Fall-Winter-Spring 2002-03
SYLLABUS
(Final Draft)
Instructors:Angela
Gilliam (x6018) and Patrick Hill (x 6595)
With Sarah Pedresen (Faculty-librarian)
“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” (Mahatma Ghandi)
"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."(George Eliot, Middlemarch)
[The human being] experiences him/herself, his/her thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us.Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by WIDENING OUR CIRCLE OF COMPASSION to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. (Albert Einstein, emphasis added.)
"Attention is akin to the capacity for empathy, the ability to suffer or celebrate with another as if in the other's experience you know and find yourself.However, the idea of empathy, as it is popularly understood, underestimates the importance of knowing another without finding yourself in her.... Attention lets difference emerge without searching for comforting commonalities, dwells upon the other, and lets otherness be...."(Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking)
"We are cursed to believe that we speak the same language."
(Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games and Debates)
"Words fitly spoken are like
apples of gold in a silver setting." (Hebrew
Testament, Bookof Proverbs,
25:11)
"In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it might be true of."(George Miller, "Thirteen Maxims for the Mind")
"Look me in the eye and admit that you truly can't understand where I am coming from.That's how you make progress."(Afsheen Fatemi, student commenting on unproductive attempts at dialogue on TESC campus, CPJ, May 9, 2002,p.11.
|
DAYS
AND HOURS |
ACTIVITIES |
LOCATION |
|
Tuesday
11:00 --1:00
2:00--4:00
|
Book Seminar Film/Video |
Lib 2219 Lib 1308 |
|
Wednesday
10:00 --12:00
p.m. 12:00 - 1:00
p.m. 6:30-9:30 p.m.(alternating Wed.nesdays) |
Lecture Brown-bag discussion of Tues film with TESC staff Film-discussion-potluck with evening studies students |
Longhouse 1007C Longhouse 1007C Lecture Hall 3 |
|
Thursday
11:00--1:00
p.m. 2:00 - 4:00
p.m. |
Flex-time (lecture or video or 1-on-1 meetings with faculty). Integrative Seminar Small group work |
LectureHall 2 Lib 4004 |
|
TBA |
Small Group Work |
TBA |
RequiredReadings
(in order of use)
Guinier, Lani, "Race: Creating a National Conversation"(On Program's Website)
Swidler, Leonard, "The DialogueDecalogue" Ground Rules for Interreligious, Intercultural Dialogue" (On Program's Website)
Baldwin and Al-Hadid, "Toward a Broader Humanism," (chapter 9 of Between Cross and Crescent)
Gilliam, Angela, "Militarism and Cargo Cult" (On Program's Website)
Hill, Patrick, "The Search for Commonality in a World of Diversity." (On Program's Website)
Brown,
Beverly, In Timber Country
Coetzee,
J.M., The Lives of Animals
hooks, bell"Keeping a Legacy of Shared Struggle" (On Program's Website)
Rosenberg, Marshall, "Compassionate Communication" (On Program's Website)
Harding, Sarah, "Re-Inventing Yourself as Other" and "Thinking from the Perspective of Lesbian Lives" " from Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from the Perspective of Women's Lives(In bookstore and on Library Reserve)
Belenky
et al, "Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing," pp. 87-152fromWomen's
Ways of Knowing.
Thandeka,
Learning To Be White: Money, Race and God in America
Ackerman and DuVall,A Force More Powerful, selected chapters.
King, Martin Luther, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence" (On Program's Website)
Dyson,
Michael Eric, Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur.
Recommended
readings:
Brown, Beverly, Voices from the Woods (In the bookstore)
Goad, Jim, The Redneck Manifesto (chapters one and two--in the bookstore and on Library reserve)
Hwoschinsky, Carol, Listening With the Heart (In the bookstore)
King, Martin Luther, Jr.,Strength to Love (In the Bookstore)
Race in America", New York Times ' ten-part series, available electronically only.
Senge, Peter, The Fifth Discipline (in the Bookstore)
Tannen,
Deborah, You Just Don't Understand
Films and Videos
|
“Dead
Men Walking"
“Eldorado” "The Mystery of Chi" "Children of Abraham" "Promises" "True Colors" "The Color of Fear" "Wounded Healers" |
"Eyes
on the Prize"
"Hope out of the Ashes" "Red White and Blues" "Slam" "Healing the Soul" "Do the Right Thing" |
There are SIX major requirements in the program.
1.Attendance and participation at all lectures, films, and seminars. The books, lectures, and films of each week have been constructed as coherent units with distinctive intellectual and pedagogical purposes relative to our topic.Participation in each program-activity of the week is vital to the success of the weekly "Integrative Seminar" and to the writing of your mid-term and the two end-of-quarter "Integrative Papers" (See below). Consequently, activities which are unavoidably missed must be made up as quickly as possible in two ways: (a) acquainting yourself with the missed material (e.g. by having a friend tape the lecture, by obtaining the film, or by buying pizza (with anchovies? J) for someone in exchange for a re-cap of a missed seminar) AND (b) by writing up in your Portfolio (see below for a description of the Portfolio) a summary of what occurred during the missed meeting.The hardest thing to make up is a missed seminar.
2. The second major requirement of the program are the three "IntegrativePapers," which bring together or crystallize your reactions to the lectures, books, films, and seminar-discussions into coherent (not to say `conclusive') essays on the major themes and issues of the whole of the program.
The Integrative Papers are not in any sense research papers.They are essentially built upon and reacting to the assigned readings and films, the lectures, our discussions, your in-seminar writings and to the notes which make up your Portfolio. The Integrative Papers do indeed demand sustained conversations with your seminar-colleagues (with or without pizza) and some hard thinking on your own; but if you are attentive to and engaged with the conversations of the program, these papers ought to flow naturally from the paragraphs and pages you have been writing from day to day and week to week in your Portfolio.
Please pay special attention to the three defining characteristics of an integrative paper: personal, comprehensive and comparative.More details are available in "Writing an Integrative Paper" on the Program's Website, under "Syllabus."The concept of integrative thinking will become clearer as we practice it in the "Integrative Seminars" each Thursday afternoon.
The focus of each of the three "Integrative Papers" is as follows:
a)My
Progress and Blockages with Dialogue:
·A
Personal/Philosophical Reflection on your own progress or lack thereof
with the implementation of program themes into your life.This
essay should flow from and crystallize the thrice-weekly entries in the
"Personal Reflections" section of your Portfolio.(See
below.)
·Length:
between 1,500 and 3,000 words.
·Due
on Wednesday of the tenth-week and distributed to all members of your small
discussion group. To be discussed in class on the following Thursday.
·This
essay substitutes for the Fall-quarter self-evaluation for those continuing
with the program into Winter quarter.
b)The
Goals, the Power and the Limitations of Dialogue.
·The
"Goals" section of this essay, for which additional guidelines will be
given in class, should reference centrally the many goals that will be
discussed in class, but ultimately focus on how you yourself are framing
the goals of dialogue in your life.
·This
essay on the power and limitations should focus on your own views but must
include as well the views of at least two other classmates with different
views from whom you have learned at lot.
·A
short statement about the most important things learned about the power
and limitations of dialogue from at least five of the books and five of
the films/videos of the fallquarter.
·Length:
between 2,500 and 3,500 words.
·Due 48 hours before your scheduled evaluation-conference in the week of December 16 to 21.
c)Martin, Malcolm, and Non-Violence (as it relates to the powers and limitations of interracial dialogue). (Details to follow)
3.Third major requirement of the program: a take-home, open-book, consult-your-classmates, "Midterm Exam." This mid-term exam (depending on how things are going) may turn into two shorter exams or but more likely is one lengthy exam following the fifth or sixth week of classes. The exam will test your comprehension of and provide you feedback on the basic concepts introduced in the program.Students experiencing difficulty will receive help and several opportunities to re-do the exam. Everyone willing to work will eventually pass.
4.Seven to Nine short Book/article "Response papers" of one-to-two pages in length.Guidelines for writing these papers are posted on the Program's Website under "Syllabus."These papers form the basis for discussion in the "Book Seminars" which will take place on Tuesday mornings. The papers need to be duplicated five times: one copy to the instructor, and one each to the members of your small seminar group (preferably emailed on Monday evening before 9pm).The papers are due before the seminar and must be on time; or there is no point to the seminar.The paper handed to the instructor is your "ticket of admission" to the seminar.
5.Fifth requirement of the program: a deep commitment to the Program Covenant, which includes centrally a willingness to enter into "conversations of respect" with people with very different opinions, and a willingness to help each other think, speak and behave in less biased ways. See separate handout on the program covenant and on "conversations of respect."
In order to make this requirement more than a rhetorical celebration of diversity, special attention will be given in the program to the accessing of diverse views.In each ofyour "Integrative Papers," each student should give evidence of having learned from people with views quite different from one's own.One good way to do this is to enter into sustained conversations of respect with such people.One of the worst ways we can do it is to project out of our own limited experience what we suppose they might say were we to speak with them.
6.Last
requirement: all students are required to keep a "Program Portfolio".The
instructor will review these portfolios in detail in the process of evaluating
your work for the quarter.Additionally,
he will review your portfolio during one-on-one conferences and may ask
from time to time to see portfolios randomly.
The Program
Portfolio
should have separate and distinctly labeled sections:
A)Notes
on lectures and responses to lectures
B)Notes
on seminars and responses to seminars. Include
things learned from others.Please
break down this section of the portfolio, week by week.Each
week's entries must address how your views of the readings for the week
have changed--and why--during the course of the week.See
"Seminar Goals" on the Program's Website" under "Syllabus."
C)Notes
on films and responses to films.
D)Notes
on books.(Some
students take copious notes while reading a book. Other students vigorously
mark up the text itself.Do what
works for you.The bottom line,
as noted below, is the quality of your Integrative Essays.The
next-to-bottom line is that there must be visible evidence during seminar
and afterwards that you have seriously interactedwith
each assigned book and article.
E)Book/article
Response Papers(described
above)
F)Mid-term
exam(s), including
the instructor’s comments and any optional re-writes you may have done.
G)Personal
Reflections.This
section of your portfolio should be looked upon as the notesyou
are taking for the first of the Integrative Essays described above.This
section must include a self-monitoring of your progress and feedback from
trusted (but honest) friends/colleagues/classmates.A
special section of these Reflections should be earmarked for your semantic
allergies (a concept to be explained in class) and their treatment.This
section might fruitfully include a subsection called "Favorite Quotations"
which (like the epigraphs at the top of this syllabus), repeatedly move
you to reflection.
H)Integrative
Essays:
Note: this is the singlemost important sectionof
your portfolio.Lest the portfolio
requirements be interpreted too mechanically, it needs to be said that
excellence here can make up for many an idiosyncrasy elsewhere.Every
other section of the portfolio should be used to feed the quality of this
section.
I)Peer
Evaluations.By
the third week of the program, students will find themselves conversing
and working with a small, relatively constant group of classmates.At
the end of the quarter, students will be asked to provide feedback on the
preparation, contributions and progress of the four-to-five students with
whom they have interacted most regularly.Please
read in the first week of the program "Small-Group Procedures" and the"Peer-Evaluation
Form" (both on the Program's Website under "Syllabus" ) to assist you in
focusing your attention on how a seminar dedicated to dialogue differs
from what Lani Guinier has called "drive by debating."
J)Program
Handouts (including emails from the Instructors).
K)Media
Watch.Each
student will choose and monitor one regularly scheduled radio or television
show or internet site that purports to be seriously exchanging opinions
about controversial issues.Minimally
twenty hours should be invested in listening/watching.In
addition to the notes taken in the monitoring, the section should conclude
with atwo-page essay on the strengths
and weaknesses of the site as a contribution to societal understanding.
L)Log
of Hourson Project Work.This
is perhaps themost unusual and difficult-to-understand
aspect of the portfolio.In recognition
of the pre-requisite nature of trust and comfortable-ness in making dialogue
possible, the program encourages and rewards your "hanging out" with persons/groups
with whom you don't ordinarily spend time.In
this section of your portfolio, you should make entries recording time
invested in making dialogue possible (even if that never happens).For
example: Spent three hours working on the Mason County Literacy project
and another two working with ESL."Or:
"Spent two hours over pizza getting to know seminar-mate Sheila, whom I
never in a million years would have crossed the street to speak to.Absolutely
fascinated by the combination of her intelligence, her religious devotion
to astrology, and her cynicism about the US government.We
promised to exchange the magazine articles we had found most convincing
about9/11, and to meet again next
week (over burritos).This is what
I learned from her:….""Or: "Spent
the better part of my Thanksgiving break putting the concepts of this program
to work in conversations with my parents about racism.While
I made more progress than ever before, I kept getting stuck on….."Note:
Actual classroom hours have been reduced to make time in your life for
this "hanging out time," pre-requisite to dialogue.This
is "field work" in dialogue.The
instructors will clarify what is and is not "loggable" and exactly how
many hours per week are expected.
M)Absences
and Latenesses.See
Covenant for expectations.This
section of the portfolio should detail how excusably missed classes and
seminars have been made up.
N)Self-Evaluation.Given
the nature and focus of this program, the self-evaluation is required.(It
can be looked on as a summary of the first two integrative essays, possibly
softened a bit in view of its importance for your employment possibilities.Printed
guidelines of a general sort for self-evaluations are available in the
College's Advising Office in Library 1400.