weekly and quarterly narrative nonfiction writings and stories, and examine the role of the storyteller/writer as social/cultural witness through workshops, seminars, research and writing. We all need to get good at looking at, listening to and telling stories, our own and others. Stories are our homes. “Finding a fitting place for ourselves in the world is finding a place for oneself in a story,” as Jo Carson explains.
Turning Eastward: Explorations in East/West PsychologyFall, Winter/Group Contract Western psychology has so far failed to provide us with a satisfactory understanding of the full range of human experience. It has largely overlooked the core of human understanding — our everyday mind, our immediate awareness of being with all of its felt complexity and sensitive attunement to the vast network of interconnectedness with the universe around us. Instead it has chosen to analyze the mind as though it were an object independent of the analyzer, consisting of hypothetical structures and mechanisms that cannot be directly experienced. Western psychology’s neglect of the living mind — both in its everyday dynamics and its larger possibilities — has led to a tremendous upsurge of interest in the ancient wisdom of the East, particularly Buddhism, which does not divorce the study of psychology from the concern with wisdom and human liberation. Eastern psychology shuns any impersonal attempt to objectify human life from the viewpoint of an external observer, instead studying consciousness as a living reality that shapes individual and collective perception and action. The primary tool for directly exploring the mind is meditation or mindfulness, an experiential process in which one becomes an attentive participant-observer in the unfolding of moment-to-moment consciousness. In this program, we will take a critical look at the basic assumptions and tenets of the major currents in traditional Western psychology, the concept of mental illness and the distinctions drawn between normal and abnormal thought and behavior. We will then investigate the Eastern study of mind that has developed within spiritual traditions, particularly within the Buddhist tradition. In doing so, we will take special care to avoid the common pitfall of most Western interpretations of Eastern thought — the attempt to fit Eastern ideas and practices into unexamined Western assumptions and traditional intellectual categories. Lastly, we will address the encounter between Eastern and Western psychology as possibly having important ramifications for the human sciences in the future, potentially leading to new perspectives on the whole range of human experience and life concerns.
User Friendly: Unmasking the Communications RevolutionFall, Winter, Spring/Group Contract Many are celebrating the so-called communications revolution in which Americans have been sometimes unwitting participants for more than 40 years. In the midst of those celebrations of a wired world, instant access and 500 channels of video enjoyment, it is important to ask fundamental questions: What difference does it make when many of the images we see, the stories we enjoy and the sounds we hear come not from life shared with the people around us but from unknowable sources behind a screen or a stereo speaker? What difference does it make when those images, stories and sounds are shaped not by natural communication processes in a face-to-face community but by the instruments of the communications revolution: television, the computer, synthesized sound? What difference does it make when these sources make images, stories and sounds not to express the human condition but to make money or to garner political power? This program will address questions such as these as it examines the worldwide communications revolution that has been underway since television became widespread in the late Fifties. The program will provide skill training in basic reporting, as well as in visual image making to help students appreciate how media technologies shape communications. There will be instruction on using the Internet, including home page construction. We will examine organizations that produce and distribute mass communications to understand the impact of economics, management and politics on the production of mass communicated images, stories and sounds. In spring quarter, students will do internships in mass communications to experience concretely the processes and situations they studied during fall and winter.
Whole and Holy: Alternative Herstories of HealingFall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study To heal: deriving from the same roots as the words whole and holy. We intend to explore healing as that which is whole and holy by examining alternative herstories — forms of healing involving body, mind, spirit and the environment from so-called feminine perspec-tives. We will learn about the historical roots of healing practices we use today, our division of mainstream and alternative medicine and the patriarchal and reductionist effects of this division on physiology, emotional literacy, and the evolution of the soul. In addition to books, films, lectures and seminars, we will expect each student: 1) to engage in an apprenticeship, community service-learning project or internship and participatory or collaborative research; 2) to go on a mid-winter retreat; and 3) to develop the discipline of a healing practice (e.g., a martial art, nutritional plan, exercise routine, herbalism, goddess worship, healing tough, yoga, music, gardening or apprenticeship with an indigenous healer). Our studies will be concerned with the contemporary resurrection of traditional healing practices. From witches, midwives and alchemists to their takeover by corporate medicine men, we will examine the historical contexts of healing versus curing. We will ask ourselves, what does the resurrection of traditional healing practices have to do with the energetics of healing and the rise of personal power out of tribal authority? We want highly motivated, self-directed students who are interested in, and capable of, integrating intellectual work with personal process. We want to develop a student-directed learning community in which experiential knowledges are put into conversation with academic scholarship.
Writer’s WorkshopSpring/Group Contract Writers! Here’s your chance to hone your creative writing skills within a workshop setting for credit. The primary emphasis of this course will be on the practical side: writing, critiquing and more writing. Students will share their work in round-robin fashion during scheduled workshops, rewriting and revising manuscripts per criticism received in the workshop and from the instructor. We will also explore hallmark works of contemporary fiction and poetry, as well as essays by writers on writing during book seminars. We will study the formal properties of fiction and poetry in workshop, seminar and lecture activities. Each student will also be responsible for the tutorial presentation of an author of his or her choice. Students wishing to apply for this program should submit a portfolio consisting of three faculty evaluations and two to three pieces of significant writing. Transfer students should prepare a portfolio consisting of their transcript and two pieces of significant writing. All material is due to Argentina Daley by Friday, February 25, 2000.
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