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Archived Catalog 2001-02

 

Culture, Text and Language
2001 - 2002

All Level

Intermediate

Advanced

Winter Quarter Offerings | Spring Quarter Offerings

Barking at the Moon
Fall/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Charles Pailthorp, Sara Rideout
Enrollment: 48
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program accepts up to 25 percent or 12 first-year students.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None


Music moves. Mountains have feet. Morality is straight. Ideas are born. Love is a journey. Hearts sink, break, and soar. Pictures speak. Words are containers. North is up, south down. Lust is heat. Computers shake hands. The fetus has legal rights. Metaphor informs and shapes all of our articulate practices and seems to be at the core of human meaning-making, from social policy to aesthetic experience, from scientific inquiry to operatic performance, from taking a walk to reading a book. "Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." (Metaphors we Live By, Lakoff p. 3)

Barking at the Moon will explore metaphor in the contexts of art, music, literature, and science. We will observe and describe how metaphor works as expressive device, as tool of inquiry, as explanatory framework. Our work will extend beyond traditional studies of metaphor in literary contexts to examine the ways in which music is composed and enjoyed through specialized forms of metaphor. Similarly, we will explore medical representation practices where metaphor is often not admitted but, nevertheless, abundantly present as metonymy and synecdoche.

We will balance theory with source materials: music, literature, poetry, art, medical records, etc. Working individually or in (very) small groups, students will engage in an extended study of metaphor, using discursive, visual, or musical modes of inquiry and representation.

This program is intended for lost intellectuals who are not only bookish but also irreverent in outlook. We will admit students at all levels and from all disciplines with the goal of creating a close-knit learning community.
Total: 16 credits.

Changing Minds, Changing Course
Fall, Winter, Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Virginia Hill
Enrollment: 24
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: Yes, 8 to 16 credit internship spring quarter.
Travel Component: None

Rhetoric and propaganda remain our close companions as we rush from the world of unadorned print into the dot com age. People's attempts to influence one another are as old as language itself, yet the mass media and the Internet extend a communicator's reach more deeply into the lives of others, promising to magnify that influence. This program examines a wide range of planned influence attempts, from cults and brainwashing to political campaigns and Internet advertising, asking how communications media in concert with persuasive messages re-form the social landscape. We will study the psychology of persuasion, as well as the ways in which various communications media encourage or inhibit particular forms of discourse. We will also discuss how telecommunications policy and media ownership might affect the persuasion process. To better understand the interplay of media and mind-changing, students will learn production techniques in print, video and the Internet, and they will design their own propaganda campaigns. Students will also learn research skills to evaluate and influence programs. In the spring, students will take part in internships to get a first-hand look at media as instruments of influence.

  • Credit awarded in persuasion and propaganda, mass communication and society, principles of marketing, campaign design, media technology and public policy.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter; 8 to 16 credit internship spring quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in mass communications, marketing, political campaigns, law and social science.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs.

Creative Nonfiction: Reading and Writing the Literature of Reality
Fall, Winter/Group Contract
Faculty: Tom Foote
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Based on review of recent prose work; students must submit prose work to faculty by the Academic Fair, May 16, 2001. Send prose materials to Tom Foote, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA 98505.
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Writers have come to realize that the genre of nonfiction writing can be as colorful and gripping as any piece of fiction. The difference is that nonfiction writers are not burdened with inventing characters, plot and description as everything they write about actually happened. Creative nonfiction writers assemble the 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 practiced with the form through intensive field work, research and writing.

This program combines journalism, field research and 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 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 winter quarter.

In the winter we will continue the study of creative nonfiction, as well as hone our sensitivity to literature techniques, and students will begin work on the first draft of their final nonfiction 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 nonfiction. 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.

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 winter quarter.

  • Credit awarded in feature writing, reading creative nonfiction, folklore, field research and writing creative nonfiction.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities: creative writing and feature writing.

Culture, Context and Human Rights
Fall, Winter/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Greg Mullins, Steve Niva
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome; college-level expository writing ability.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $30-$50 for possible field trip.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

In the post-Cold War era, the discourse of human rights has risen to prominence in social justice movements and in debates over foreign policy and globalization. At the same time, many questions about the meaning and practice of human rights remain unresolved. Who defines human rights and to whom should they be applied? Which humans and which rights? Are human rights universal or do they reflect Western cultural norms? Should human rights instruments apply to corporate behavior, sweatshops and the institutions of the global economy such as the World Trade Organization? What is the relation of "human" and "humanitarian" to "the humanities" we study as part of a liberal arts education? How can literature, film, philosophy and history help us understand humanity and human rights?

This program aims to provide students with a broad working knowledge of the theory and practice of human rights. We will explore theory and practice through novels and testimonies, films and video, and historical and analytical texts. The program will push us to think more deeply about how different peoples' experiences have been translated into human rights narratives, how these have shaped struggles to end oppressive relations and what forms of power operate under these conditions. Our case studies will be drawn from the United States, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Among our concerns will be immigration rights, sexual rights, women's rights and labor rights. We will examine Islamic and Asian perspectives on human rights to better understand questions about the universality of human rights instruments. The program will provide a stimulating political and intellectual context and guidance on writing, research methods, Internet research and activism and approaches to challenging texts and ideas.

For more detailed information about this program, visit Greg Mullins' Web site, linked to Evergreen's home page through "Personal Home Pages" http://academic.evergreen.edu/m/mullinsg/.

  • Credit awarded in international studies, law and government policy, literature and political economy.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in liberal arts professions such as politics, education, law, human rights work, arts, management, humanities and social services.

Decadence and New Blood: The Outsiders
Fall, Winter/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Marianne Bailey, Hiro Kawasaki, Judith Gabriele
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing; transfer students welcome with two quarters
of study in literature, art history and philosophy.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

In this program, we will study literature, art history and aesthetic theory, music, drama and philosophy. We will examine avant garde, outsider thinkers and artists of 19th and early 20th-century Europe and their tenuous but fruitful dialogues with the inside, the aesthetic and intellectual mainstream of their times.
The study of French language will be an important component of this program. Students will participate in beginning or intermediate classes depending on their previous training and ability.
We will begin our study with works of Romantic writers, artists and thinkers during the late 18th and early 19th century, examining how they laid the foundation for the development of modern movements. We will then focus our attention on how the arts and writings of the "fin de siècle" reflect the slow and anemic decline of Western culture. But the cherry blossom's beauty is most throat-catching at the moment it falls. Decadent artists and writers were drifters and pariahs, or recluses in gilded towers or closed chambers. Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Wilde, Nietzsche, Moreau, Redon, Gauguin, Hofmannsthal and Strauss were some of the artists who announced and prepared the rites of spring of the dawning 20th century, the arising vanguard of modernist movements. We will look at aesthetics of abstraction, atonality and anti-narration; at Jugendstil or art nouveau, expressionism, primitivism, cubism and dada. We will consider how non-European cultural traditions infused new vigor into 20th-century Europe.
In addition to all program activities (reading, writing, lectures, seminars and workshops), a collaborative group project will constitute an important part of students' work each quarter. The faculty will guide the formation of the groups, and will offer suggestions on topics and approaches to the projects.
Students are expected to commit themselves to both fall and winter quarters. They should have a background and strong interest in literature, philosophy, art history and French language, and considerable discipline and self-motivation.
Credit awarded in European literature, art history and aesthetic theory, philosophy and beginning or intermediate French.
Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities and arts.
This program is also listed in Expressive Arts.

Destiny: Welcoming the Unknown
Fall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Kristina Ackley, Raul Nakasone(F), Corky Clairmont(W)
Enrollment: 48
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: Kristina will require a signature for spring quarter. The students must submit
independent project prosposal to Kristina. Faculty interview required.
Special Expenses: Approximately $100 per quarter for field trip expenses.
Internship Possibilities: Yes
Travel Component: None

This program is a part of the Native American and World Indigenous Studies area. While the program will not be a study specifically of Native Americans we will explore Native American historical perspectives and will look at issues that are particularly relevant to Native Americans. We will concentrate our work in cultural studies, human resource development and cross-cultural communication. The program will examine what it means to live in a pluralistic society at the beginning of the 21st century. We will look at a variety of cultural and historical perspectives and use them to help us address the program theme. We will also pay special attention to the value of human relationships to the land, to work, to others and to the unknown.

We will ask students to take a very personal stake in their educational development throughout the year. Within the program's themes and subjects students will pay special attention to how they plan to learn, what individual and group work they want to do and how they plan on doing it, and what difference the work will make in their lives. Students will be encouraged to assume responsibility for their choices. The faculty and students will work to develop habits of healthy community interaction in the context of the education process.

  • Credit awarded in Native American history, cultural studies, philosophy, and content areas dependant on student's individual project work.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in education, the arts, anthropology, multicultural studies, tribal government and Native American studies.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs, Social Science and Native American and World Indigenous Peoples Studies.

International Feminism
Fall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Angela Gilliam, Ju-Pong Lin, Therese Saliba
Enrollment: 75
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing or above, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $100 each quarter for field trips.
Internship Possibilities: Possibly during spring quarter.
Travel Component: None

This program offers a broad overview of the contentious and problematic constructions of womanhood and women's lived experiences all over the world. The program also interrogates many approaches to feminism, the contemporary methods for studying women's lives. While much of bourgeois feminism has focused on sexual liberation, women's struggles internationally are rooted in the claim for economic, political and social, as well as sexual equality.

Thus, this program will examine the experiences of women, both in the United States and abroad, through art, film, literature and cultural and political analysis. The structural inequality between men and women and the ways in which this inequality has been eroticized across historical and geographical contexts unites many women around the world. We will explore how women's bodies function as signs and sites of struggle and how women artists, filmmakers, writers and activists produce resistant works that deconstruct the historical coding of women's bodies.

Beginning with colonialist representations, we will examine the uncomfortable intersection of ethnography, pornography and Victorian medicine, and its effect on women's lives and consciousness of self. These representations of primarily African, Arab and Asian women laid the foundations for the eroticization of inequality and the medicalization of motherhood. Focusing on the politics of mothering, we will explore the history of birthing practices and neo-colonialist interventions in the mothering process. We will also look at how the construction of race and gender are interrelated; for example, how concepts of "beautiful," "ugly," "exotic" and "erotic" are used in relation to Black women's hair, Asian women's eyes or veiled Arab women. We will examine how performance artists and filmmakers use their bodies as signifiers to deconstruct the power of language as a tool of oppression.

Recent developments in the global economy are reshaping the political and social terrain of global feminism. Through case studies on the global sex trade, women prisoners and female sweatshop workers, we will examine the intersections of gender, class and national and racial inequalities. In addition, we will interrogate the tensions between women's search for liberation as women and their often conflicted role within cultural nationalist movements. From colonialism to globalization, we will explore how migration and transnational movements have shaped the identities of women in the Diaspora, and how they represent their identities in performance art, installation, film and writing.

In workshops, students will develop skills in video production, art installation, oral history and creative nonfiction. During spring quarter, students will work on individual or collaborative projects on women's issues using these skills and/or intern with a women's organization.

  • Credit awarded in gender studies, international studies, multicultural literature, media studies, history and cultural anthropology.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in women's advocacy, media, education, international relations, art and writing.
  • This program is also listed in Expressive Arts and Social Science.

Filming Fictions
Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Bill Ransom, Caryn Cline
Enrollment: 48
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will accept up to 25 percent or 12 first-year students.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Up to $300/student may be required for materials, equipment and theater admissions.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

This one quarter coordinated studies program examines the choices writers and filmmakers face when telling stories. We will study the work of a number of writers and the filmmakers who've brought adaptations of their work to the screen. Engaging in a close critical reading of literary texts, and building our skills as print-text readers, we will also learn to look at their film adaptations and to read the filmic uses of space and time, images and sounds.
What are the requirements of fiction? Of film? How do the elements of plot, character, setting, mood, point of view, narrative voice, tone and foreshadowing work in fiction? In film? When to translate from the text literally and when to diverge? What makes for a successful adaptation? How does the screenwriter translate words into images and sounds? What is gained and lost in the translation?
This program emphasizes small group work in workshop and seminar, supplemented with lectures by visitors and faculty. Along with four program peers, students will write weekly seminar papers, keep extensive lecture and journal notes, participate in on-line and in-person workshops. Each participant will write a short story from scratch and will adapt this story to screenplay.
Faculty will present the basics of story writing and adaptation, shooting and editing video, and students will create a short video from their completed screenplay (or a scene from that screenplay). The emphasis for the production component of the program will be on process rather than product. No video experience is necessary, but students with intermediate and/or advanced production experience may enroll in the program. For students with media production skills, alternative assignments must be arranged with the faculty. Guest speakers and an extensive reading/viewing list will infuse this program with effective methods for approaching the fiction-to-film process.
Total: 16 credits.

.life
Fall/Group Contract
Faculty: York Wong
Enrollment: 24
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

February 15, 2000
"What did you do today, Justin?"
"I wrote my name."
"How exciting!" exclaims his young mother, handing him a crayon. "Show me."
The two-and-a-half-year-old proudly scribbles out: J U S T I N . C O M
"And you are my mommy dot com!"

Technology transforms culture. Cars spew suburbs and change our notion of community. Television alters how we see ourselves and others. Computers shift control from workers to management.

.life probes our world now bonded to new technology. What is meaningful when virtual is real, time stretched and compressed, bodies programmable and mind mapped?

So what?

In addition to weekly reading and writing, lectures and seminars, students will also carry out independent projects on emerging biological, chemical and physical developments on social and psychological techniques that will impact race and gender identification and behavior, and missions to the unknown.

  • Credit awarded in political economy, research, and content areas dependant on students' project work.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in technology and the humanities.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs.

Looking Backward: America in the Twentieth Century
Fall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: David Hitchens, Jerry Lassen
Enrollment: 48
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

The United States began the 20th century as a second-rate military and naval power, and a debtor nation. The nation ended the century as the last superpower with an economy that sparked responses across the globe. In between, we sent men to the moon and began to explore our place in space. Many observers have characterized the 20th century as "America's Century" because, in addition to developing as the mightiest military machine on the face of the earth, the United States also spawned the central phenomenon of "the mass." Mass culture, mass media, mass action, massive destruction, massive fortunes-all are significant elements of life in the United States, especially after the national participation in World War I.

Looking Backward will be a retrospective, close study of the origins, development, expansion, and elaboration of "the mass" phenomena and will place those aspects of national life against our heritage to determine if the growth of the nation in the last century was a new thing or the logical continuation of long-standing, familiar impulses and forces in American life. While exploring these issues, we will use history, economics, sociology, literature, popular culture and the tools of statistics to help us understand the nation and its place in the century. At the same time, students will be challenged to understand their place in the scope of national affairs; read closely; write with effective insight; and develop appropriate research projects to refine their skills and contribute to the collective enrichment of the program. There will be program-wide public symposia at the end of fall and winter quarters, and a presentation of creative projects to wrap up the spring.

  • Credit awarded in U.S. political and economic history, U.S. social and intellectual history, American economics and global connections, and American literature.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities and social science areas of inquiry, law, journalism, history, economics, sociology, literature, popular culture, cultural anthropology and teaching.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs and Social Science.

Marking Time: Rituals, Gestures and Languages of Movement
Fall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Ruth Hayes, Doranne Crable, Lance Laird
Enrollment: 60
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome; Core program and college-level reading and writing.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $150 for art materials.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

People hang a calendar on the wall and place a sundial in the garden. A band marches in place while the dancer leaps, spins, taps or slides across the stage. Individual frames of film speed before our eyes to create the illusion of continuous movement, while commencement ceremonies and rites of passage cast the spotlight on a single moment of transition. A yogi counts breaths, while a college student counts credit hours. All are marking time.

In this program we will explore the variety of ways human beings mark time as we construct our lives, tell our stories and move our bodies through space. We will examine the boundaries and intersections between religious ritual, dance and animation: from a Catholic Office of the Hours to the Muslim's five daily prayers, from drawn gestures to the key frames of animation and from the core to the distal breath in Laban movement.

We are called upon to play many roles in our lives. Sometimes we think we choose the roles, and sometimes they seem to choose us. We may feel guided and comfortable in this process, or we may feel that we are lost. As we write the score of our lives, we define our identities among the infinite number of roles available, frequently reshaping one identity into another. The archetypes of metamorphosis and liminality (threshold crossing) will be central to our work in this program.

Humans set boundaries in almost every area of their lives in order to manage time and shape space to a human scale. At many times of life and across cultures, we mark the boundaries with rituals, celebrations and narratives. They help us find security, nurturing and sustenance for creative life. At the same time, boundaries, canons, rules and traditions can bind or limit our freedom. One of the questions we will consider is what drives some individuals or groups to leave a spiritual, artistic or political tradition, when it is the very space that has nurtured and sustained them? What is the benefit of going into the unknown, a "space" without boundaries, community or tradition? The individuals and groups we will study are those who have done this and returned to their tradition, renewing it and reinitiating a cycle.

Our explorations will lead us along various disciplinary pathways. They include spiritual, religious and mystical traditions, the arts and anthropology, politics and poetry. We will have workshops in animation, movement, spoken word and meditation, and take field trips to places of worship and to performances. We will seek answers to our questions through numerous texts and works of creative art. Kafka's Metamorphosis, Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return, Lawlor's Sacred Geometry, Purce's The Mystic Spiral and Chatwin's Songlines, the mystical writings of Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen and Black Elk, the films of Buñuel, Svankmajer, Deren and the Fleischer Brothers, and poetry by Mary Oliver, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rumi and Rainer Maria Rilke, are examples of works with which we may engage.

  • Credit awarded in drawing, animation composition and techniques, animation studies, comparative religion, ritual studies, comparative mysticism, religion and art, fundamentals of movement, poetry and prose: analysis and interpretation, cultural mythology and rituals of performance.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the arts (animation, dance and theater), education, world literature, humanities, religion and religious studies.
  • This program is also listed in Expressive Arts.

The Order of Things
Fall, Winter/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Bill Ransom, Joe Feddersen
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Admission to the program is contingent upon review of student art portfolio and writing samples, to be presented to the faculty before the Academic Fair, May 16, 2001. Send art portfolio and writing samples to Bill Ransom, The Evergreen State College, Lab I, Olympia, WA 98505.
Special Expenses: Students can expect to pay up to $300 in art supplies per quarter, and up to $100 for field trips.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

This is a two-quarter program of advanced studies in the visual arts and in the written word. We will draw expression from the contextualization of objects, extracting from them and from their contexts hidden or implied meanings. We will explore the texture, form, shape and mood of found objects to create meaning. An assortment of readings will deal with how others have gleaned meaning from the found object. We will spend time on the works of Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Cornell, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Jimmie Durham and Robert Rauschenberg. Readings, like Foucault's The Order of Things, will deal with the cultural display of objects and how text is used to convey ideas. Students will be expected to bring with them an advanced level of achievement in either the written word or visual arts. We will offer workshops in the fall to fill in some gaps-meaning that some of the workshops will address the whole group, but we will make a special effort to give the visual artists more skills in writing and the writers a better understanding of visual arts. Students will be required to participate fully in both writing and visual arts assignments. In winter quarter, students will have the opportunity to focus on a major project culminating in a final exhibition and/or publication.

Readings will include selections from contemporary authors who utilize found or everyday materials to make poetry and fiction; these include, but are not limited to, Tim O'Brien, Pattiann Rogers, Ken Brewer, Rebecca Wells, Bill Ransom and Carolyn Forché. A visiting-artist-and-writer series will be an integral part of this program.

  • Credit awarded in open- and closed-form poetry, research writing, expository writing, fiction, art history, philosophy, semiotics and studio arts.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the arts and humanities.
  • This program is also listed in Expressive Arts.

Pablo Neruda: Love, Politics and Poetry
Fall/Group Contract
Faculty: Craig Carlson
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Neruda writes simply, directly, forcefully, earthily of his love for-and his lover's quarrels with-Matilde Urrutia and Chile. He is a fiery poet of love and of politics. He violates the rules of behavior set up by the wise. His is a poetry of high animal spirits and enthusiasm:

Y cuando asomas
Suenan todos los ríos
En mi cuerpo, sacuden
El cielo las campanas,
Y un himno llena el mundo.

And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.

Students will immerse themselves in Neruda's poetry and his politics. We will examine Chilean culture through the scholarship of Howard Zinn, Karl Marx, Eduardo Galeano and Jorge Gilbert, as well as Neruda's poetry and prose.

Students will participate in weekly seminars and be asked to respond to Neruda through a variety of writing-critical essays, journal work and creative-as well as choosing expression in drawing, painting, calligraphy, dance, music and/or performing arts. Each student will design and present a final project based on Neruda's work and artistic heritage, as well as complete a research paper. We will follow Neruda's approach:

Estoy, mirando, oyendo,
Con la mitad del alma en el mar y la mitad del alma en la tierra,
Y con las dos mitades del alma miro el mundo.

I am here, watching, listening,
With half of my soul at sea and half of my soul on land,
And with both halves of my soul I watch the world.

  • Credit awarded in literature *, Latin American culture*, writing* and art*.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in law, the humanities, cultural studies, art and writing.

Politics and Ideologies From the Americas
Fall, Winter/Group Contract
Faculty: Tom Rainey (W), Adriana Fernandez-Batlle (FW.25)
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: $15 for program materials.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Rich and industrialized nations from the North assert that capitalism brought progress and welfare to many nations. On the other hand, people from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean argue that capitalism was based upon primitive accumulation rooted on 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 many centuries. First Europe and then the USA, after they expropriated the Third World of their right to life, have created and imposed structures and laws, which allowed them to decide the destiny of these continents. These conditions have permitted the 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 market, their culture, religion and identity were imposed upon them. Peoples from these continents were forced to be ashamed of them because they were Indians or Blacks, to renegade their cultures and to accept to living under eternal conditions of exile in their own lands.
This program is aimed to study the above processes in the Americas from pre-Columbian times until today from a multidisciplinary approach which 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 both from Europe and the USA. This program will also include a social research methods component to study 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 the spring quarter of 2002 the program will offer interested students a chance to 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 this Field School to Chile.

  • Credit awarded in social sciences, communications, Spanish language, Latin American studies, political economy, arts, television production and writing.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.

Self, Gender and Culture: Japanese and Anglo-American/Native American Literature and Cinema
Fall, Winter/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Harumi Moruzzi, David Rutledge
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Self, Gender and Culture: Japanese and Anglo-American/ Native American Literature and Cinema is a coordinated study designed for the students who are interested in cross-cultural exploration of the concepts of self and gender.

It is often said that American and Japanese cultures represent themirror 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. We also incorporate the study of Native American culture through literature and cinema in order to add another dimension and further depth to our multi-cultural examination of self and gender.

During the fall quarter, our focus will be on film medium. At the beginning of the quarter the 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 the critical viewing of film, weekly readings concerning culture and gender will also be incorporated. Students will also acquire rudimentary experience in video production. 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, which deal with gender issues in specific cultural contexts.

Winter quarter, our focus will shift to literature, but film viewing will continue throughout the quarter. At the beginning of the quarter the students will be introduced to the major critical theories in order 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.

  • Credit awarded in psychology, gender studies, Japanese culture, Japanese literature, Native American culture, American literature, sociology, film criticism, expository writing and video production.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in psychology, gender studies, cultural studies, film studies, and the humanities.

Social Work Practice
Fall/Group Contract
Faculty: Justino Balderrama
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

This one quarter, upper-division group contract explores the field of social work as an evolving helping profession. We will examine the historical and philosophical foundations of social work, as well as the contemporary political-cultural issues that form its field of practice. Thus, our focus is on the diversity of social work professional roles and functions.

Students will be expected to participate in a volunteer service learning project, assess current research studies that inform social work practice, write several response-essays, facilitate a seminar discussion and complete a major scholarly essay on a student-selected social work topic.

  • Credit awarded in history of social work*, social work community practice*, volunteer service learning* and human behavior in the social environment*.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in social work and human services.
  • This program is also listed in Social Science.

Tragic Relief: Comedy, Tragedy and Community, from Athens to America
Fall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Helen Cullyer, David Marr, Sam Schrager
Enrollment: 69
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $300 for week-long trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: Out-of-state field trip.

Jokes, humor and comedy are central to human experience, but too often have been considered unworthy of serious study. Tragedy, suffering and "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," on the other hand, have been thought to strike closer to the truths of the human condition. We will investigate comedy and tragedy as powerful rival visions of life. Our yearlong study of great texts will include masterpieces of ancient and modern drama and prose fiction, along with oral humor, films and television sitcoms.

We will read comedies and tragedies from ancient Greece and Rome, England and America. By approaching these works in their social and political contexts we will seek to understand how comedy and tragedy shape human outlooks on life, make political statements, reaffirm or challenge stereotypes, and work for or against human community. Among the authors whose works we will examine are Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Sopho-cles, Plautus, Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Arthur Miller. To aid us in our investigations, we will also read philosophical commentaries by Aristotle, Roland Barthes, Mikhail Bakhtin and Ted Cohen.

Our studies will not be confined to works in written and visual media which are traditionally labeled comedy and tragedy. We will also consider the role of jokes and humor in everyday life, questioning the time-honored belief that ranks comedy beneath tragedy in seriousness. To test this belief students will undertake a fieldwork project to document occasions of humor and responses to it. In the same spirit of skepticism we will also question the view that tragedy is out of place in a democratic society of equals.

In fall and winter, students will perform scenes from famous comedies and tragedies. In winter and spring students will collaborate in writing and performing their own plays.

  • Credit awarded in classical studies, humanities, folklore, literature, history, philosophy, social thought and foreign language.
  • Total: 12 credits each quarter. All students will take a four-credit course in a foreign language: Latin, Spanish, French or Japanese.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities, theater, teaching, law and community work.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs.

Women and Wisdom
Fall, Winter, Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Janet Ott, Sarah Williams
Enrollment: 37
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing or above, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: Yes. To apply, submit a writing sample by May 1, 2001, to Sarah Williams, The Evergreen State College, SE 3127, Olympia, WA 98505. For writing sample details and interview process see http://192.211.16.13/users1/ottj/home.htm. Students will be informed of acceptance by May 21, 2001.
Special Expenses: $50 for materials and $120 for yoga class.
Internship Possibilities: Yes
Travel Component: None

"[T]o grow in wisdom and to learn to love better" writes Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., is life's basic lesson plan. We will focus on the paradoxically radical idea that a goal of education should be to instruct ourselves-particularly women-in our abilities to gain wisdom and to love better.

Historically the rise of the university system from the monastic system of education split the development of spirit from that of mind and body. By further separating mind and body, our Cartesian cosmology solidified this process of compartmentalization. An education that embraces body, mind and spirit is radical. It is paradoxical because the cultivation of wholeness and divinity was once the heart of the system. And as women, those "not-men" creatures whom gender stereotyping has rendered particularly susceptible to matters of the heart, the paradox is even greater. Our program reclaims the wholeness and divinity of the cultivation of mind, body and spirit from which women have been repeatedly and specifically excluded. Our goal is to educate in ways that heal. Education means "to lead forth the innate wholeness in a person." So, concurs Remen, "in the deepest sense, that which truly educates us also heals us."

We also expect each student: to engage in an apprenticeship, a community service-learning project, an internship, or participatory or collaborative research project; to participate in a mid-winter retreat; and to develop a daily discipline that enhances his or her ability to grow in wisdom and learn to love better.

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 where experiential knowledge is put into conversation with academic scholarship.

  • Credit awarded in feminist theory, history, anthropology, science, women's studies, cultural studies.
  • Total: 16 credits each quarter.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in biology, counseling, cultural studies, health sciences, healthcare services, history, religious studies, social work and women's studies.
  • This program is also listed in Scientific Inquiry.

OFFERINGS BEGINNING WINTER QUARTER

A Study of Violence
Winter/Group Contract
Faculty: Justino Balderrama
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: Yes. In order to be considered for enrollment, prospective students must submit a two-page typewritten statement of interest. The statement of interest should express clearly: (1) the degree of interest in the program, (2) an assessment of reading and writing skills and (3) evidence of the ability to work independently. Continuing Evergreen students also should attach a copy of a previous "Faculty Evaluation of Student Achievement." Send to Justino Balderrama, The Evergreen State College, COM 301, Olympia, WA 98505, any time up to or during the Academic Fair, November 28, 2001. Students will be notified of acceptance into the program by November 29, 2001. If any questions exist, contact the faculty who is happy to respond, (360) 867-6051.
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

In this upper-division, one-quarter group contract we will explore the socio-cultural meaning of violence: we address the critical question, what is the social reality of violence in the United States? Thus, we examine how the institutions, symbols, beliefs, attitudes and everyday social practices found within the United States create and sustain violent behavior. We critically investigate the cultural connections between violent crime, media, literature, art and the United States' "culture of violence." Our approach is interdisciplinary using sources from both the social sciences and the humanities that inform our study of violence. Also, we will explore the social work and human services intervention models that inform successful violence prevention programs.

  • Credit awarded in social psychology*, cultural studies*, aesthetics of violence*, philosophy of violence*, literature of violence, criminology*, social work* and human services*.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities and social sciences.
  • This program is also listed in Social Science.


Bones and Stones: Children of the Ice Age; The Achievement of Our Prehistoric Ancestors
Winter/Group Contract
Faculty: Gordon Beck
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Students must submit at least one upper-level research paper to Gordon Beck, The Evergreen State College, L 3220, Olympia, WA 98505. Faculty will assess writing and potential research skills. Interviews will be conducted November 26-30, 2001. Students will be notified of acceptance by phone or mail.
Special Expenses: Local field trips to the Burke Museum and Seattle Art Museum.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Man's success is due to lack of specializa- tion, to being able to change habit and diet when occasion demands. - Colin McEvedy

In this learning community we will be reading the "prehistoric library" of bones, stones, ancient artifacts and early written texts from Gilgamesh to the Iliad. Our goal is to develop an understanding of the world from the last ice age (c. 50,000 B.P.) and to ponder the achievements of our ancestors through reading texts of bone, stone, ash, ivory, paint, metals and early cities. Our major activity is research.

Our program of exploration and discovery will utilize the academic tools of history, archaeology, anthropology, art history, literature and mythology. In aid of our search we will read both primary and secondary texts in order to survey current opinions; our investigations will involve a great deal of research, careful interpretation of evidence and speculative reasoning.

We will explore the recent past of our human species, from the rise of agriculture, ceramics, metal working, towns, trade and early texts. From the Indus Valley to the Pillars of Herakles, from the Second Cataract of the Nile Valley to the Scythian iron workers north of the Black Sea, our research will seek to understand the growth of agriculture, industry and the roots of social order.

Our program uses 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 W. Burkert's The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Campbell's The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, C. McEvedy's The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History, Stanley's Children of the Ice Age: How a Global Catastrophe Allowed Humans to Evolve, Trump's The Prehistory of the Mediterranean, and Hoffman's Egypt Before the Pharaohs: The Prehistoric Foundations of Egyptian Civilization.

Our activities will include seminars, research presentations, field trips, image workshops and films. Reading, writing and discussion are central to all of these.

  • Credit awarded in anthropology, archaeology, arts and crafts of prehistoric people, and research writing.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities, social sciences and the arts.

English Poetry
Winter/Group Contract
Faculty: Charles McCann
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome; Core program or equivalent.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Students intending further studies in literature or those wanting simply to tap poetry's potential for lifetime pleasure will gain familiarity with the range of poetry in English and with ways of thinking and writing about it. All will acquire confidence in understanding and expressing appreciation of poems.

Seminars will meet for about five hours on each of two days a week, participants having read (for each day) about 50 pages of poetry. In addition to normal seminar participation each student will make one 10-minute presentation per week, explicating a poem from the relevant readings.

Students opting for independent study will choose, during the first week, a major poet to read in and around during the quarter, with a view toward a term paper on some aspect of the poet's work.

The final examination, an explication of a "mystery poem," will prove to each student his or her acquired confidence in taste and judgment.

  • Credit awarded in American poetry, English poetry and expository writing.
  • Total: 16 credits. Students may take four credits by prior arrangement in lieu of independent study.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in any field requiring competency in using words.

OFFERINGS BEGINNING SPRING QUARTER

Alternatives to Capitalist Globalization: Radical Theory and Practice
Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Peter Bohmer, Steve Niva
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, transfer students welcome; students should have some background in political economy and social change.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

At the end of the 20th century, the dominant ideology expressed by global and national elites and institutions is that there are no alternatives to capitalist globalization. The world must be restructured according to "free market" principles that open up countries to the products and investment of multinational corporations, reduce social relations to commercial transactions and impose Western development models on diverse cultures. In this program, we will examine different social movements and thinkers who are actively resisting neoliberalism and are offering alternative visions and models for social relations and meeting human needs.

We will examine the dominant ideology of neoliberal economic development as well as alternative approaches to development and challenges to the very concept of development itself as a universal goal. We will also explore different theories and strategies of resistance to global capitalism that have arisen in diverse locations around the world, including those influenced by socialist, anarchist, ecological, feminist and postcolonial perspectives. The program will devote considerable time to researching case studies based on the interests of the students and faculty. Possible case studies may include worker cooperatives in Mondragon, Spain; Zapatista resistance to neoliberalism in Mexico; ecological and anarchist movements in Europe and North America; and anti-corporate movements in the Third World. Students will form research groups, write and present their case studies to the class.

  • Credit awarded in comparative social systems, political theory and international political economy.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in political theory, Third World studies and international solidarity work.
  • This program is also listed in Social Science.

Antebellum
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Michael Pfeifer
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Junior standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

The United States developed many of its crucial characteristics in the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. From 1781-1861, social arrangements that emerged around the enslavement of Africans and the territorial expansion onto the lands of First Peoples bequeathed America its troubled racial legacy. Distinctive regional identities-northern, southern, western-grew out of proximity to slavery, capitalist transformation and the frontier. As the rural North underwent the intensive agriculture of small farmers, the first wave of industrialization produced large metropolises in the Northeast, and eventually, the Midwest. Working classes and middle classes created by early industrialization and urbanization, the arrival of large numbers of migrants from Germany and Ireland and ostracized populations of First Peoples and African Americans, contested and produced the distinctive synthesis that we know as American culture. Although we can recognize the emergence of much that we identify as American in the pre-Civil War United States, there was also much that is less familiar. These less recognizable qualities include a passionate, democratic political culture (albeit one circumscribed by race and gender), highly particularistic regional and local cultures that eschewed assimilation into a homogeneous national identity, and a strong ethos of communalism and mutuality undergoing the initial challenges posed by individualistic capitalism.

Concentrating on themes of race, gender, class, ethnicity and religious experience, we will read extensively in the social and cultural history of antebellum America, listen to its music (such as that of William Billings and Stephen Foster) and read its literature. We will interpret and contextualize many primary documents and read key secondary historical accounts. Students will write short papers that will explore specific topics, and long papers that will attempt to make sense of the era in its entirety. We will be most concerned in our seminars and expository essays with what was old and what was new in this period, and its legacy.

  • Credit awarded in American social and cultural history, American studies and the history of music.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities, teaching, law and other professions.

Bodies of Contention
Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Alice Nelson, Greg Mullins
Enrollment: 48
Prerequisites: Two quarters of college. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $35-$50 for possible in-state overnight field trips.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Bodies are not only biological. They are also a medium of culture, a powerful symbolic space where the central rules and values of a given cultural context may be expressed. Our bodies are trained, shaped and impressed with prevailing historical forms of selfhood and desire, masculinity and femininity. As feminism and queer studies have insisted, this regulation of the body is political, and the prevailing norms shaping bodies must be contested and questioned if exclusionary social hierarchies are to change.

Focusing on literary and historical texts, and drawing centrally from feminist and queer theory, this program will explore the following questions: Why and how has the body been used as a site for political contention in the period 1950-2002? More specifically, what battles have been waged over gender and sexuality, as expressed through bodies, and what can literature tell us about these struggles? How are bodies and desires regulated and contested differently in different cultural contexts? How do transgressions of bodily, gender and sexual norms compare with other sorts of crossings: of geographical borders, ethnic/racial categories, social classes, pleasure/pain, aesthetic hybridity? Please note that much of the reading is sexual in nature. Students enrolled in the program must be prepared to approach this material in scholarly ways.

This program will focus on texts, both those we read and those we write. Students will explore program questions through writing and extensive revision, as well as through seminar discussion. In addition, students will work on media literacy skills through critical viewing and analysis of one film per week. For more information about this program, visit Greg Mullins' Web site, linked to Evergreen's home page through "Personal Home Pages" http://academic.evergreen.edu/m/mullinsg/.

  • Credit awarded in literature, history, critical theory and gender/sexuality studies.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in liberal arts professions such as education, law, arts, management, humanities and social services.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs.

Fiction and Nonfiction
Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Tom Foote, Evan Shopper
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing and above, transfer students welcome; the faculty will consider some third-quarter freshmen with two quarters Core program or equivalent background.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Based on review of recent prose work; students must submit prose work to the faculty by the Academic Fair, March 6, 2002. Send prose materials to Tom Foote, The Evergreen State College, Lab II, Olympia, WA 98505 or footet@evergreen.edu.
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

This program is designed around the central tenet that students cannot write effectively about something that they are unable to see clearly. To that end, we begin by studying field research methodology in preparation for observational studies in the field designed to teach students to learn to see beyond looking. Along with the field observations, students will read and discuss selected works of creative nonfiction, an exciting genre that allows and encourages the use of the tools of the fiction writer to report on factual events. This five-week introductory unit concludes with students writing a nonfiction piece based on their fieldwork.

The second five-week unit in the quarter is based on the writing of fiction, which builds from the previous work and discussion in creative nonfiction. Exercises in writing and in observation will continue, and the final product will be one or more pieces of fiction suitable for submission to literary magazines. All students will be required to submit a piece of fiction and nonfiction to one or more magazines.

  • Credit awarded in reading creative nonfiction, folklore, field research, writing fiction and writing creative nonfiction.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities.

Field School to Chile
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Jorge Gilbert
Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Students must apply by January 11, 2002
Special Expenses: $2,500 for airfare, room and board, transportation and visits to different sites, conversational Spanish classes, on-site orientation and program related expenses. Participants must pay a deposit of $150 by February 15, 2002
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: Four weeks in Chile.

This Field School to Chile has three general objectives. First it provides participants with an interdisciplinary curriculum which will allow them to study, research and experience firsthand a wide range of issues and concerns affecting Chile and South America at the beginning of the 20th century. Secondly, the Field School to Chile provides practical opportunities for intensive language study. Students will attend regular classes geared to their skill level with the goal of developing or deepening their knowledge of Spanish. Third, the Field School to Chile immerses participants in the cultural, socio-political and economic reality of a country struggling to overcome its condition of underdevelopment. Students will have the opportunity to participate in workshops, conferences, and discussions with political and community leaders and grassroots organizations and to study the social, artistic, folkloric and intellectual life of the country.
In spring 2002, the Field School to Chile will focus on the study of different aspects of Chilean life. The subjects of the studies will include poverty, popular culture, the status of women, artistic expression, environmental concerns of the people, and the particular struggles and issues facing different sectors of the population under Chile's current neoliberal model of economic development. The studies will involve research, observation, and close collaboration with communities and groups.
Students interested in the field school with a background in video production, Latin American studies, political economy, communication, art, media, folklore, environmental or cultural studies can enroll in this program for spring. However, you need to apply to this Field School to Chile no later than the second week of the winter quarter.

LOGISTICS The first week of the quarter will be used to introduce the students to the culture, politics and geography of the country. Working groups will be organized to join different research projects according to the particular interests of the participants of this field school. Once in Chile, the group will visit governmental, non-governmental, private and church projects for development 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 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 the new economic and cultural changes. Classes, conferences and workshops about this and other topics will be available at the University of Chile and other educational and research institutions.

REQUIREMENTS Students are expected to keep a personal journal documenting their experiences in the country, and to work in a group research project. To carry out their research projects, students can travel around the country, consult people, and visit libraries and universities. The coordinator of the field school will facilitate this component of the program. Students will stay in Chile for four weeks (or more). Upon return, the students will complete their video-projects and research at TESC with the material gathered in Chile. Participants in this field school are required to pay a deposit of $150 (non-refundable) by February 15, 2002. If students decide to travel to Chile, $100 will be used to cover airfare. Although knowledge of Spanish is not a requirement, it is highly recommended that the students take some provisions to gain familiarity with this language. However, this field school includes conversational Spanish classes at no extra cost to the students during the four weeks in Chile. Most of the activities described above will be enhanced by knowledge of Spanish. Lectures and workshops by the faculty will be in English.

FIELD SCHOOL COST The base price of this field school is approximately $2500 for four weeks. The cost of the airfare tickets need advance payment to secure group discounts. For this reason it is advisable to assemble your financing as soon as possible in order to avoid organizational problems and delays.

THE FIELD SCHOOL INCLUDES:

  • Air fare (around trip Seattle-Santiago-Seattle)
  • Room and board (breakfasts & dinner) in Santiago
  • Transportation and visits to different sites (and from the airport to the residence: Estadio de la Contraloría de la República de Chile)
  • Conversational Spanish classes
  • On site orientation (guides, local tours, etc)
  • Program related expenses (class & studio rooms, guest lectures, etc).
THE FIELD SCHOOL DOES NOT INCLUDE:
  • TESC tuition fees

FINANCIAL AID Students are entitled to apply for financial aid and loans from the college. If you need financial aid for the program, you must start this process no later than February 1, 2002. After this date, you will need to use personal funds to pay for your expenses. Financial Aid will reimburse you upon your return. For more information, contact the campus Financial Aid Office as soon as possible regarding application for support for this field school.

Total: 8, 12 or 16 credits.

Founders of American Consciousness
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: David Powell
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $200 for required texts.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

With canals and railroads under construction in America; with the coming shock of a total civil war fought on our own soil against ourselves; with power already firmly in the hands of the American materialistic mercantile owner class; with slavery as an economic basis and slave ownership guaranteed in our Constitution; with the requirement for speed in life and rapid production of goods on the job bred into us; with cruelty, disrespect and genocide as our national response to the Native peoples; with a slightly raw, but incredibly rich and varied bounty of literary masterpieces appearing, almost, out of nowhere; with the subject of these literary masterpieces frequently being alienation and isolation; with both the herd response mentality and individuated artists' dissent as core coexistent elements in our burgeoning culture; with our national propensity for grabbing and digesting vast tracts of land with total disregard for Native or Hispanic rights, or even recognition of their presence; with a capacity to build, cross, conquer and control both "nature" and natural obstacles already recognized and truly admired by the rest of the industrialized world; with natural resources so vast in quantity and quality that they were, obviously, inexhaustible, and probably greater than all of the natural resources of Europe; with the frontier moving, moving, ever westward, blessed by our almost religious conviction concerning our "manifest destiny" as subduers of an entire continent; with technology and industrialization as the handmaidens and pages of our physical success and our infrastructure (canals, bridges, dams, cities, railroads, boats, barges and roads) one of the amazing wonders of the modern world; with our fascination with and attraction to male and female cultural icons (from mythic Paul Bunyan to the superstars of today) already part of our "reality"; with our absolute convictions about the basic right of all Americans to freedom, wealth, independence and happiness, despite the actual availability of those to only a small number of the most privileged white citizens of the republic; the keystones of American consciousness are: growth, expansion, creativity, change, moralism, violence, materialism, thoughtfulness, political action, conflict, greed, imagination, productivity, personal courage, vast hopes and even greater dreams of individual/cultural achievement and success.

Readings will include these authors: James Fenimore Cooper, Francis Parkman, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Catherine Sedgwick, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry David Thoreau.

  • Credit awarded in American literature and American culture history.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in literature, social science and the humanities.

Hemingway: The Writing Life
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Tom Grissom
Enrollment: 24
Prerequisites: None. This all-level program will offer appropriate support for sophomores or above ready to do advanced work.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Ernest Hemingway, more than any other American writer, lived a life that became inextricably identified with his writings. From his beginnings as a writer in Paris in the 1920s to his death in Idaho by suicide in 1961, his own life and experiences became the source of his material and the spark of his imagination. He developed a style of storytelling that was uniquely his own. He aimed at uncompromising honesty in his writing, and strived always to create a depiction of the actual in his spare, unadorned and precise prose. He ranks as one of the most distinctive prose stylists in American literature in his novels, short stories and nonfiction works.

This program will be an intensive examination of major works of fiction and nonfiction by this important writer, including such works as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell To Arms, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Across the River and Into the Trees, The Old Man and the Sea, Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa and A Moveable Feast, plus the collected short stories. In addition, we will read literary criticisms and commentary of Hemingway's work and a biography of the life and times of the writer. Students will write responses each week to the readings and will produce a longer expository paper on some chosen aspect of Hemingway's writing. In our work we will pay attention to the structure and aesthetic qualities of the writings and to their meaning and relevance, responding to the question: What is the writer doing, and how does he do it? We will read and discuss with the aim of understanding and assessing Hemingway's contribution to and place in American literature. Classes will all be seminars and recitations in which students will be responsible for presenting their own writing and work.

  • Credit awarded in topics of 20th-century American literature, contemporary intellectual history, research and expository writing.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in literature and the humanities.
  • This program is also listed in First-Year Programs.

Japanese Film: The Characteristics and Aesthetics of Tradition and Change
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Setsuko Tsutsumi
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $40 for cultural events from Japan.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

This program will explore various aspects of Japanese film through an examination of the works of several major directors since the late 1930s. The course will focus primarily on three directors, Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956), Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63), and Akira Kurosawa (1910-99) who, though diverse in style and choice of material, have each contributed to establishing Japan's current place in world cinema. Mizoguchi, through his romantic adaptations of literary works, Ozu, through his depiction of family life, and Kurosawa, through his powerfully direct and dynamic work, have all explored themes which are universally relevant to the human condition, yet have done so from a uniquely Japanese perspective. We will make a close examination of their subject matter, artistic presentations and cinematographic techniques in order to define what makes each director different and uniquely Japanese.

We will also analyze some contemporary films by younger directors. We will see how the traditions of those directors mentioned above are carried out or changed in the new films and whether these new films still convey a strong sense of "Japaneseness" in the rapidly growing global culture. Through our study of film, we will examine the social transformations that have taken place during the past 50 years in Japan, particularly in the areas of family structure, women's roles, sense of morality, aesthetic sensibility and the Japanese sense of self.

Students will attend film-viewing sessions twice a week and discussion seminars immediately following them. In addition, students will read some literary and historical works to develop a better understanding of Japanese culture and society.

  • Credit awarded in Japanese film, Japanese culture and society and modern Japanese literature.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in Japanese studies, film, literature and cultural studies.

The Mexican Nation State: History, Political Economy and Community
Spring, Group Contract
Faculty: Dan Leahy
Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Intermediate Spanish fluency.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Students must demonstrate facility in Intermediate Spanish, agree to participate in a weekend orientation February 23 and 24, 2002, agree and sign the program covenant.
Special Expenses: Students must pay a $150 non-refundable program fee by February 4, 2001, and payment of another $150 before we leave. Approximate cost above tuition and $300 fee is $1,950 for round-trip airfare, hotels, bus, food and books.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: Mexico: four week travel to sites of the Mexican Independence and the Mexican Revolution; four weeks residency in San Patricio, Jalisco.

Students will learn about the creation of the Mexican nation state, its revolutionary history and current political economy through travel, reading, lectures and community residence. This program will travel together by bus for the first month, visiting the important sites of Mexican Independence and the Mexican Revolution. We will meet in Chihuahua in early April, retrace the southward movement of Villa's army through Zacatecas, visit Aquascalientes where the revolutionary forces met in 1914, stop in Queretaro where the 1917 Revolutionary Constitution was signed, spend a week in Mexico city and then visit Emiliano Zapata's home state of Morelos.
In late April, we take up a four week residence in the small, seaside village of San Patricio, Jalisco, where we live in Mexican homes, participate in Mexican family life and possibly work on community projects depending on the student's language fluency.
Students must complete all readings, maintain a journal and portfolio of class materials, complete and present an analytical project to the class, and write and present, in Mexico, an extensive evaluation of your learning.
Possible readings include Bonfil's Mexico Profundo, Shorris' Under the Fifth Sun: A Novel of Pancho Villa, Reed's Insurgent Mexico, Womack's Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, Castellanos' The Book of Lamentations, Poniatowska's Tinisima, Fuentes' Death of Artemio Cruz, and Collier's Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas.
Credit awarded in Mexican nation-state history, revolutionary social movements, cross cultural analysis and Mexican literature.
Total: 16 credits.

Nietzsche-Borges: Artist-Philosopher
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Evelia Romano, Marianne Bailey
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, transfer students welcome; previous college-level course work in literature and philosophy.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Nietzsche and Borges were the master stylists and the deepest, most enigmatic thinkers of their generations. Both conceived and communicated complex philosophical ideas as artists through a symbolic, even hieroglyphic, language. A key to approaching both is Paul Ricouer's statement "the symbol gives rise to thought." Both, finally, in their lifetimes stood at the margins of cultural life as "nomadic thinkers," in Deleuze's words.

The program will explore the connections between Nietzsche's thought and Borges' fictions, combining philosophical, linguistic and literary approaches. By reading some of Nietzsche's major works (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Gay Science and "The Case of Wagner"), students will discover the relationship between thought and language, which serve as the root of the recent literary postmodern movement. Likewise, the study of Borges' themes and style of thinking will unveil the philosophical nature of his writings, defined in many instances as ontological enigmas. Literary criticism and the work of other relevant philosophers will complement the exploration of the intersections between the Nietzschean and Borgesian universes.

Activities will include lectures, seminars, student presentations and workshops devoted to the in-depth analysis of the readings. Assignments will include formal essays and a group project on a selected topic related to program content.

  • Credit awarded in philosophy, literature, literary theory and semiotics.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in literature, philosophy, arts and writing.

Performative Shakespeare
Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Rose Jang, Hilary Binda
Enrollment: 48
Prerequisites: This all-level program accepts up to 25 percent or 12 first-year students.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Admission fees for theater tickets
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None
In the program, we will study Shakespearean dramas as both masterpieces of literature, as well as theatrical, performative texts. We will concentrate on a select group of plays from the Shakespearean canon and apply the most up-to-date, cutting-edge theories of literary criticism to them. We will also complement literary, theoretical explorations with practical applications and performances, by experimenting with and acting out different interpretations of scenes and characters from the plays, using both literary criticism and performance theory as interpretative and cognitive foundation. Besides general group meetings and film-viewing sessions, there will be smaller workshops focused on literary analysis and performance training. Students are required to engage in both activities in the process, but they have the choices of responsibilities and concentration for the final production. The program will culminate in a public performance of Shakespearean scenes, with suggestive costumes, makeup and scenic components, in the Recital Hall at the end of the quarter.
Credit awarded in Shakespearean study, literary and dramatic criticism, dramaturgy, theater acting, movement and technical theater.
Total: 16 credits
Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in literature and performing arts.

Postmodern Fiction: John Barth, Haruki Murakami and World Cinema
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Harumi Moruzzi
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Postmodernism is frequently mentioned in academia as well as in popular culture today. Nobody seems to be able to define it unequivocally, however. Postmodernism means different things to different people. For instance, it may mean an eclectic mixture of many traditions to some people, or it may mean the negation of canonical values to others, depending on their intellectual premises or their academic fields. What we get from these multi-faceted definitions of postmodernism is a realization that we are amidst a sometimes confusing, sometimes exhausting, sometimes exhilarating point in history when everything is up for grabs. In 1921, Yeats wrote in the "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

In this group contract, we will read fiction written by John Barth, an American writer, and Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer, in order to understand the complexity of our contemporary reality, while reading texts pertaining directly to the concept of postmodernity/postmodernism written by thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard.

We will also examine selected international films that demonstrate postmodernism. At the beginning of the quarter the students will be introduced to the basic terms of film analysis. With these analytical tools in hand, students will then examine, in weekly sessions of viewing and discussion, cinematic manifestations of postmodernism in selected international films.

  • Credit awarded in Japanese culture, Japanese literature, American literature, film studies and contemporary philosophy.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in cultural studies and the humanities.

Power and Limitations of Dialogue
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Patrick Hill
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, transfer students welcome; at least two years of college-level study of the humanities and social sciences.
Faculty Signature: Yes. Contact Patrick Hill, The Evergreen State College, L 3220, Olympia, WA 98505, for signature information.
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

The United States is an extremely diverse society. In some areas, like music or food, we seem to revel in that diversity. In other areas, like organized religions, we merely tolerate the diversity as a civic obligation. And in still other areas, we downright avoid our differences, polarizing and segregating them, unless forced to do otherwise. This program explores the power and limitations of dialogue through a study of a variety of dialogues, including our most difficult and most avoided ones. Prospective students need to understand that the program is an empirical (or fact-gathering) inquiry about the powers and limitations of dialogue. There exists in the program no prior feel-good precommitment to the power of dialogue; and no cynical precommitment to its limitations.

The program will focus on theoretical models of human differences, on the ideal and less than ideal conditions for dialogue, on the various forms of dialogue (beyond the overemphasized face to face conversation), and on dialogical skills, strategies and expectations. Particularly instructive dialogues, such as those that occur between men and women, environmentalists and loggers, prisoners and society, gays and straights, and/or blacks and whites, will be introduced. Students will be expected to work in groups around one of these dialogues.

Throughout the program, close attention will be paid to the development of the wisdom and personal skills that will maximize our own contributions to the limited power of dialogue. Each student will sense over the course of the program that she/he can internalize the dialogical skills as add-ons to one's already existing strategies of survival; and/or as the adoption of fundamentally depolarizing habits of mind and heart now, sometimes, seen as vital to a pluralistic age in need of a more functional understanding of our differences.

This program might well be described as a 10-week experiment in understanding, in unprecedented, radical or respectful listening. Such an experiment is one of a few crucial prerequisites to both assessing the power and limitations of dialogue and to improving our own dialogical skills and wisdom. As a consequence, the program will require an unusually strong Covenant. The full Covenant, addressing all student and faculty expectations, will be available at the Academic Fair and must be read and agreed to before admission to the program.

In a normal week, there will be one to two lectures, one to two films or videos, one book seminar and one integrative seminar. Students will be required to write response papers for the assigned books, take a comprehensive mid-term exam, maintain a journal and program portfolio, report on an in-depth involvement with one of our society's most avoided dialogues, and compose an end-of-quarter paper on her/his personal assessment of the powers and limitations of dialogue, Sample texts: Tannen's You Just Don't Understand, Hacker's Two Nations, Senge's The Fifth Discipline and Rittner's Living With Our Differences.

  • Credit awarded in philosophy, sociology (contemporary American society), political economy and the theory and practice of interpersonal communication.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in mediation, education, business and government administration, teaching, philosophy and ethnic, cultural and gender studies.

Shakespeare's Craft (cancelled)
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Craig Carlson
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Is it not curious that Shakespeare is both the standard against which all writers and thinkers are measured and yet largely unread by the public? He is celebrated, nevertheless the vast majority of us have been denied the pleasures Shakespeare offers-betrayed by well-meaning teachers who so took apart his every line and metaphor that they often managed to obscure the dramatic tension, excitement and humor that makes his work so remarkable. Some of us enjoy his plays in production, but rarely read him. Yet Shakespeare is fun to read and to experience, and he himself gives us a key to understanding his work.

Hamlet, as playwright, tells his actors: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action . . ." It is here that we too should begin our involvement. What conventions of dramatic action and speech does Shakespeare use to construct his plays and poetry? How does Shakespeare use words to convey action? How does Shakespeare use action to enrich the verbal dexterity of the plays? An early question to Shakespeare might be one to a master watchmaker-how did you get your plays to tick?

Students will participate in weekly seminars, be asked to respond to Shakespeare through a variety of writing-critical essays, journal work and creative-as well as choosing expression in drawing, painting, calligraphy, dance, music and/or performing arts. Each student will design and present a final project based on Shakespeare's craft, as well as complete a research paper of his/her own design.

In all this-and with some laughter, catharsis and amazement-we will try to follow Leontes's hope:
If this be magic, let it be an art
Lawful as eating.

  • Credit awarded in Shakespeare*, writing* and art*.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in law, humanities, arts and writing.

Shakespeare in China: A Search for Holistic Theater (cancelled)
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Rose Jang, TBA
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome; one year of coordinated studies or equivalent in either literature or performing arts.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Admission fees for theater tickets.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Shakespeare and classical Chinese theater share many traits and elements clearly aimed to embody something close to a total, or holistic, theater experience. Textually, both Shakespearean and Chinese theater resort to poetic rhythm and highly structured literary schemes. Aesthetically, both of them explore purity and simplicity through multiplicity and exuberance. Thematically, both traditions depend on the constant cross between the real and the fantastic, the joining of the physical and the emotional worlds, and the desire to transcend human senses to a lyrical, musical and hence mythical state of existence.

This program will search for ways and mechanics to bring these two together, and to create a theater of the joint adventure-the third, the harmony-for public presentation at the end of the quarter. A full-length Shakespearean play, or selections from a host of them, will be set in the context of ancient China. The classical form of Chinese performing arts, best exemplified by elaborate Chinese costumes, makeup and performance style-including Chinese music, movements, martial arts, individual as well as group fighting choreography-will underline the stage presentation. All these flamboyant theatrical elements will come to serve the dramatic discourse and emotional core of the performance-the original Shakespearean drama.

Our study in the program will embrace a continuous line of explorations, from literary criticism and dramatic interpretation to performance and production work. While we are exploring all elements and stages of the process together each student will be required to focus on one aspect of the program, and stay with either the literature or performance aspect of the production. Under this design, close literary and dramaturgical analyses, conducted by a smaller group of student dramaturgs, will take place simultaneously with movement workshops, technical theater workshops and rehearsals, participated in by theater students. Each activity will inform and complement with the others throughout the process. A series of Chinese movement/stage combat workshops, taught by a visiting artist, will be offered to prepare student actors for the special performance demands of the stage. The final production will be directed by faculty and acted and designed by students, under the thematic and aesthetic guidance of the faculty. Students who are interested in Shakespearean study, dramaturgy, acting, dance, movement study, Chinese martial arts, various Chinese fighting techniques and technical theater (lighting, sets, costumes, props, theater management, promotion and publicity) are strongly encouraged to join the program.

  • Credit awarded in Shakespearean study, literary and dramatic criticism, dramaturgy, theater acting, movement, stage combat and technical theater.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in theater, literature, cultural studies and performing arts.
  • This program is also listed in Expressive Arts.

Silence
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Mark Levensky
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome; Core program or equivalent.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $300 for a six-day retreat and $50 for a meditation workshop.
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: Six-day retreat.

Silence is an introductory investigation into origins, kinds, qualities and good and bad consequences of silence. Each member of the program will be encouraged to experience, describe and make commentary about his or her own silences and the silences of others. Dreams, poetry, essays, photographs, films, landscapes and philosophy will be studied and a variety of forms of response-visual, written, gestured-will be encouraged in workshops, seminars, one-day field trips and a six-day, silent retreat during the fifth week. A dream workshop, book seminar, special event, meditation workshop and project workshop will occur during most weeks. Readings for the book seminar might include Robert Bly's Silence in the Snowy Fields, John Cage's Silence, first person accounts from Jews who survived the Holocaust (Sho'ah), or reproductions of photographs by Minor White and Paul Caponigro. Films might include Kinugasa's A Page of Madness (Japan), Chaplin's The Gold Rush (USA), Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (France) or Bergman's The Silence (Sweden). Field trip destinations might include Mt. Rainier National Park, an ocean beach or the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Self-directed individual or small-group project work will be required. Each student or student group will determine the form and content of the project and each student or group will present results of the project work to the program during the 10th week. Students who are interested in silence, who can quiet themselves, who enjoy doing difficult work with other people, and who have knowledge and skill in visual or performing arts, sciences, humanities or social sciences are invited to join.

  • Credit awarded in dream workshop, readings on silence, writing and research project.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities, social sciences and arts.

Social Gerontology
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Justino Balderrama
Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, transfer students welcome.
Faculty Signature: Yes. In order to be considered for enrollment, prospective students must submit a two-page typewritten statement of interest. The statement of interest should express clearly: (1) the degree of interest in the program, (2) as assessment of reading and writing skills and (3) evidence of the ability to work independently. Continuing Evergreen students should attach a copy of a previous "Faculty Evaluation of Student Achievement" to the statement of interest. Send to Justino Balderrama, The Evergreen State College, COM 301, Olympia, WA 98505, any time up to or during the Academic Fair, March 6, 2002. Students will be notified of acceptance into the program by March 7, 2001. If any questions exist, contact the faculty who is happy to respond, (360) 867-6051.
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

This upper-division, group contract introduces the field of social gerontology. We address the fundamental question: what is aging? We will study the socio-cultural processes that define and describe the social phenomena of aging. We will explore and critically examine the leading theoretical perspectives, research studies and socio-political issues that inform the social construction of aging in the United States. We will examine the social work and human services intervention models that have informed improvements in the quality of life for the aging population.

  • Credit awarded in social gerontology*, social psychology*, volunteer service learning*, social work* and human services*.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in the humanities and social sciences.
  • This program is also listed in Social Science.

Transatlantic Revolutions
Spring/Coordinated Study
Faculty: Jeanne Hahn, Thomas Rainey
Enrollment: 50
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing only, transfer students welcome; college-level European or early American (to 1820) history or political economy.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: No
Internship Possibilities: No
Travel Component: None

Today's globalism is only the latest phase of the 500-year process of the political, economic and social development and expansion of capitalism. This program will focus on globalism's foundations as they were laid in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In an effort to comprehend globalism's current phase we will investigate both critical turning points in and resistance to this historical process.

This program will probe capitalist expansion throughout the transatlantic world through its primary engine, English imperialism. We will study the relationships among colonialism, slavery and British free-trade imperialism that together knit the transatlantic region into a global trading system, fueling Britain's industrial revolution as well as stimulating resistance and revolution. We will also investigate the role and consequences of other colonial powers active in the Caribbean trade, both in humans and cheap commodities.

Imperialism and economic expansion precipitated political and social revolutions and the foundations of new governments that experimented with liberal democracy. These revolutionary changes fueled conflict, resistance and further political revolution. In studying these changes we will look specifically at the political, economic and social consequences of three of these revolutions: the revolution of the North American settler-colonists, the slave revolution in the sugar colony of Haiti, and the French revolution and its emancipatory spirit. Throughout, we will endeavor to understand the articulation of these many impulses as they join to undergird an emerging capitalism that forms the first major phase of the globalization process. Students will be expected to draw on their previous work in history and political economy and to engage in serious written and oral investigation.

  • Credit awarded in North American founding, political economy, early capitalism, mid-18th- to mid-19th-century European history: France and Great Britain.
  • Total: 16 credits.
  • Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in history and political economy.
  • This program is also listed in Social Science.

Uniquely Dutch: The Netherlands in History and Art
Spring/Group Contract
Faculty: Stacey Davis
Enrollment: 24
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing and above; freshmen with a faculty signature.
Faculty Signature: No
Special Expenses: Approximately $50 for field trips and museum tickets.
Internship Possibilities: No

Today Amsterdam is famous as a melting-pot city of social and cultural tolerance. But few travelers realize the uniquely Dutch mixture of multicultural open-mindedness and straight-laced bourgeois industry is over four hundred years old.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the little Dutch Republic, a rare democracy in a Europe filled with increasingly-autocratic monarchies, became a powerhouse in both global trade and a fore-runner of modern capitalistic societies. In our attempt to pinpoint the Dutch difference, we will take an in-depth look at Dutch history, from the building of the first dikes holding back the sea to the violence of the Protestant Reformation; from the war of independence to the growth and final decline of a Dutch colonial empire that stretched from New York to Indonesia and included a booming slave-trade.
Simultaneously, we will study the art of Dutch master painters from Bruegal in the 16th century to Rembrandt, Vermeer and de Hooch in the 17th in an attempt to determine how the uniquely Dutch culture both sparked and reflected an artistic flourishing rivaled only by the Italian Renaissance. As a counterpoint, we will study Dutch poetry and autobiography and ask why no great literary tradition emerged to rival the Netherlands' painters. Finally, we will end with a look at the late 19th century Van Gogh, to see whether Dutch identity influenced this tortured artist who worked most of his life in France.
Students will complete substantial individual research projects in Dutch history or art history; as part of this work they will present their research to their classmates. Students will also play primary roles in leading seminars.
Readings will include: Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age and Rembrandt's Eyes; Edward Snow, A Study of Vermeer; Rudolf Dekker, Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland; and Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Credit awarded in European history and art history. Upper-division credit may be awarded for upper-division work.
Total: 16 credits.
Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in history, art history, cultural studies and research.

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Last Updated: August 25, 2017


The Evergreen State College

2700 Evergreen Parkway NW

Olympia, Washington 98505

(360) 867-6000