awareness

Seminar

We’ll be exploring several approaches to what, at Evergreen, is a verb that refers to a primary method of learning: seminaring.

We strongly urge you to read, at your earliest convenience, the notes on dialogue written by
Stringfellow Barr that are on the web at:
http://www.sjca.edu/asp/main.aspx?page=6712
(Click there to open the notes in a new browser.)

Barr began his presidency of St. Johns College, Annapolis, Maryland, in 1937.  He and Scott Buchanan are responsible for the unique, great books curriculum of that college.  The notes begin:

Perhaps the first obstacle to writing even these random notes on dialogue is that the very word, dialogue, has been temporarily turned into a cliché. Everybody is loudly demanding dialogue, and there is not much evidence that most of us are prepared to carry one on. Indeed, to borrow a traditional phrase from professional diplomats, conversations have deteriorated. But both radio and television, whether public or commercial, remind us daily that a lonely crowd hungers for dialogue, not only for the dialogue of theatre but also for the dialogue of the discussion program.
There is a pathos in television dialogue: the rapid exchange of monologues that fail to find the issue, like ships passing in the night; the reiterated preface, “I think that …” as if it mattered who held which opinion rather than which opinion is worth holding; the impressive personal vanity that prevents each “discussant” from really listening to another speaker and that compels him to use this God-given pause to compose his own next monologue; the further vanity, or instinctive caution, that leads him to choose very long words, whose true meaning he has never grasped, rather than short words that he understands but that would leave the emptiness of his point of view naked and exposed to a mass public.

Seminars should aim for dialogue.  Dialogue, as Barr makes clear, is not an exchange of opinion.  And even though modern definitions say that dialogue involves “conversation,” they often do not point to the potential deep meaning of even that word, a term that used to imply conversion, a turning of the soul.  Dialogue, the word, is constructed from dia-, the prefix meaning “through” or “across,” and –logue, a term that derives from logos, the Greek term for word/wisdom.  Seminars should aim higher than chit-chat, higher than an exchange of views, higher than sharing, higher than an expression of opinions (along with the conventional respect that is to be accorded the other, as in, “You have your opinion, and …”); seminars should pursue wisdom.  Enjoy.

Non-
Participation

People who do not participate in seminars are a drag, literally.  They drag the group down to an unacceptable level.  We’ve probably heard all the reasons for not participating.  None are acceptable.  There is plenty of evidence in our experience that those who participate in seminars learn more.  They expose their ideas to critical evaluation (by one’s colleagues, by one’s teachers, by oneself) and allow themselves the opportunity to rethink what they know.  Evergreen was built around dialogue in seminars.  If this is something you’d rather not be part of, maybe Evergreen is not the best place to go to school.

Groupings

Peer Groups: Students will divide into peer groups of 4-7 people that should meet once each week outside of regular class times. This group will be of most direct help in editing papers. The group should also consider making the community service project a collective effort of the peer group.

Mondays: Three seminars meet on Monday. Each consists of three or four complete peer groups (about 16 people per seminar).

Wednesdays: Two seminars will meet, one with Bill, one with Sarah. These groups are formed without consideration to peer groups or the Monday seminars. Your seminar faculty will write your evaluation.

Monday Seminar

First, have a seminar on the assigned reading(s).  The structure and conduct of the seminar are your business.  The faculty will not be present and will not “check in.”  Second, write a reflective note on a “meeting” that happened during this seminar.  This “meeting” might be between people, between a person (including yourself) and the text, or, so to speak, between a person and him- or herself. (A “meeting” with yourself anywhere but in the seminar room--in your room, in the forest, at you place of work, etc.--does not count.  You must attend a seminar before writing this memo.)

We take Martin Buber’s comments on “meeting” (in Meetings, Open Court Press, 1973) as a starting point for understanding this term which describes a situation out of which reality emerges.  Buber first uses the term to describe an encounter that happened when he was four years old.  An older girl said to young Martin that his mother, who had left the family, “will never come back,” something about which no one else had spoken.  Buber writes,

I know that I remained silent, but also that I cherished no doubt of the truth of the spoken words.  It remained fixed in me, from year to year it cleaved ever more to my heart, but after more than ten years I had begun to perceive it as something that concerned not only me, but all men.

He also seems to suggest that it might be easier to recognize a “Vergegnung”—a mismeeting or “miscounter”—than it is to recognize a genuine meeting.  But use this notion of genuineness, of authenticity, of realness and awareness—as well as the negative notion of mismeeting—to begin to pick out the meeting about which you want to write.

Write an essay that gives a good, accurate, thorough description of what happened.  Avoid abstractions. Just point, carefully, considerately, and deliberately, at what you perceived.  Think about Buber’s words: “I am no philosopher, prophet, or theologian, but a man who has seen something and who goes to the window and points to what he has seen.”

When I was eleven years of age, spending the summer on my grandparents’ estate, I used, as often as I could do it unobserved, to steal into the stable and gently stroke the neck of my darling, a broad dapple-gray horse.  It was not a casual delight but a great, certainly friendly, but also deeply stirring happening.  If I am to explain it now, beginning from the still very fresh memory of my hand, I must say that what I experienced in touch with the animal was the Other, which, however, did not remain strange like the otherness of the ox and the ram, but rather let me draw near and touch it.  When I stroked the mighty mane, sometimes marvelously smooth-combed, at other times just as astonishingly wild, and felt the life beneath my hand, it was as though the element of vitality itself bordered on my skin, something that was not I, was certainly not akin to me, palpably the other, not just another, really the Other itself; and yet it let me approach, confided itself to me, placed itself elementally in the relation of Thou and Thou with me.  The horse, even when I had not begun by pouring oats for him into the manger, very gently raised his massive head, ears flicking, then snorted quietly, as a conspirator gives a signal meant to be recognizable only by his fellow-conspirator; and I was approved….

Like this description of Buber's "meeting" with the horse, your description of the meeting that you saw should be richly detailed enough that others will know what you are pointing to and will be able to learn something, even if they weren’t present or didn’t see it.

We will, together, refine our understanding of this term and this assignment as we go (including exploration of the dominance of the visual metaphor, for example!). You will also find the following papers, by Lizzy Negelev, helpful:
Negelev on "Meetings"
Negelev Response Paper

Submit your essay to your seminar leader no later than 4:00 pm on Monday afternoon.  Sarah will pick them up in her mailbox.  Bill’s students should paste the essay into the body of an email and send it to him.

Additionally, send your essay to the members of your peer group. At your weekly peer group meeting read some of the papers out loud. (During the quarter, make sure that everyone has at least three of his or her papers read out loud.) Use these to begin your discussion and conversation. Listen for the stylistic attributes and note the senses to which they appeal in your discernment of whether a "meeting" has actually been described. You should keep in mind that one of the goals of your work is to compile a list of styles and rhetorical devices that make writing appeal effectively to the various senses. This list must be included in your portfolio.

e-mail

You will need an e-mail account for program business.  All Evergreen students are assigned an e-mail account.  You can find out how to use this account at http://www.evergreen.edu/netservices/Accounts/studentuserpass.htm

We encourage you to use your Evergreen account because you get campus notices and you are subscribed to the discussion lists.  (You can “unsubscribe” from the discussions if you wish.)  You can have mail forwarded from your Evergreen account to another e-mail account by following these directions:

• On the net go to http://my.evergreen.edu (Click on that address and the link will open in a new browser.)

• Enter your account name and password.  (Just enter your account name; do not put the @evergreen.edu suffix on it.)

• On the next page, got to “Change email preferences.”

• Enter the forwarding address.

Sometimes it takes a few days to put the forwarding into effect.  You can check to see if anything is still landing in your Evergreen account at www.evergreen.edu/webmail

It is your responsibility to ensure that your e-mail account is functioning.  We will try to make sure that our e-mails, including attachments, are within the size-guidelines of most common Internet services.  We cannot be responsible for mail undelivered because your inbox is full, you changed accounts without telling us, your dog ate your password….

listserve

You should sign up with the program listserve as well.  Send an email to
join-awareness@lists.evergreen.edu (click on that e-mail to do that now)
and confirm your intention to subscribe when prompted to do so.