2014-15 Undergraduate Index A-Z
Find the right fit; Academic Advising wants to help you.
Leave feedback about the online catalog or tell us ideas about what Evergreen could offer in the future.
- Catalog Views (Recently Updated, Evening & Weekend Studies, Freshman Programs, and More)
-
Recently Updated
Featured Areas
- Evening and Weekend Studies
- Fields of Study: Subject List
- Freshmen Programs
- Individual Study
- Research Opportunities
- Student-Originated Studies
- Study Abroad
- Upper Division Science Opportunities
View by Location
- Searching & Filtering Options
-
Note: No need to submit! Your results are filtered in real time, as you type.
Literature [clear]
Title | Offering | Standing | Credits | Credits | When | F | W | S | Su | Description | Preparatory | Faculty | Days | Multiple Standings | Start Quarters | Open Quarters |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Arun Chandra
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | The creation and the performance of music involves the structuring of time (now this movement, then that sound, but first a grand entrance!), and an aesthetic goal (how does one perform an 'I don't care!' attitude? with what sound can one express hunger? Does one preclude the other?). In this program, we'll explore the performance of music, as mediated by what one can learn from poetry and theories of film. We'll read and study the poetry of T.S. Eliot (his ) and Aime Cesaire (a 20 century Caribbean poet) particularly his and his version of Shakespeare's We will also read and study essays on film composition by Sergei Eisenstein (an early 20 century Russian filmmaker and theoretician). From the work of these artists, we will create weekly performance assignments. Students, working in small groups will create responses to these assignments, and receive weekly feedback from the class and from the faculty. The assignments will address issues of montage, aesthetics, sequence, dynamics and other structural considerations. Students will be challenged to create music works starting from the poetry and the structural relations we study. During the final week of the quarter, some of the assignments will be chosen by the class for public performance. | Arun Chandra | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | |||||
Susan Preciso and John Baldridge
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 12 | 12 | Evening | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | What is history for? This year-long investigation of 20 Century American history and culture will be organized around the pivotal roles of wars and social movements as shapers of American life and thought, especially the development of our sense of irony as reflected in politics and culture. Fall quarter's work will focus on World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War. During winter quarter, we will study three key movements for social change: the Progressive movements of the early 20th century, the African American Civil Rights Movement of the mid-century, and the second wave of feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. Students will write articles based on their own historical research and will publish them in a program web-zine. During spring quarter's study of culture as history, we will see how these turning points were and are reflected in our cultural lives. This is an all-level program, ideal for returning and transfer students, especially those pursuing the “Upside Down” BA degree. It is a broad liberal arts program designed for students who want to improve their historical knowledge, research skills and (multi)cultural literacy. We especially encourage those who would like a supportive atmosphere for senior-level project work to attend. Credits may be awarded in twentieth-century American history, labor history, American literature, Geography, and academic writing. It will be possible in our work over three quarters to meet some endorsement prerequisites for the Master in Teaching program. *We strongly encourage students to plan to enter the program in the fall and stay with us for winter and spring. Evergreen is unique in that it gives students the chance to be engaged with a complex intellectual project over time. By the concluding quarter of an all-year program, students amaze us with the quality and complexity of their work. | Susan Preciso John Baldridge | Mon Wed Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | ||
Gail Tremblay
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | Poets use language to create an experience for the reader by using images, metaphors, similes, rhythm and sound like musicians use notes, sound and rhythm to tempt audiences to feel deeply what can be known about the roots of the human condition. In this writing-intensive program, students will read poetry by a wide variety of writers, study poetic form and explore a variety of strategies for writing poetry. Fall quarter, they will read by John Frederick Nims and David Mason, and will learn about the history of poetry and the development of different styles and techniques for writing poems. There will be assignments online that allow students to listen to poets and performers read poetry and study techniques for reading poetry as well as writing it. All students will be required to write at least two poems each week and to present those poems for discussion in a writers' workshop. They will continue to work on drafts throughout the quarter. Students will also be required to attend poetry readings, and to study poetry publications and strategies for publishing their work in a variety of magazines, journals and online sites. At the end of the quarter, they will hand in a portfolio that contains all the drafts and comments on their poems with a clean final draft on top. Winter quarter, students will have the opportunity to study a diverse collection of chapbook and book length collections of poems and to discuss how poets choose and arrange poems to prepare them for submission to a press. They will continue to hand in two poems a week for workshop and to work on drafts of their poetry throughout the quarter and submit new drafts to their faculty. They will study publishers of poetry books, and hand in a portfolio with all their drafts at the end of Winter quarter. They will also prepare poetry for submission to a journal before the end of the quarter. | creative writing, editing, and teaching English. | Gail Tremblay | Mon Mon Tue Tue Thu Thu | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | ||
Heather Heying, Andrew Buchman and Sarah Pedersen
|
Program | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | What does it mean to observe? When things change—the stakes, the shoreline, or the technology, the observed or the observer—how does what we see change? How are vision and insight intertwined into representations of the natural world? Through the perspectives, methodologies and skills of artistic practice, field studies, literary criticism, evolutionary science and seamanship, we will study, interpret and communicate what we see, how we see and why. Beginning the year with a six-day field trip, we will engage in sail training aboard a classic sailing vessel and practice both foundational field methods in evolutionary studies and the documentation of sights and sounds through recordings and field journals. We will then return to the sea in spring with a two-week long expedition. How will our senses, and the brains that interpret for them, have changed in the interim? What might we see that we could not before? What do we see in the spring that was truly not there in the fall?As we move between sea and shore, we will focus on borders and boundaries: physical, sensory and cultural; metaphorical and literal. Coastlines are both fixed, defining a transition between two other real things, and in constant flux. We will look for pattern and subtlety in the places in between the dichotomies, developing stories about the changes and the boundaries we’ve observed. We will consider what makes a good story in science, art and literature, and we will investigate how to create, tell, assess and destroy stories. The stories that we know to be true sometimes aren’t, and those that we know to be false are sometimes true; we will ask how the stories that we tell and believe are influenced not just by our eyes and other senses, but also by our histories, personal and cultural. What we want to see influences what we do see. Why do our brains deceive us and when?In this program, students will study and practice observation and representation in the fields of audio and video recordings of nature and culture, performance and visual art, evolutionary biology, literary studies and seamanship: | Heather Heying Andrew Buchman Sarah Pedersen | Freshmen FR | Fall | Fall | |||
Donald Morisato and Rita Pougiales
Signature Required:
Winter Spring
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | The human body has long been a natural locus of study, interpretation and storytelling. Corporeal existence has been conceptualized and experienced in radically different ways across time and across cultures, conceived as an irreducible whole by some and as an amalgam of separate systems or individual elements by others. How has our philosophical and biological conception of the body changed over time? How is the body used to find or express meaning? What is the relationship of the body to the mind and the soul?In this program, we will explore the nature and essence of the body and reflect on the experience of being human. Knowledge about the body and our lived experiences within our bodies has been created from the culturally distinct perspectives of biologists, social scientists, artists, philosophers and storytellers. We will read philosophical and historical texts and closely analyze some of the ideas that have helped shape our conception of the body. We will study the genetic development and biological function of the body, carrying out experiments in the laboratory to get a direct sense of the process of scientific investigation. Finally, we will read novels and look at visual images as other ways of engaging with the body, particularly the physical manifestation and representation of emotion. Throughout our inquiry, we will ask how we have come to know what we claim to know.Our investigations will follow a particular progression. In fall quarter, we will consider the body: the history of the conception of the body, images of the body, evolution of the body, the body as the site of meaning-making and genetic approaches to deciphering the development of the human organism. In winter quarter, we will examine aspects of the mind: the Cartesian dualism, the functional organization of the brain, processes of cognition, measuring intelligence, use of language and the importance of emotions. In spring quarter, we will explore the notion of the soul: death and burial rituals in different cultures, philosophical and literary investigations of the soul, ethics, beauty and religion. The program will use regular writing assignments, including essays and papers, to strengthen and deepen analytical thinking skills. We anticipate reading such authors as Michel Foucault, Rene Descartes, Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Kuhn, Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, Clifford Geertz, Gregory Bateson, Paul Rabinow, Joao Biehl, Emily Martin, Virginia Woolf, Robert Musil, Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeffrey Eugenides. | Donald Morisato Rita Pougiales | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Joli Sandoz
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 8 | 08 | Weekend | W 15Winter | Resilience is about adaptability, buoyancy, hardiness, and strength. We’ll read about resilience as a concept that applies to both personal and community life, and identify and articulate our own experiences and observations of bouncing back.This is a writing program, which means it’s also a reading program; careful attention to published creative nonfiction about experiences of resilience will be one of two central foci of the program. The other focus will be the writing and polishing of several short creative nonfiction pieces based in observation and personal experience.In all program efforts, we will be especially attentive to the following lines of inquiry and their implications: effective communication of event and emotion, empathy as a mode of response, and the creation on the page of a robust and multi-dimensioned narrator. is designed for anyone interested in exploring ideas and experience in order to learn and write about human resilience. Prospective professionals in the human services, education and health-related fields, and people who want to acquire or sharpen skills applicable to producing vivid and interesting nonfiction writing, may find program content particularly relevant to their interests. Previous creative writing experience is not required. Reading, writing and responding to published and unpublished work of others will make up bulk of our work together. Program participants must be willing to share their writing with all program members for their response, in person and in a program-only space online. Please note that this is not a psychology program, although our focus on resilience certainly relates to working with people; we will draw on tools and methods of analysis from the fields of creative writing, journalism and literature as we do our work. | Joli Sandoz | Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | ||||
Steven Hendricks, Brian Walter and Kathleen Eamon
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | This is an upper division program aimed to support interdisciplinary work among students with some experience in any of our disciplines: mathematics, the humanities, or creative writing. Together, and drawing on our respective backgrounds, we will explore how conceptual tools like philosophical terms, fictional narratives, and mathematical systems depend upon and challenge the structures of knowledge—edifices built up against the unknown. We'll see how practices in all three disciplines function to exceed or disrupt conventional thinking, and we'll pursue our own experiments in the use of constraints to help emancipate us from aesthetic traditions and generic structures of meaning.We’ll regard each of these disciplines as ongoing conversations that can both expand and limit what we can know and what we can imagine. For us, mathematics will be an imaginative, humanist endeavor: a study of patterns, a struggle for certainty and precision that yields a language of symbols that in turn reveals new possibilities for inquiry. Philosophy will help us both think about the conditions for the possibility of world-making and examine fictional worlds as aesthetic objects. In our study of literature, we’ll attend closely to structures in language and narrative that make meaning possible. We’ll read work by contemporary literary experimentalists working within the aesthetic and philosophical lineages of Borges and Calvino, story tellers for whom time, space, and being are of more interest than plot. Philosophical texts will likely include works by Kant, Benjamin, Adorno, and Lacan. We'll also read texts that describe the scope, content, and aesthetic of modern mathematical work, such as Davis and Hersh's . | Steven Hendricks Brian Walter Kathleen Eamon | Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | |||||
Trevor Speller
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | What is a novel? How did this art form develop? It is perhaps hard for us to imagine a world without novels, where poetry, drama and nonfiction ruled the literary world. Grounded in British literature, this upper-division program will explore the rise of the novel. We will read examples ranging from speculative prose fiction in the 17th century to established examples of the novel in the 19th century. We will consider the novel as both an art form that establishes a genre and one that breaks genre boundaries.The intersection of colonialism, nationalism and the emerging novel will also be an important focus of our attention. Although we call these works "British novels," we might equally view them as an international art form, one concerned with the politics of colonialism, an emerging global empire and the shadowy figures of those who live outside the British Isles.In order to accomplish this, we will read works by Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and Joseph Conrad. In addition to these novels, we will read excerpts from other works, critical views on the rise of the novel and contemporary theory concerning literature and colonialism. Film versions of the texts will be shown as required. By the end of the program, students will have a firm foundation in British literature, exposure to significant strands of literary theory and experience with upper-division literary research.In this program, students will be asked to prepare a 20-minute in-class presentation, to lead class discussions and to produce a long (15-plus pages) critical paper, in addition to regular minor assignments. The best work in this program will be useful for graduate school applications. | Trevor Speller | Tue Tue Wed Thu Thu | Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Joli Sandoz
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 8 | 08 | Weekend | S 15Spring | To whom do we give, and from whom do we take? What is the social "language" of giving and receiving? And what characterizes respectful and mutual relationships between givers and receivers of services, in professional settings? We’ll read, think and write about these questions first in our own lives, and then within the contexts of the human service, medical, writing, teaching, law, community organizing and social justice professions. Writing will be our primary (though not the only) mode of inquiry, as we acknowledge and learn from attention directed toward our own lives and those of others. Members of will draw on empathy and personal experience in addition to our readings, to produce short pieces of story- and experience-based nonfiction. Because this is in part a writing program, it is also a reading program; participants will be expected to read carefully factual and creative assigned texts, with attention to both content and the writer’s craft. Our work in class will include instruction in making decisions ethically, in reading for information and to understand and appreciate creative texts, and in writing to engage and educate readers. Another important part of our work together will be discussing our readings and the writing produced by program members. In all program efforts, we will be especially attentive to the following lines of inquiry and their implications: how best to address inequities and complexity within service relationships, and how to draw on personal energy and knowledges to serve the common good. To lend our classroom work particularity, one focus will be on relationships and reciprocity between people who are abled and people who are disabled by prevailing environmental and social arrangements. Sustainability of personal efforts to reach out to others will be an important consideration.Program participants must be willing to share their writing with all program members for response, in person and in a program-only space online. Previous creative writing experience is not required. Please note that this is not a psychology program, although our work will center on working with people; we will draw on tools and methods of analysis from the fields of writing, literature and ethical decision making. | Joli Sandoz | Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Steve Blakeslee
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 8 | 08 | Evening | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | In the past decade in particular, graphic novels have become recognized as an important form of storytelling, shaping contemporary culture even as they are shaped by it. These book-length, comic-art narratives and compilations employ a complex and iconic visual language. Combining and expanding on elements associated with literature, 2-D visual art, and cinema, the medium offers unique opportunities for reader immersion, emotional involvement, and even imaginative co-creation. In “The Graphic Novel,” we will study sequential narratives that represent diverse periods, perspectives, styles, and subject matter--from the “high art” woodcut novels of the 1930s (e.g., Lynd Ward’s ), to contemporary memoirs such as Marjane Satrapi’s to the bizarre but compelling alternate universe of Jim Woodring’s . While many of our works include humor, they frequently center on serious topics, including war, religious oppression, social and economic inequality, and dilemmas of ethnic and sexual identity. We will carefully examine each text at multiple levels of composition, from single frames to the work as a whole, and read selected theory, criticism, and commentary, including Scott McCloud’s seminal and Matt Madden’s ingenious . As writers, students will develop and articulate their new understandings by means of response papers, visual analyses, bibliographic summaries, and other activities as assigned. Each quarter our studies will conclude with final projects focused on particular artists, works, and themes, or on the creation of original graphic narratives. Finally, while this is not a studio art course, we will experiment with drawing throughout the program as a way to develop an artist’s-eye view of comic art. Our overall goal is to develop an informed and critical perspective on this powerful medium. | Steve Blakeslee | Tue Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter Spring | |||
Rebecca Chamberlain and Cindy Beck
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 8 | 08 | Weekend | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | During this year-long program, we will explore the human experience and health from the inside out. What can we do to achieve healthy bodies, minds, and spirits, sometimes referred to as being in the “flow?” Combining science and humanities, we will look at our relationships to food, family, community, culture, movement, fitness, and the environment. Through a study of theory and practice, we will learn to cultivate healthy patterns and lifestyles that develop the body and mind, creativity and human potential, and sustainable relationships with our communities and the natural world. Food For Thought: What is our relationship to food? How does it sustain healthy individuals and communities? How does it affect human potential? What is the role of food in diverse cultures? What is its influence on the history and environment of the places we live? As we explore themes through science, history, culture, literature, folklore, and social media, we will ask: How does the food we eat nourish our cells [another community], and how do our thoughts influence our cells and well-being? We will study nutrition through a practical physiological platform as well as through the tantalizing effects food has in enhancing the senses, creating culture and identity, and through its symbolism in literature, memoirs, films, historical, and journalistic accounts. Students will develop skills of analysis, writing, and performance as they explore the stories, myths, cultural and family traditions around food, from hunting and gathering and early agricultural communities to the global economic, political, and nutritional issues that challenge the world today. Participants will research locally raised and harvested foods including their cultural, environmental, nutritional, and economic influences. Research projects will culminate in a media campaign to promote local foods and connect themes to the larger community. In the Flow: We will deepen our understanding of health, fitness, creativity, and well-being as we continue to train our minds and bodies. How do people achieve their peak potential? What are the principles of movement and mindfulness that give us clues to how the body's healing processes work? From science and medicine to psychology and contemplative practices, we will explore anatomy, physiology, psychoneuroimmunology, epigenetics, exercise, and psychosomatic processes. We will look at fitness versus sports in our society, and how we can incorporate movement into everyday life. Humans need to move and are not made to be sedentary; how has this relatively new phenomenon become a health issue? We will also explore the role of creativity, emotional, and spiritual health, as we look at a variety of diverse philosophic, psychological, historical, cultural, artistic, and literary traditions. As we analyze texts from the world’s literary, mythic and wisdom traditions, we will ask: what have different cultures and traditions suggested about how to achieve balance and well-being? How can we maximize various physiological and psychological processes that integrate our interior lives and imagination with outer experiences and healthy patterns? How does this help us cultivate relationships to our communities and the natural world? Field-trips and activities will encourage both collaborative and self-motivated learning, and students will continue to refine their critical reading, writing, and thinking skills through research and writing projects, essays, poems, and memoirs about health and movement. The Power of Place: We will continue our study of health and the human experience by looking at our interactions with the environment; how does it nourish us, and how do we nurture it? How do healthy patterns help us cultivate relationships to our communities and the natural world? We will explore the role of the physical senses, natural history, literature, and practices of writing, walking, and pilgrimage--even stargazing and basic wilderness skills--as we engage with the natural world through multicultural and interdisciplinary perspectives. We will study local landmarks, historical sites, and native flora and fauna, through scientific research, essay writing, community studies, oral history, art, performance, journalism, or media projects. Fieldtrips, assignments, and activities will encourage both collaborative and self-motivated learning. Students will look at issues unique to their local environment as well as conditions in the global environment. They will choose important issues to focus on, and present their work through final projects and public presentations. | Rebecca Chamberlain Cindy Beck | Sat Sun | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | ||
Eirik Steinhoff
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | By the time the First World War broke out in 1914, the vast majority of the world’s population and territory were under the direct or indirect control of European imperial powers. This was accomplished, on the one hand, through military conquest, genocide, and political subjugation, and it was legitimated, on the other, through religious, economic, and scientific argument. Works of art played their part as well, but also open up spaces of inquiry, critique, and resistance. This program shall accordingly place a special emphasis on critical and creative reading and writing as a way of deepening our inquiry into these challenging materials. What were the arguments made in support of imperialist policy and practice? And what arguments – and other forms of resistance – have been mounted against it? How does imperialism do things with words? And what might words, in turn, do with imperialism? How does the experience of imperialism affect those subjected to it, and what impact does it have on imperialists? And how does the legacy of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism continue to structure our own so-called “post-colonial” epoch?In order to answer these questions, we will study the discursive practices of both the imperial past and the “post-colonial” present, paying special attention, in particular, to verbal actions and reactions in relation to concrete material historical conditions. Our study will be enriched by the theoretical paradigm of Orientalism (as theorized by Edward Said), which shall enable us to examine the ways in which European ideologies underwrote the formation of empire and continues to inscribe asymmetrical relations today under the guise of freedom, modernity, progress, and global economic development.Requirements will include (a) frequent short writings, (b) an end-of-the-quarter research paper and presentation, and (c) weekly seminars. Weekly schedule will consist of presentations by faculty and guest speakers, viewing of films, study groups, and seminar discussion.A reporter once asked Gandhi, “What do you think about Western Civilization?” Gandhi replied wryly: “I think that it would be a good idea.” | Eirik Steinhoff | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | |||||
Stacey Davis and Samuel Schrager
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | Stacey Davis Samuel Schrager | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||||
Jeanne Hahn and Ratna Roy
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 15Winter | It is often said that an inquiry into the past helps make the present more understandable. Certainly this is the case with India. The roots of today's India lie deep in its early history. One of the world's oldest civilizations, with a body of literature in Sanskrit dating back to l500 BCE, India is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and the home of diverse philosophical thinking that relates to concepts of birth/death, duty, citizenship, state building and governance. Today, India is considered to be the world's largest democracy and a nation undergoing rapid change and modernization. What is the relationship of this long past to today's India? India's ancient inheritance continues to shape modern India, while at the same time creating tensions and contradictions as it changes and finds its place in the world of the 21st century. This program will study aspects of both India's past and its present to gain an understanding of its long historical trajectory, as well as its present society and what it is that connects past to present. We will begin with translated excerpts from ancient texts as literature and gain an understanding of the foundations of Indian thought. A focal point of the first several weeks will be a reading of the great epic text, We will then build on this foundation to investigate the defining cultural, political and economic issues facing contemporary India. In addition to the ancient texts, the program will read contemporary literature, political economy and cultural studies. Writing will include a carefully developed two-part progressive essay that synthesizes and analyzes the program themes. | Jeanne Hahn Ratna Roy | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | |||||
Bill Arney
Signature Required:
Winter
|
Contract | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 15Winter | Individual Study offers opportunities for students to pursue their own courses of study and research through individual learning contracts or internships. Bill Arney sponsors individual learning contracts in the humanities and social sciences. All students ready to do good work are welcome to make a proposal to Bill Arney. | Bill Arney | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | |||||
David Wolach
|
Course | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening and Weekend | W 15Winter | In what ways is writing gendered? This class will take up "the body" as a site of radical cultural production as expansively as possible within the short time we have, considering some of the ways in which bodies are othered through language, including through discourses of disability, gender performance, and other zones of social dislocation. Each week we'll read texts by contemporary writers that we will use as models for build our own writing portfolios. Though this is primarily a creative writing class, our writing will push itself outside its usual modes of operation. Emphasis will be put on experiments in breaking genre and mixing media, collaborating on pieces as well as making individual works, and developing a poetics in relation to the social-political. We will explore texts anthologized in the recent collection , discuss and critique the rich tradition of "somatic" practices in the world of performance and live art, including the work of artists such as Marina Abramovic, and we will familiarize ourselves with important recent experiments in poetry and prose by authors such as kari edwards, Hannah Weiner, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and CA Conrad. Our end goal will be to curate a show and live reading that allows us to test out some of our textual experiments. | David Wolach | Wed Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | ||||
Greg Mullins and Julie Russo
|
Program | FR–SOFreshmen–Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | This program offers an introduction to queer studies and an avenue to continue the study of literature and visual culture that students may have begun in “It’s About Time.” Through the critical study of film and fiction students will expand their appreciation for how words and images open horizons of understanding sex and gender and the cultural politics of sex and gender.Style (in literature, film, art, fashion, design) is notoriously easy to recognize and challenging to define. You know an Olympia hipster when you see one, but what makes a hipster “hip”?Queer writers, critics and media artists have historically deployed styles at once visible and elusive. Why? To what effects? (Think: Ziggy Stardust. Think: Margaret Cho.)This program will explore style as an aesthetic and political practice. We will focus on queer politics and on ways that gender and sexuality might interrupt narratives that, on their surface, appear quite tranquil. Our visual studies will center on narrative cinema; our textual studies will focus on novels. Expect to devote long hours to reading richly stylized fiction, literary criticism and queer theory. Expect also to write expository essays.A sense of fashion is not a prerequisite, but a willingness to explore style (in your writing, at least) is. | Greg Mullins Julie Russo | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Spring | Spring | |||||
Trevor Speller, Shaw Osha (Flores) and Greg Mullins
|
Program | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | Quick—what time is it? Your answer probably comes from a smartphone that connects you instantly to information across the globe. New technologies drive new experiences of time and writers and artists respond to those new experiences with startling innovations in form and vision.Through the critical study of art and literature, we will explore the experience of time in the modernist period—roughly defined as the first half of the 20th century. In those decades, airplanes, automobiles, telephones and radio sped up time and the modernists responded in kind. How did they experience time? How is this different from our own experience of it?To answer those questions, we will not only study modernist art and literature, but also live like modernists. We will begin the fall quarter with a voyage, sailing the waters of Puget Sound on a 100-year-old schooner. We will slow down by using the technologies of the past. Students will write with ballpoint pens and typewriters, draw from observation and move into abstraction, use film photography, memorize poetry and go to museums, all in the hopes of living more slowly. During both fall and winter quarters we will study movements such as Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-impressionism, Cubism, Dada, Abstraction and Surrealism in visual art and literature. Students will engage with authors like James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf and artists like Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.Students in this program can expect to examine art, literature and culture in the modernist period; learn how to draw, paint and write in various ways from naturalism to abstraction; understand the basic principles behind artistic and literary representation in the modernist period; and go on field trips using "slow" technologies (train, boat, walking). | Trevor Speller Shaw Osha (Flores) Greg Mullins | Freshmen FR | Fall | Fall Winter | ||||
W. Joye Hardiman
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | Students in this ambitious program will examine the complexity of identity within the Black experience through lectures and film series, author-led discussions about their autobiographical processes, guest speakers and seminars. They will acquire the necessary concepts, skills and habits, to create their own autobiographies based on the lessons they learned and wisdom they earned from the hills and valleys of their lives through knowledge development workshops, writing workshops and peer collaborations. Students will also draw upon Ancient Egyptian and Classical African worldviews as conceptual lenses, engage in appreciative inquiry as a process and employ a griotic compositional framework.All students will be evaluated on their participation in program activities, an mid-quarter asset–based autobiography, and a autobiographical presentation treatment in a medium of their own choosing during our Identity Fair at the end of the quarter. | W. Joye Hardiman | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | |||||
Marla Elliott and Thomas Rainey
Signature Required:
Winter
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 8, 12 | 08 12 | Evening | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | This program will explore the Russian short story writer and playwright Anton Chekhov and other European dramatists, such as Heinrich Ibsen, who together are credited with the development of modern drama. We will analyze not only their fictional and dramatic works but also their lives and times, from which they drew their major characters and dramatic situations. We will also study the Stanislavsky Method as well as other aspects of modern acting techniques. During the fall quarter, we will experience Chekhov and Stanislavsky through scene work and culminate those studies in auditions for a full production of Chekhov's which we will perform at the end of winter quarter. During the winter quarter, we will study carefully filmed live performances of plays by Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht, and other dramatists associated with the birth of modern drama. In the winter quarter, we will also continue to read, critique, and discuss commentaries—current and past—on the plays of Chekhov and of the other late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century dramatists and determine the many reasons for the enduring legacy and influence of all these makers of modern drama. Embedded in the program, during the fall quarter, will be a 4-credit segment entitled “Anton Chekhov: Life, Times and Work.” Students enrolled in the program will participate in these seminars and lectures alongside students from the 16-credit program “Russia and the Forging of Empires”. Credit equivalencies will be in cultural history, literature, and drama. | Marla Elliott Thomas Rainey | Tue Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | |||
Amy Cook and Julie Russo
|
Program | FR–SOFreshmen–Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | Leonardo da Vinci Throughout the centuries that span Leonardo's Mona Lisa (painted in the early 1500s) and William Gibson's cyberpunk classic (published in 1988), the worlds of science and art have been in dialogue, and those conversations lie at the heart of this two-quarter program. We will explore the many meanings of “science”: how do scientists and non-scientists define it, and on what points do they agree and disagree? We will examine science in a variety of contexts to gain a deeper understanding of how it functions in culture(s): what is the relationship between what chemist and novelist C.P. Snow termed “the two cultures” (the sciences and humanities) and the larger culture(s) of which they are part? To answer this question, students will consider, in detail, the choices that artists, writers and media creators make about how to interweave science with storytelling and aesthetics. We will undertake this journey by navigating a conceptual double helix that bridges introductory life science and introductory media studies (analyzing film, television, and new media). Such a schema involves thinking through how research and ideas about the nature of life have been shaped by media technologies and representations, and vice versa. In Fall quarter, we will begin a path of study in general biology with a focus on cell biology and genetics. Over the course of two quarters, we will cover major concepts in organic chemistry, microbiology, evolutionary biology, physiology, and ecology. Equally importantly, students will supplement their humanities toolkit by honing their critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Equipped with this knowledge and these skills, we will examine and critique how issues like biotechnology, epidemics, race and gender have been presented in the news media and both nonfiction and science fiction film and television, from to . In Winter quarter, we will continue our study of biology with a focus on organisms (plants, animals and fungi) and ecosystems. We will also explore the media's portrayal of these concepts through themes such as monsters, anthropomorphism, reproduction and eugenics, and the human/machine binary. The scope of our analysis will expand to include computers, the internet, video games, and other independent or varied multimedia. Singers and songwriters like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Maddy Prior and Ray Troll incorporate themes from biology and geology into their music. Visual artists like da Vinci have delved into science to lend their work a high degree of scientific accuracy and filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg hire scientists for similar reasons. Mary Shelley, Barbara Kingsolver, William Gibson and a host of other creative writers merge science and art to produce what may be called “lab lit.” How these artists attempt to achieve balance between the application of scientific exactitude and the exercise of artistic license will be a guiding question in winter quarter.Program activities will include biology lectures and labs, seminars on texts that explore science from a variety of different perspectives, film/media screenings and discussions, and field trips. Students will have the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of science, culture and media and to develop their skills in the analysis of texts and in academic and creative writing and media practice. | Amy Cook Julie Russo | Tue Wed Thu Thu Fri | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | Fall Winter | |||
Stephanie Kozick and Andrea Gullickson
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Alfred Lord Tennyson This program is a yearlong academic inquiry into the paired realms of music and the city. The history of modern music sits squarely in the emergence of cities. Can we get an impression of the waltz without getting an impression of 18th-century Vienna? Can we consider New Orleans without considering jazz? And certainly, urban recording companies, such as Cincinnati’s King Records in the late 1940s to early 1960s, influenced what urban dwellers listened to. The connected study of these aspects of society—music and cities—creates a lively academic journey. Inquiry in this program will bring to light how cities and music interact with one another, how each changes the essence of the other, how each are expressions of culture. Music and cities are “characters” for deep consideration. The distinct topics of urban life and urban music will be explored through familiar modes of inquiry: readings, workshops, writing and listening. Furthermore, work that combines the two topics will move us to understand their interface. Fiction, such as (Seth, 2000), a tale set in Venice and Vienna that explores how music can both unite and divide, helps portray the urban, international music scene. Kurt Ambruster’s nonfiction (2011) connects the topics through a historical perspective. There are also specific collected urban sound experiments to think about: John Cage’s New York City art and score is one such experiment, and Steve Reich’s minimalist composition is another. This program will experiment with its own collection of city sounds through student fieldwork projects. In this program, expect to develop a new language to express what you are hearing and learning about in the world of music and cities. You will learn to listen critically, to become familiar with genres of music and to understand music’s cultural implications. At the same time you will be immersed in the concept of “city” by experiencing others’ visions of cities, how we navigate urban environments and how we change them. Fall and winter in-class work will be punctuated with fieldwork to explore the sounds of nearby cities. In spring, students will have the opportunity to design a field study that investigates the urban/music significance of a city of your choice and means. A formal field study proposal will be required as a tool to plan a five-week field study. | Stephanie Kozick Andrea Gullickson | Mon Tue Wed Thu | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | ||
Marla Elliott and Mark Harrison
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 8 | 08 | Evening and Weekend | S 15Spring | “Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” “Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.” --Stephen Sondheim Stephen Sondheim is widely considered by critics and public alike to be the most influential and innovative composer/lyricist in American musical theatre. His works demonstrate that musicals, both on and off Broadway, are powerful vehicles for important ideas about self, culture, history, and creativity. Working with the sources, scores, and texts for these complex and subtle musical plays requires us to collaborate, to cross cultural barriers, and to become personally engaged with the ways they are embodied. We will learn how Sondheim brings "order out of chaos.” From a performance standpoint, we will study (and sing!) representative songs from Sondheim’s musicals. Students will also actively participate in staging practices of the musical in general and Sondheim's works in particular. Our examination of Sondheim's art will also involve analysis and some writing. Students will be expected to read the assigned texts, do required listening and screening, and complete all writing assignments. | Marla Elliott Mark Harrison | Wed Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Kristina Ackley and Zoltan Grossman
Signature Required:
Spring
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith asserts, “Our communities, cultures, languages and social practices—all may be spaces of marginalization, but they have also become spaces of resistance and hope.” In this program we will identify and contextualize these spaces and the politics of indigeneity and settler colonialism. We will use the Pacific Rim broadly as a geographic frame, with a focus on the Pacific Northwest Native nations and the Maori in Aotearoa (New Zealand). A comparative study of the role of treaties in Washington state and New Zealand—in natural resources, governance, the arts, education, etc.—will provide a key framework for the program.By concentrating on a larger region, students will have an opportunity to broaden Indigenous studies beyond the Lower 48 states and explore common processes of Native decolonization in different settler societies. We will be studying decolonization through cultural revitalization and sovereign jurisdiction of First Nations. In order to examine the central role of Indigenous peoples in the region's cultural and environmental survival, we will use the lenses of geography, history, and literature.In fall our focus will be on familiarizing students with the concept of sovereignty, working with local Native nations and preparing to travel to Aotearoa or elsewhere. The concept of sovereignty must be placed within a local, historical, cultural and global context. Through theoretical readings and discussion, we will move from state-building in the U.S. and Canada to Native forms of nationalism. We will stress the complexities and intricacies of colonization and decolonization by concentrating on the First Nations of Western Washington and British Columbia.We will later expand the focus to appreciate the similarities and differences of Indigenous experiences in other areas of the Pacific Rim, such as Native Alaskans, Aboriginal peoples in Australia and South Pacific island peoples. We will emphasize common Pacific Rim concerns such as climate change, tourism and cultural domination.For up to seven weeks spanning the last half of winter quarter and the beginning of spring quarter, many of us will travel to Aotearoa, where we will learn in a respectful and participatory way how the Maori have been engaged in revitalizing their language, art, land and politics, and their still unfolding, changing relationships with the Pakeha (non-Maori) people and society. Students will learn about the ongoing effects of colonization as well as gain a foundation in theories and practices of decolonization. We will take as our basic premise in this program that those wishing to know about the history of a particular Native group should write it with a purpose to be in solidarity with these people today.Students will develop skills as writers and researchers by studying scholarly and imaginative works, by conducting policy research and fieldwork with Native and non-Native communities, and by comparing community and government relationships in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand. Students will be expected to integrate extensive readings, lecture notes, films, interviews and other sources in writing assignments. | Kristina Ackley Zoltan Grossman | Tue Tue Wed Fri Fri | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | ||
Therese Saliba and Amjad Faur
|
Program | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | From the Arab uprisings to the “global war on terror,” literary and artistic interventions from the Arab/Muslim world have played a critical role in confronting Orientalist stereotypes and providing new visions of the region and its peoples. Focusing on contemporary artwork and writings by Arab artists from the Middle East and the diaspora, this program will explore the intersections of literary and artistic production, imperialism, diasporic politics, gender and sexuality, nationalism, religion, and societal change. Through the lenses of art theory and literary theory, as well as postcolonial theory, we will examine the new visions set forth by these artists, and the role of Western gatekeepers in influencing the reception and distribution of their work.We will examine a range of modern and contemporary art and read novels, poetry, essays, and memoirs by Arab writers across the region. We will situate our analysis within the historical and political events that shape artistic and literary production, and examine how artists and writers critique masculinist narratives that justify violence and exclude women’s voices. Students will write art and literary analysis, and engage in independent projects that may include their own creative writing, photography, or research on an artist or writer of their choice. In this study, students will consider the impact of political, economic, cultural and military forces on Arab and Muslim’s lives and artistic production, and examine literary, artistic, and film representations as sites of resistance. Students will also gain a greater understanding of postcolonial, Third World, transnational feminism, and Islamic movements. Students will have the opportunity to attend community-based events that promote an understanding of Arab culture, politics, and aesthetic productions. | Therese Saliba Amjad Faur | Tue Tue Wed Wed Thu Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Steve Blakeslee
|
Course | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | F 14 Fall | This course will help students to develop clearer and more comprehensive understandings of literary texts, as well as to forge a more rewarding relationship with reading in general. In a supportive group environment, students will explore a range of reading strategies, including textual analysis, background research, response and summary writing, and recitation. Then they will apply these tools to an in-depth study of several literary works; likely titles for Fall 2014 include Mary Shelley’s and Charles Dickens’s Our overall goal is to become more resourceful, effective, and insightful readers. | Steve Blakeslee | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | ||||
Marianne Bailey and Leonard Schwartz
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | From Heraclitus and Nietzsche to Blanchot and Levinas, philosophers have sought to speak as poets: to recreate the language of their tradition in order to speak the ineffable, truths of intuition and experience which seem to lie beyond language as commonly conceived. From Homer to Mallarmé, Artaud or Pound, poets have revealed through their enigmatic languages, truths of our existence and the nature of the world. Poets engage in epistemological inquiry, ask metaphysical questions; philosophers use metaphorical language, symbol, aphorism or parable, as vehicles of insight. In this program we will study a select group of philosophers who, in the wake of Friedrich Nietzsche, write and think as poets and conversely, those poets who write and think philosophically. From Wallace Stevens, there is a lineage of American poetry, which draws from continental philosophy.We will consider how it is that a writer's words open into a multitude of interpretations, or that a symbol, as philosopher Paul Ricoeur writes, points toward a meaning otherwise inaccessible. The poets and philosophers whom we will study never relent in their fascination with the diverse avenues of knowing, or with reconceiving their means of expression; they act with the reckless abandon of the free spirit described by Nietzsche in his essay, "On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense," daring to “speak only in forbidden metaphors.”We will examine works embedded in the creative power of myth and the artist-writer’s work as a ritual gesture. All students will read, write and analyze poetic, philosophical and critical texts; will discuss key theorists in aesthetic theory, and will choose between two series of workshop/seminars: either poetics/creative writing or philosophy/Nietzsche and his work’s influence on contemporary writing. Over the two quarters of this program, students will develop and complete a major personal project. This substantial body of work, students will conceive during Fall quarter, and carry through by the close of winter quarter; this offers serious writers of poetry, theory, philosophy and interpretation the opportunity to undertake a collection of philosophical/poetic experimental writings, a performance/spectacle, or an interpretive work on philosophy or literature.This upper-division program demands a serious commitment of time and effort; the works which we will read are difficult; the writings we expect substantive. We welcome serious students of philosophy, poetics and theory, those capable of designing and carrying through a major independent writing project. | Marianne Bailey Leonard Schwartz | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | ||||
Leonard Schwartz
Signature Required:
Spring
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | The goal of this program will be to immerse students in an intense and various writing community, both as writers of poetry themselves and as critical writers. It is hoped that this daily contact with practicing writers, poets, translators, and publishers will advance each student's writing horizons and range of reading possibilities, demystifying the practice and profession of writing while inspiring students to advance in their own art.This field study program features an immersion in New York City's poetry, literary, art, and publishing worlds. We will spend two weeks on campus preparing for our trip by way of various readings in New York's literary history and in The New York School of Poets. The focus will be on the relationships between poetry and painting in the NY School poets John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, and James Schuyler, the connections between current publishers like Ugly Duckling Presse and New Directions Publishing Company and the writers they choose to publish, and NYC's international literary character. We will then fly to New York City for five weeks, where, in addition to class meetings, students will pursue their own writing, write critical pieces on the poetry they hear at readings, and of the books they read for class, interview poets they meet, and be required to attend at least one event a day (or night) across the city: The St. Marks Poetry Project, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Public Library, Poets House, and so on, are all options for students to pursue their writing. Local projects might include working on poems to appear in public spaces in the city, working collaboratively on translations of poets in town writing in other languages, interning at a publishing house, or compiling a journal of field notes. Field trips will also be arranged to the offices of various publishers of the instructor's acquaintance to study, close up, the way in which literature is made. Some of these publishers might include: The New York Review Of Books, Archipelago Books, Rizzoli Books, New Directions, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, etc.The final three weeks of the quarter will be spent back on campus in Olympia, debriefing, finishing poems and essays, and producing an anthology of our work. | Leonard Schwartz | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | |||||
Elizabeth Williamson
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 15Winter | Shakespeare’s plays are in many ways notoriously conservative. Women dress up as men, only to be railroaded into marriage at the end of the play; Jews and people of color are regularly treated horribly by otherwise likeable characters; servants are routinely sidelined into supporting roles. Early in the 20 century, E.M.W. Tillyard went so far as to argue that the plays were written expressly for the purpose of maintaining the Elizabethan social order. Since the 1960s, however, scholars and theater professionals have been working to draw out the subversive content of the plays, arguing that Shakespeare’s representation of oppressive social norms can be read as a critique of those norms—as well as a prefiguration of our own contemporary political struggles. This program is designed for students who want to engage in the project of reading literary texts against the grain. Liking Shakespeare is not a prerequisite. Rather, our focus will be on studying and practicing various modes of literary criticism—Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and post-colonial, as well as methodologies informed by queer theory and disability studies. Students will read one play (primarily histories and tragedies) per week, along with sample pieces of literary criticism, and will write essays applying particular modes of literary theory to the plays. At the end of the quarter, students will write a dramaturgical analysis informed by at least one mode of literary criticism, and will perform sample scenes that embody their interpretation of the play. Our central question is a simple one: “What, if anything, can Shakespeare’s plays DO for us? What kind of social work can we make them perform?” | Elizabeth Williamson | Tue Tue Wed Fri Fri | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | ||||
Tyrus Smith, Peter Boome, TBD, Suzanne Simons, Frances Solomon, Barbara Laners, Peter Bacho, Anthony Zaragoza, Paul McCreary, Gilda Sheppard and Mingxia Li
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day and Evening | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | This year’s program is designed to help students explore the history of how working hands have built the material world around us and shaped the environment, which in turn has molded our own consciousness. Realizing the capacity of working hands and the possible dual relationship between our hands with our mind is the critical first step toward empowerment of the working majority and potential social transformation.Arguably, all human expressions of intelligence both in art/craft and the written/spoken word are rooted in the hands. We will examine the theories and practices in humanities, social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences, media and technology that simultaneously represent and influence works by the hands of individuals, groups and organizations to change our society and environment locally, nationally and globally throughout the ages. For example, hands of different genders, races and social affiliations, hands that cradle, cook, weed, maneuver, calculate, experiment, film, draw, write and type will all be possible study subjects. Metaphors originated from hands, such as feel one’s way, to grasp the meaning, the right touch vs. heavy-handed, to be in touch vs. out of touch, and handling it right vs. wrong, as well as in one’s hand vs. out of one’s hand just begin to inform us how important our hands are in our consciousness. Hand gestures that solidify social bonding, express trust and admiration, and symbolize social contract are the beginning toward building social capital and cohesive communities. Our coordinated studies program consists of two major components: 1) whole campus yearlong lyceum/seminar where faculty and students will study the program theme from a broad multi-disciplined perspective, and 2) quarter long courses with a more focused approach. These courses will cover topical areas such as sociology, government, politics, education, math, law, public health, life science, media art, youth study, environment, community development, women's empowerment and political economy. The two components are linked through the program theme. In both components, we will pay particular attention to the “hands-on” style of learning through critical reflection and creative practices. Besides lyceum/seminar, a student will select two additional courses each quarter depending on career interest. The majority of the classes in the program are team-taught.Fall quarter will lay the foundation for the rest of the year, both substantively and in terms of the tools necessary for students to operate effectively in the learning community.During winter quarter, students will collaborate to investigate the characteristics and motivations of social entrepreneurs and develop action plans to promote social change.In spring quarter, we will bridge the gap between theory (mind) and practice (hand) by carrying out an action plan developed during winter quarter. | Tyrus Smith Peter Boome TBD Suzanne Simons Frances Solomon Barbara Laners Peter Bacho Anthony Zaragoza Paul McCreary Gilda Sheppard Mingxia Li | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Miranda Mellis and Shaw Osha (Flores)
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | “Beginning again and again is a natural thing,” wrote Gertrude Stein in her 1925 lecture, "Composition as Explanation." In this program we will begin again and again, practicing the arts of writing and drawing by means of continuously returning to the same objects and methods in order to generate, through repetition, a series of interconnected and centripetally formed drawings and texts. This creative writing, critical thinking, and visual art program is for students who are ready to concentrate on working and reworking a series of works of visual art, or writing, or both. Our focus is on practice–the subject is less important than our disciplined return to it. We will be guided by a range of artists and writers who take an experimentalist and recursive approach to composition, as well as philosophers and critics, Elizabeth Grosz in particular, whose book will anchor and orient our thinking about aesthetics in a richly exploratory and cross-disciplinary manner. We'll take inspiration from the repetitive methodology of Expressionist Maria Lassnig, the formal restraint of Giorgio Morandi, and Wassily Kandinsky’s continuous return to . The serial minimalism of musicians such as Julius Eastman and Steve Reich will form a portion of our auditory index, and we’ll also make a study of the insistent return T.J. Clark performs in his book , an extended, recursive, ekphrastic meditation on Poussin’s and Rilke's as exemplars for our own ekprhastic writings. We'll work and re-work our methods and objects, and turn and re-turn to oft-repeated forms such as the refrain, the loop, the drill, and the anecdote. Students should be prepared for intensive reading and writing as well as independent project work in practice and research. | Miranda Mellis Shaw Osha (Flores) | Mon Wed Thu | Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Patricia Krafcik and Robert Smurr
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 12, 16 | 12 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | This program offers an interdisciplinary approach to Russian and Eurasian history, literature, culture, geography and film. Our journey will take us across all of the vast territories that once comprised the Russian and Soviet empires—territories that today make up more than 15 independent states. In lectures, seminars and film analyses and discussions, we will travel from the fjords of Norway to the thriving cities of Constantinople and Baghdad; from the windswept grasslands of Mongolia to the Moscow cathedrals built by Ivan the Terrible; from the Artic Ocean to the marketplaces of Central Asia; from the peaks of the Caucasus Mountains to the deserts of Uzbekistan.Our focus is the rise and fall of empires in this region, beginning with one that no longer exists—the Mongol empire—and one that in many senses still does—the Russian empire. We will investigate the development of the Russians and their nation through history, starting with Viking invasions of Slavic territories in the 800s and progressing to Russia's thriving imperial era in the 1800s. This latter period witnessed not only Napoleon's massive invasion of Russia, but also the emergence of some of the world's greatest literature (including Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol and Turgenev). The diverse ethnicities that had cultural, political, social, economic and religious contact with the Russians—the Vikings, Mongols, Greeks, Tatars and Turkic peoples, among others—will all play key roles in our examinations. Faculty will provide lectures to guide our study and students will read and discuss a diverse selection of historical and literary texts in seminars, view and discuss relevant documentaries and films, and write three major essays based on seminar readings. One field trip will be to the Maryhill Museum to view its collection of icons and other Russian-related items along with a visit to a Greek Orthodox women's monastery for a tour of the grounds and the icon studio. Another field trip will take us to the Pacific Coast village of La Push, Washington, and the Quileute Reservation, where in the early 19th century a Russian ship was grounded—an event which was preserved in Quileute oral tradition and is significant in our study of the Russian historical presence in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Students are strongly urged to take the Beginning Russian Language segment within the full-time program. Studying Russian will enhance their learning experience. Those who opt out of language should register for only 12 credits. | Patricia Krafcik Robert Smurr | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | |||||
Robert Smurr and Patricia Krafcik
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 15Winter | This program emphasizes the Russian Empire’s extraordinary political, historical, literary, artistic and musical developments of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We will explore literary masterpieces by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov; examine paintings by Repin, Nesterov and Vereshchagin; and listen to the compositions of Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. We will also examine the rise of the Russian Empire’s radical intelligentsia, thinkers who rebelled against autocratic tsarist policies and the institution of serfdom and whose activities led to the world-changing revolutions of the early 20th century.Readings from social and revolutionary activists, such as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, will allow us to better understand how these thinkers managed to transform the economically and socially “backward” Russian Empire into the planet’s most experimental and, at times, most feared political power. Our diverse readings from Russian and Soviet imperial literature and history will help us gain an appreciation for the cultural, social and political nuances of these expansive, beguiling and enigmatic lands. Faculty will provide lectures to guide our study. Students will read and discuss in seminar a diverse selection of historical and literary texts; view and discuss relevant documentaries and films; and write three major essays based on seminar readings. A special all-program workshop in (wax-resist egg decorating) will offer a hands-on Slavic folk art experience. New language students will be accepted in the Beginning Russian Language segment within the program if they have one college quarter of Russian or the equivalent.A special history workshop segment is available to students within or from outside the program for 4 credits. It will investigate the origins, development and dissolution of nine separate wars in which the former Russian Empire, the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia have been involved. The workshop, entitled "Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Wars," will start with the Napoleonic invasion of the Russian Empire and progress chronologically to a new war each week. | Robert Smurr Patricia Krafcik | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | |||||
Elena Smith
|
Course | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | This year-long course is designed to teach students to read the mysterious looking Cyrillic script, write the unique Russian cursive, construct sentences and express themselves in Russian. Students will immerse themselves in the colorful cultural and historical context provided by authentic text, film, music, and visual arts. Exploring selected works by such literary masters as A. Pushkin, L. Tolstoy, and A. Chekhov, to name a few, students will be able to understand not only the specifics of Russian grammar and vocabulary but also the complexities of Russian character and the Russian way of thinking as documented and preserved by outstanding Russian authors. | Elena Smith | Tue Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | ||
Ann Storey and Aisha Harrison
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 12 | 12 | Evening and Weekend | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | This will be an interdisciplinary ceramic sculpture and art history program that will explore the dynamic artistic traditions of Mexico from ancient times to the present. We will take a thematic approach to our historical studies, exploring Mesoamerican art and spirituality, colonial artistic traditions, Day of the Dead belief and rituals, the Virgin of Guadalupe and the on-going contribution of women to the culture, the post-revolutionary mural and printmaking traditions, and Chicano culture. Moving from theory to practice we will work to deepen our understanding of the ideas we have discussed in seminar through an intense ceramic studio practice. Fall quarter, we will focus on drawing and sculpting the human figure/skeleton; developing our sense of the human form, working on abstraction, and creating a Day of the Dead sculpture/altar. Winter quarter we will continue to use the handbuilding skills learned in fall to create a Tree of Life sculpture and a ceramic tile mural. | Ann Storey Aisha Harrison | Tue Thu Sat | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | |||
Robert Smurr and Patricia Krafcik
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | This program will investigate the 74-year lifespan of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), as well as the two decades that have passed since its collapse in 1991. We will explore Russian and Eurasian poetry and prose from this period and analyze the reasons why the USSR produced such remarkable and world-renowned talents as the writers Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn and such composers as Prokofiev and Shostakovich. We shall also investigate how this society included inhuman prison camps, governmental rule by terror and totalitarian rule. Indeed, we shall attempt to determine how Josef Stalin became responsible for the murder of at least 20 million of his fellow citizens while at the same time transforming a relatively backward empire into an undisputed world power.Economic difficulties and shortages of consumer goods continued to plague citizens of the USSR until its collapse, but the empire’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, did his best to revitalize the Soviet socialist experiment via peaceful and more open means. Gorbachev’s campaigns to “restructure” the empire’s economy and become more “open” towards a free press simply hastened the collapse of the empire. We will examine these policies, but equally as important, we will also investigate the rise of 15 independent states that emerged from the ashes of the former Soviet Empire and trace their paths since they gained independence in 1991. Vladimir Putin has led Russia since 2000 and his authoritarian policies suggest that he will remain in power until 2024. Faculty will provide lectures to guide our study and students will read and discuss a diverse selection of historical and literary texts in seminars and will view and discuss relevant documentaries and films. The centerpiece of student work will be a major research paper on any topic connected with the Soviet Union and Russia, along with the production of a professional-quality poster for the students' final presentation of their research this term. Students are strongly urged, but not required, to take the Beginning Russian Language segment within the full-time program. To enter language study at this point, students should have the equivalent of two quarters of college Russian. A special history workshop segment is available to students within or from outside the program for four credits. It will investigate aspects of the "Cold War" from U.S. and Soviet perspectives, as well as lend a greater understanding of the worldwide struggle for political, economic, military and ideological supremacy. | Robert Smurr Patricia Krafcik | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | |||||
Alice Nelson, David Phillips and Catalina Ocampo
Signature Required:
Winter Spring
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Spain and Latin America share not only the Spanish language but also an intertwined history of complex cultural crossings. The cultures of both arose from dynamic and sometimes violent encounters and continue to be shaped by uneven power relationships as well as vibrant forms of resistance. In this program, students will engage in an intensive study of the Spanish language and explore cultural production by Spaniards and Latin Americans in historical context. Every week will include seminars on readings in English, Spanish language classes, a lecture or workshop conducted in Spanish and a Spanish-language film. There will be regular written seminar responses, synthesis essays and a winter-quarter research project. Please note that Spanish language classes are integrated into the program, so students do not have to register for them separately. We welcome students with any level of Spanish, from true beginner to advanced. No previous study of Spanish is required to enter in the fall.Fall quarter, we will explore cultural crossings in Spain and Latin America prior to the 20th century. We will study the coexistence of Jews, Christians and Muslims in medieval Spain and the suppression of Jewish and Muslim communities during the Spanish Inquisition. We will also examine violence against indigenous peoples and Africans during Spain's process of imperial expansion and how subsequent colonial institutions were contested by diverse resistance movements, including Latin America's struggles for independence in the 19th century. Our readings will include historical accounts as well as contemporary cultural products that reexamine and reimagine these encounters.Winter quarter, we will turn to the 20th and 21st centuries in Latin America, with emphasis on the roles of class, gender and ethnicity in various groups' struggles to contest unequal power relations and determine their own futures. Possible cases include: ethnic and national movements in the Caribbean; ongoing issues of land, violence and sovereignty in Mexico; indigenism and indigeneity in Mexico, Guatemala and Peru; legacies of the Nicaraguan revolution; roles of new social movements in transitions to democracy in the Southern Cone; and the impact of unprecedented migration in the Americas. In each of these contexts, we will explore the interrelationships between politics and cultural production and how literature and film can impact processes of social change.Spring quarter offers two options for study abroad and an internship option with local Latino organizations for those who stay on campus. The Santo Tomás, Nicaragua, program is coordinated with the Thurston-Santo Tomás Sister County Association and its counterpart in Nicaragua and is open to 4-8 intermediate/advanced language students. The Mérida, Mexico option is co-coordinated with HABLA Language and Culture Center, and is open to 15 or more students of all language levels. For students staying in Olympia, the program will have an on-campus core of Spanish classes and seminars focused on Latino/a communities in the U.S. and the opportunity for student-originated projects and/or internships. All classes during spring quarter, in Olympia and abroad, will be conducted entirely in Spanish. | Alice Nelson David Phillips Catalina Ocampo | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Steven Hendricks, Toshitami Matsumoto, Kathleen Eamon and Brian Walter
|
Program | FR–SOFreshmen–Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | In this program, we will explore how tools for thinking--like philosophical terms, fictional narratives and mathematical systems--are involved in building up and also challenging structures of knowledge. We will ask: Are these defenses against the unknown or our only ways of accessing it? Through critical and creative writing projects, we will see how practices in all three disciplines also work to disrupt conventional thinking and we will pursue experiments in the use of constraints to free us from our own aesthetic traditions and generic modes of thought.We’ll regard academic disciplines as ongoing conversations that can both expand and limit what we can know and what we can imagine. We will work to understand how mathematics is an imaginative, humanist endeavor, a study of patterns that yields new languages and opens up possibilities in the world. Philosophy will help us both think about the conditions for the possibility of world-making and examine fictional worlds as aesthetic objects. In our study of literature, we’ll attend closely to structures in language and narrative that make meaning happen. We’ll read work from the avant-garde tradition, by contemporary literary experimentalists, and by storytellers for whom time, space and being are of more interest than plot. Philosophical texts will likely include works by Kant, Benjamin, Adorno and Lacan. We'll also read texts that describe the scope, content and aesthetic of modern mathematical work, such as by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh. Many of these texts are challenging, but we will work together to develop the skills needed to approach them in reading, writing and conversation. In fall, students will be introduced to disciplinary approaches to formulating and responding to complex questions. Regular work of the program will include seminars, short papers and workshops in literature, philosophy, writing and mathematics.In winter, in addition to seminar and workshops, students will pursue a creative and critical writing project connecting all three disciplines, with opportunities to develop a chosen emphasis. | Steven Hendricks Toshitami Matsumoto Kathleen Eamon Brian Walter | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | Fall Winter | ||||
Marianne Bailey
|
SOS | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 15Spring | In this SOS, students will learn how to conceive, plan, structure and successfully carry through a major independent learning project. More importantly, they will have the pleasure and fulfillment of realizing a major college-level independent body of work. Students have an exciting array of humanities and artistic areas to work in. For example, I can foresee projects as different from one another as a well edited collection of stories or free form poetry, perhaps illustrated and bound in a beautiful book, or a research project in religious symbolism and ritual in Celtic or Haitian worldviews, or in archetypal characters such as the Trickster, the Underworld mediators, or the artist/Orpheus and his quest. A student could write and compile an innovative collection of essays and images dealing with a philosopher such as Nietzsche or Foucault; or with a philosophical topic, such as the human/nature relationship, or the power and nature of artistic language. Students could also plan and research a transformational, pilgrimage journey, keep a rich travel journal, make art quality photographs and present the pilgrimage experiences at the quarter’s end to your colleagues in the class. Students could plan a multimedia spectacle or a short film based on artistic work as a small group in the style of the Surrealists.In other words, if it is a challenging academic or artistic body of work which you find deeply fascinating and which will keep you going enthusiastically for a quarter, we can shape this idea and make it possible for you to carry it through. We will do this step-by-step, in close collaboration between professor and individual student, and with the support of a small group of other program students working in similar veins of inquiry or creation, who will serve as a critique and support group. At Evergreen this mode of intellectual and creative work is a hallmark of our belief in fostering self-direction, intellectual discipline and stamina, and in pursuing academic projects about which we are passionate. It is no easy feat, however, to master the fine art of writing and proposing, let alone bringing to fruition, a top quality independent learning project. The purpose of this SOS is first, to coach you through the conception stage, then, to help you to choose your readings and activities and make your schedule, and finally, to guide and support you along the path to completion of the best work of which you are capable.During the first eight weeks of spring quarter, students will meet every week with their professor as an individual, and as a member of a small work and critique group. We will meet as a large group, as well. Students will report in writing and orally on their progress every week. In the final weeks of the quarter, all students will present their completed work to the group.Students enrolling should have a first proposal of a project which they want strongly to undertake, including, at least, the kind of work you plan to do, for example: writing poetry, studying the work of a given writer or philosopher, and/or studying a particular kind of religious or mythic symbolism. This should be carefully written, typed and ready on the first day of class. The rest we will do during the first two weeks of the program. You may enroll in this program for 12 or 16 credits. | Marianne Bailey | Mon Wed | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Ann Storey and Nancy Parkes
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | 8 | 08 | Evening and Weekend | S 15Spring | What are the relationships among art, writing and transformation? Have artists been inspired by creative writing and have writers been inspired by art? The answer is a resounding yes! In this interdisciplinary art and writing class we will explore examples of mutually creative influence coming from these sister arts. In turn we will create art and writing that draws on these twin sources of creativity, with a special emphasis on relationship to environment and place. We are concerned with art and writing that addresses both cultural and personal transformation. We will learn the formal analysis of art and literature so that we can engage in "close reading" of both. Also, we will read literature that shows the many ways that works of art can be cherished and understood throughout time. Our primary studio practices will be drawing, assemblage, book arts and collage. Students will also engage in creative writing workshops that often involve art. | Ann Storey Nancy Parkes | Wed Sat | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
Naima Lowe, Shaw Osha (Flores), Kathleen Eamon and Joli Sandoz
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
|
Program | SO–SRSophomore–Senior | V | V | Day, Evening and Weekend | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | This is an opportunity for students to work on faculty-driven scholarly and creative projects. By working with faculty in a studio and research “apprentice” model, students will gain hands-on experience in visual arts studio practices, film/media production practices, the creative writing workshop focused on craft, critical research and writing, library and archival research practices, and much more. (social and political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of art) has interests in German idealism (Kant and Hegel), historical materialism (Marx, 20 C Marxists, and critical theory), and psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan). She is currently working on an unorthodox project about Kant and Freud, under the working title “States of Partial Undress: the Fantasy of Sociability.” Students working with Kathleen would have opportunities to join her in her inquiry, learn about and pursue research in the humanities, and critically respond to the project as it comes together. In addition to work in Kantian aesthetics and Freudian dream theory, the project will involve questions about futurity, individual wishes and fantasies, and the possibility of collective and progressive models of sociability and fantasy. (experimental media and performance art) creates films, videos, performances and written works that explore issues of race, gender, and embodiment. The majority of her work includes an archival research element that explores historical social relationships and mythic identities. She is currently working on a series of short films and performances that explore racial identity in rural settings. Students working with Naima would have opportunities to learn media production and post-production skills (including storyboarding, scripting, 16mm and HD video shooting, location scouting, audio recording, audio/video editing, etc) through working with a small crew comprised of students and professional artists. Students would also have opportunities to do archival and historical research on African-Americans living in rural settings, and on literature, film and visual art that deals with similar themes. (visual art) works in painting, photography, drawing, writing and video. She explores issues of visual representation, affect as a desire, social relationships and the conditions that surround us. She is currently working on a project based on questions of soul in artwork. Students working with Shaw would have opportunities to learn about artistic research, critique, grant and statement writing, website design, studio work and concerns in contemporary art making. (creative nonfiction) draws from experience and field, archival and library research to write creative essays about experiences and constructions of place, and about cultural practices of embodiment. She also experiments with short lyric nonfiction, and with juxtapositions of diagrams, images and words, including hand-drawn mapping. Students working with Joli will be able to learn their choice of: critical reading approaches to published works (reading as a writer), online and print research and associated information assessment skills, identifying publishing markets for specific pieces of writing, or discussing and responding to creative nonfiction in draft form (workshopping). Joli’s projects underway include essays on illusion and delusion, and on physical achievement and ambition; and a visual/word piece exploring the relationship of the local to the global.Please go to the catalog view for specific information about each option. | Naima Lowe Shaw Osha (Flores) Kathleen Eamon Joli Sandoz | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Trevor Speller, Greg Mullins, Stacey Davis and Nancy Koppelman
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | V | V | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Students of the humanities who are nearing the end of their Evergreen education may wish to pursue a major research project, senior thesis or capstone project in their particular field of interest. Often, the goal is to contruct an original argument around a particular body of literature, set of ideas or historical events. These kinds of projects develop advanced research skills in the humanities, including the ability to read deeply and critically in a particular field, and to discover and engage with important theoretical writings in that field. Students will also gain valuable skills in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, writing and editing long pieces of complex prose. The best kinds of this work will be invaluable for graduate school applications, and will be an asset to those entering the job market directly following graduation. (European history) specializes in French history from the 18th century to the present, as well as the history of French colonies in North and West Africa. Students who wish to study European social, cultural, political, intellectual or religious history from the Middle Ages to the present, including topics in the history of gender and sociocultural aspects of the history of art, are welcome to propose research projects. Students are welcome to work with Dr. Davis on her ongoing research projects on 19th-century political prisoners, notions of citizenship and democracy in modern Europe, memory and the history of aging. (American studies) specializes in American social, literary and intellectual history until 1920. Students who wish to study in these fields are welcome to propose research projects and senior theses. Particular interests include the social and intellectual history of the Puritans; the founding generation, immigrants, the working class and the middle class; industrialization and reform movements; pragmatic philosophy; the history of childhood; and the history of technology and consumer culture. Students are also welcome to work with Nancy to participate in her ongoing research projects on alcohol reform movements, the histories of social/economic mobility and of individual physical movement, and ethical themes in American cultural history. (American literature, queer theory) specializes in 20th-century and contemporary literature and comparative American Studies (U.S./Brazil). His broad interests include the crossroads of aesthetics and politics, national versus transnational formations of literary studies, queer gender and sexuality, memory studies and poststructuralist theory. Most of the capstone projects he has supervised in the past have been centrally concerned with literary and cultural theory, including visual culture and queer theory. Students are enthusiastically welcome to work with Greg on his research on cultures of human rights and representations of human rights in literature and film. (British/anglophone literature) specializes in the long 18th century (1650-1830), including the Restoration, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Students who wish to study the literature and political philosophy of these periods are welcome to propose research projects, including capstone projects and senior theses. Particular interests include the rise of the novel, the conception of reason and rationality and representations of space and place. Previous projects have included studies of Romantic women writers and travel writing. Students are also welcome to work with the faculty member to develop his ongoing research projects on such authors as Daniel Defoe, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Bishop Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and John Milton. | Trevor Speller Greg Mullins Stacey Davis Nancy Koppelman | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Greg Mullins
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
|
Research | JR–SRJunior–Senior | V | V | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Students of the humanities who are nearing the end of their Evergreen education may wish to pursue a major research project, senior thesis or capstone project in their particular field of interest. Often, the goal is to contruct an original argument around a particular body of literature, set of ideas or historical events. These kinds of projects develop advanced research skills in the humanities, including the ability to read deeply and critically in a particular field, and to discover and engage with important theoretical writings in that field. Students will also gain valuable skills in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, writing and editing long pieces of complex prose. The best kinds of this work will be invaluable for graduate school applications, and will be an asset to those entering the job market directly following graduation. (American literature, queer theory) specializes in 20th-century and contemporary literature and comparative American Studies (U.S./Brazil). His broad interests include the crossroads of aesthetics and politics, national versus transnational formations of literary studies, queer gender and sexuality, memory studies and poststructuralist theory. Most of the capstone projects he has supervised in the past have been centrally concerned with literary and cultural theory, including visual culture and queer theory. Students are enthusiastically welcome to work with Greg on his research on cultures of human rights and representations of human rights in literature and film. | Greg Mullins | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Nancy Koppelman
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
|
Research | JR–SRJunior–Senior | V | V | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Students of the humanities who are nearing the end of their Evergreen education may wish to pursue a major research project, senior thesis or capstone project in their particular field of interest. Often, the goal is to contruct an original argument around a particular body of literature, set of ideas or historical events. These kinds of projects develop advanced research skills in the humanities, including the ability to read deeply and critically in a particular field, and to discover and engage with important theoretical writings in that field. Students will also gain valuable skills in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, writing and editing long pieces of complex prose. The best kinds of this work will be invaluable for graduate school applications, and will be an asset to those entering the job market directly following graduation. (American studies) specializes in American social, literary and intellectual history until 1920. Students who wish to study in these fields are welcome to propose research projects and senior theses. Particular interests include the social and intellectual history of the Puritans; the founding generation, immigrants, the working class and the middle class; industrialization and reform movements; pragmatic philosophy; the history of childhood; and the history of technology and consumer culture. Students are also welcome to work with Nancy to participate in her ongoing research projects on alcohol reform movements, the histories of social/economic mobility and of individual physical movement, and ethical themes in American cultural history. | Nancy Koppelman | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Stacey Davis
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
|
Research | JR–SRJunior–Senior | V | V | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Students of the humanities who are nearing the end of their Evergreen education may wish to pursue a major research project, senior thesis or capstone project in their particular field of interest. Often, the goal is to contruct an original argument around a particular body of literature, set of ideas or historical events. These kinds of projects develop advanced research skills in the humanities, including the ability to read deeply and critically in a particular field, and to discover and engage with important theoretical writings in that field. Students will also gain valuable skills in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, writing and editing long pieces of complex prose. The best kinds of this work will be invaluable for graduate school applications, and will be an asset to those entering the job market directly following graduation. (European history) specializes in French history from the 18th century to the present, as well as the history of French colonies in North and West Africa. Students who wish to study European social, cultural, political, intellectual or religious history from the Middle Ages to the present, including topics in the history of gender and sociocultural aspects of the history of art, are welcome to propose research projects. Students are welcome to work with Dr. Davis on her ongoing research projects on 19th-century political prisoners, notions of citizenship and democracy in modern Europe, memory and the history of aging. | Stacey Davis | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Trevor Speller
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
|
Research | JR–SRJunior–Senior | V | V | Day | F 14 Fall | W 15Winter | S 15Spring | Students of the humanities who are nearing the end of their Evergreen education may wish to pursue a major research project, senior thesis or capstone project in their particular field of interest. Often, the goal is to contruct an original argument around a particular body of literature, set of ideas or historical events. These kinds of projects develop advanced research skills in the humanities, including the ability to read deeply and critically in a particular field, and to discover and engage with important theoretical writings in that field. Students will also gain valuable skills in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, writing and editing long pieces of complex prose. The best kinds of this work will be invaluable for graduate school applications, and will be an asset to those entering the job market directly following graduation. (British/anglophone literature) specializes in the long eighteenth century (1650-1830), including the Restoration, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. Students who wish to study the literature and political philosophy of these periods are welcome to propose research projects, including capstone projects and senior theses. Particular interests include the rise of the novel, the conception of reason and rationality and representations of space and place. Previous projects have included studies of Romantic women writers and travel writing. Students are also welcome to work with the faculty member to develop his ongoing research projects on such authors as Daniel Defoe, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Bishop Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and John Milton. | Trevor Speller | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter Spring | |||
Emily Lardner
|
Course | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | W 15Winter | Since 1917, a Pulitzer Prize has been awarded to one novel written by an author in the U.S. that focuses on life in the U.S. We’ll use the list of Pulitzer winners to explore what makes literature good, and what literature is good for. We’ll start with the most recent winner, , by Donna Tartt, and work our way back, selectively, to the first winner, , by Ernest Poole, published in 1917. Along the way, we’ll use Terry Eagleton’s book on literary theory to help us become better, more intentional readers. | Emily Lardner | Mon | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | ||||
Miranda Mellis
|
Program | JR–SRJunior–Senior | 16 | 16 | Day and Evening | W 15Winter | This upper-division cross-genre literary arts program will give students an opportunity to generate new writing, and/or develop existing writing projects; practice craft in community; analyze contemporary literary texts; and develop tools and techniques with which to critique and revise our own works-in-progress. We'll read as writers, studying and learning from the interplay of structure, lineage, genre, ethics, politics, and aesthetics in powerful, effective literature, with a focus on the idea of writing as experiment. Our readings of outside authors will expose us to a wide range of approaches to literary form.No art form exists in isolation. We'll cultivate our fluency and sharpen our theoretical vision by intersecting with two humanist forums on campus: the Critical & Cultural Theory lecture series, and the Artist’s Lecture Series. Our participation in these series' will increase our understanding of the vital symbiotic interconnections between cultural theory, literature, and the visual arts (of special interest for those who use visual imagery in their creative writing). Come prepared to read anywhere from 100-300 pages a week; write intensively and rigorously; collaborate respectfully; experiment playfully; and think connectively. | Miranda Mellis | Mon Wed Thu | Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | ||||
David Wolach
|
Course | FR–SRFreshmen–Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening and Weekend | S 15Spring | This course challenges students to write the world that does not yet exist. Or, as poet and theorist of radical black performance Fred Moten does, we will try to engage in writing that "investigates new ways for people to get together and do stuff in the open, in secret." Each week we’ll work individually and collaboratively on writing experiments—prose, poetry, essay—that critique and advance beyond our own assumptions about what is socially possible or probable and that do so by paying careful attention to the rhythms of current crises. As a basis for this creative production, we will engage critically with writers whose work exists at the point where the border between politics and art ruptures. In sound, in sight, and through a kind of "improvisatory ensemble" (as Moten puts it) we will resist what too often gets counted as the inevitable outcome of a political economy that treats people as objects that just happen to speak. What is inevitable about the future, and what is it about controlled acts of creative improvisation that helps us not just "guess at" but hear our future’s past? | David Wolach | Wed Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring |