2013-14 Undergraduate Index A-Z
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American Studies [clear]
| Title | Offering | Standing | Credits | Credits | When | F | W | S | Su | Description | Preparatory | Faculty | Days of Week | Multiple Standings | Start Quarters |
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Kabby Mitchell and Joye Hardiman
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | How did Black women, of many different cultures and ages, succeed against all odds? How did they move from victim to victors? Where did they find the insurmountable courage to deconstruct and reconstruct their lives? In this program, students will participate in an inquiry-base exploration of the efficacy, resiliency and longevity of the lives and legacies of selected Black women from Ancient Egypt to contemporary Seattle. Our exploration will use the lenses of Ancient Egyptian studies, African, African-American and Afro-Disaporic history, dance history and popular culture to investigate these womens' lives and cultural contexts.The class will have a variety of learning environments, including lectures and films, workshops, seminars and research groups. All students will demonstrate their acquired knowledge, skill and insight by: creating an annotated bibliography; giving a final performance based on the life of a chosen black woman; and an end-of-the-quarter "lessons learned presentation" demonstrating how our collective studies applied to each individual student's life and legacy. | Kabby Mitchell Joye Hardiman | Tue Tue Tue Wed Wed Wed Thu Thu Thu | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | ||||
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Stephanie Coontz
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 8 | 08 | Weekend | S 14Spring | This program explores changes in the social construction and cultural expectations of family life and intimate relations, from colonial times to the present. We begin by delving into the very different values and behaviors of colonial families and then trace changes in love, marriage, parenting, and family arrangements under the influence of the American Revolution and the spread of wage labor. We study the gender and sexual norms of the 19th century, including variation by race and class, then examine the changes pioneered in the early 20th century. We discuss the rise of the 1950s male breadwinner family and then follow its demise from the 1960s through the 1980s. We end the quarter by discussing new patterns of partnering and parenting in the past 30 years,Readings will be challenging, and there will be frequent writing assignments. All students are expected to complete all assignments and participate in workshops and seminar discussions. Credit depends upon consistent attendance and preparation and a demonstrated mastery of the subject matter.This class is excellent preparation for graduate work or professional employment in history, sociology, law, American studies, social work, and psychology. Ir provides needed context and background for people working in the social services or education. | sociology, history, family studies, research, social work, teaching, family law and counseling. | Stephanie Coontz | Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | |||
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Zoltan Grossman and Kristina Ackley
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | Students will explore the juxtaposed themes of Frontier and Homeland, Empire and Periphery and the Indigenous and Immigrant experience. We will use historical analysis (changes in time) and geographic analysis (changes in place) to critique these themes, and will turn toward cultural analysis for a deeper understanding of race, nation, class and gender. We will take as our starting point a critique of Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”—that the frontier is "the meeting point between savagery and civilization"—as a racist rationale for the colonization of Native American homelands. We will consider alternative histories of Anglo-American expansion and settlement in North America, with interaction, change, and persistence as our unifying themes.We will study how place and connection is nurtured, re-imagined and interpreted, particularly in Indigenous and recent immigrant communities. We will connect between the ongoing process of "Manifest Destiny" in North America and subsequent overseas imperial expansion into Latin America, the Pacific and beyond. The colonial control of domestic homelands and imperial control of foreign homelands are both highlighted in recent patterns of recent immigration. These patterns involve many "immigrants" who are in fact indigenous to the Americas, as well as immigrants from countries once conquered by the U.S. military. The American Empire, it seems, began at home and its effects are coming back home and will be contested again.In fall quarter, we will track the historical progression of the frontier across North America and overseas and the territorial and cultural clashes of immigrant and colonized peoples. We will hear firsthand the life stories of local individuals and communities to understand their narratives of conflict, assimilation, resistance and survival. In the winter quarter, we will look at contemporary case studies that show the imprint of the past in the present and how 21st-century North American communities (particularly in the Pacific Northwest) are wrestling with the legacies of colonization, imperialism and migration. In particular, we will examine the overlapping experiences of Native Americans and recent immigrants, and Indigenous territories and migrations that transgress or straddle the international border as defined by "Homeland Security. This program offers ideal opportunities for students to develop skills in writing, research, and analysis. | Zoltan Grossman Kristina Ackley | Tue Wed Fri | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | |||
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Karen Gaul, Rita Pougiales and Julie Russo
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | In , the historian William Leach writes, “Whoever has the power to project a vision of the good life and make it prevail has the most decisive power of all.” Since the early 20th century, the pleasures of consumption have dominated prevailing visions of the good life in the United States. Innovations in mass production and mass media went hand in hand to link pleasure and prosperity with acquiring the latest commodities. Leisure has also been central to those pleasures, often in the form of tourism, fashion and entertainment, as people consume not only goods but experiences and ideas about what it means to be successful and happy. This program is an inquiry into these features of American consumer culture, particularly the values of convenience and authenticity that characterize the objects and desires it produces and exchanges.Students in this program will study the history and logic of U.S. consumer culture. We will consider the forces that have shaped each of us into consumers in this capitalist society, from prepresentation and ideology to material and technological development. Sustainability will be a critical lens for our inquiry, as we consider the raw materials, labor and waste streams inherent in goods and in cultural experiences. Life cycle analysis of objects—from their origins in nature to their presence on retail shelves, personal spaces, garbage bins and landfills—will help us build a broader context for understanding the materiality with which we all engage every day.Our historical arc will be sweeping: from hunter-gatherers nearly two million years ago, to the origins of animal and plant domestication, to the formation of colonial settlements which created unprecedented challenges and opportunities, to the modern era. We will explore the patterns of resource use, social inequality and relative sustainability. We will examine how habits of conservation, thrift and re-use that were endemic to pre-modern societies transformed in tandem with the unprecedented energies of industrialization. We will investigate the theory and economics of post-industrial capitalism to better understand the impact of new media and technologies on the ways we produce and consume in the present day. We will also examine how curiosity about foreign and mysterious cultures in the context of globalization paved the way for tourism in which cultural authenticity is a central attraction. We will study the relationship between consumption and sustainability, pursuit of the good life through self-help and imported cultural practices such as yoga and meditation, between entertainment industries and communication networks, advertising and buying habits, spending money and self-worth. These contexts will enable us to destabilize and interrogate notions of what feels "normal" in the ways we engage as consumers today, including as consumers of knowledge in increasingly digitized institutions of higher education.Students will have the opportunity to examine ingrained routines of daily life, become conscious of the origins and meanings of their own habits and desires, and thereby become critical thinkers and actors in consumer culture. Our activities will include reading, writing papers and participating in seminar discussions on program topics, learning ethnographic research methods, experimenting with multimodal and collaborative work, viewing relevant films and participating in field trips. In fall quarter, we will build foundational skills and introduce key concepts and themes; winter quarter students will begin to develop their own research agenda; and in spring quarter, they can apply theory to practice in research and/or community-based projects. | Karen Gaul Rita Pougiales Julie Russo | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | |||
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Susan Preciso and Mark Harrison
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 8 | 08 | Evening and Weekend | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | “Culture is simply the ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves” (Clifford Geertz).Those stories, our national myths and cultural icons, will provide the lens through which we will examine American history in this year-long program. Students will study works of fiction, film, and history in order to learn how our culture shapes our understanding of past and present realities. Each quarter students will incorporate quantitative methods to enrich and explain aspects of American culture. We’ll look at cultural products, from high art to popular culture with a particular focus on film and literature, to see how they reflect and shape our ideas about who and what we are. Our study will be organized around three turbulent decades in American history.During Fall Quarter, we will consider the post-Civil War years, to include Reconstruction and western expansion. From dime novels to Hollywood westerns, we’ll examine how deeply we are shaped by 19 and 20 century frontier ideology. Money and technology—capitalism and the railroads—also drove westward migration. We’ll see the tensions around race and class as they figure in film, novels, and popular culture.Winter quarter, we will move to the 1930s. How did the Great Depression and the policy created to deal with that crisis change the way we see government? What was the impact of two great migrations—from the dust bowl states to the West, and from the agricultural South to the industrial north—on American society? In such a time of hardship and deprivation, how did the Golden Age of Hollywood reflect our cultural realities through genre films, such as the screwball comedy, the musical, and the gangster film?In the spring, we’ll focus on the 1950s and ‘60s and how upward—and outward—mobility informed who and where we are today. The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War transformed the country. Cars, freeways, and the rise of the suburbs re-shaped the cultural landscape, and television expanded the scope of mass media and popular culture.Our work will include critical reading of books and films. Students will be expected to learn about schools of cultural criticism, using different approaches to enrich their analyses. They will be expected to participate in seminar, lectures, workshops, and library research and to attend field trips to local museums and live theater performances.Credits may be awarded in American studies (literature, art and history), moving image, and mathematics. | Susan Preciso Mark Harrison | Wed Sat | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||
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Peter Bohmer
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | The outcome of current social and economic problems will shape the future for us all. This program focuses on analyzing these problems and developing skills to contribute to debates and effective action in the public sphere. We will address major contemporary issues such as national and global poverty and economic inequality, immigration, incarceration, climate change, and war. U.S. economic and social problems will be placed in a global context. We will draw on sociology, political science, economics and political economy for our analysis, with particular attention to dimensions of class, race, gender, and global inequalities.We will analyze the mainstream and alternative media coverage of current issues and of the social movements dealing with them. We will build our analyses using data-driven descriptions, narratives of those directly affected, and theories that place issues in larger social and historical contexts. Students will be introduced to competing theoretical frameworks for explaining the causes of social problems and their potential solutions (frameworks such as neoclassical economics, liberalism, Marxism, feminism, and anarchism). We will study how social movements have actively addressed the problems and investigate their short- and long-term proposals and solutions as well as how they would be addressed in alternative economic and social systems.We will choose the specific issues to be investigated in the program as spring 2014 approaches, so that our study will be as relevant as possible. For each topic examined, we will combine readings with lectures, films, and workshops, along with guest speakers and possible field trips as appropriate to observe problems and responses first hand.Students will write short papers on each of the social problems we analyze. In addition, you will study in more depth and report on one of the economic or social issues we are studying. | Peter Bohmer | Tue Wed Fri | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Spring | ||||
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John Filmer
Signature Required:
Winter
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | How are organizations managed? What skills and abilities are needed? Organizations, fail or succeed according to their ability to adapt to fluid legal, cultural, political and economic realities. The management of organizations will play a seminal role in this program, where the primary focus will be on business and economic development. Management is a highly interdisciplinary profession where generalized, connected knowledge plays a critical role. Knowledge of the liberal arts/humanities or of technological advances may be as vital as skill development in finance, law, organizational dynamics or the latest management theory. An effective leader/manager must have the ability to read, comprehend, contextualize and interpret the flow of events impacting the organization. Communication skills, critical reasoning, quantitative (financial) analysis and the ability to research, sort out, comprehend and digest voluminous amounts of material characterize the far-thinking and effective organizational leader/manager.This program will explore the essentials of for-profit and non-profit business development through the study of classical economics, free market principles, economic development and basic business principles. Selected seminar readings will trace the evolution of free market thinking in our own Democratic Republic. Critical reasoning will be a significant focus in order to explicate certain economic principles and their application to the business environment. You will be introduced to the tools, skills and concepts you need to develop strategies for navigating your organization in an ever-changing environment. Class work will include lectures, book seminars, projects, case studies, leadership, team building and financial analysis. Expect to read a lot, study hard and be challenged to think clearly, logically and often. Texts will include by Thomas Zimmerer by Thomas Sowell, by M. Neil Browne and Stuart Keeley, and by John A. Tracy. A stout list of seminar books will include , by Hayek, by Thomas Paine and by DeToqueville. In fall quarter, we will establish a foundation in economics, business, critical reasoning and the history of business development in the United StatesWinter quarter will emphasize real life economic circumstances impacting organizations. You will engage in discussions with practitioners in businesses and various other private sector and government organizations. You will be actively involved in research and project work with some of these organizations and it will provide an opportunity to investigate and design exciting internships for the spring quarter.In spring quarter, the emphasis will be on individual projects or internships. Continuing students will design their own curriculum. This will require students to take full responsibility for their learning, including a bibliography, the design of the syllabus, and learning schedule. The faculty sponsor merely acts as an educational manager and not as a tutor. In-program internships provide a different opportunity to apply prior learning but in this case, with the intent of developing applied skills and people skills rather than focusing solely on advanced study or research. | John Filmer | Mon Wed Fri | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||
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Julianne Unsel and Artee Young
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Program | JR–SRJunior - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | As currently measured by the United Nations' Human Development Index, the United States has one of the highest standards of living in the world. Average life expectancies, educational levels, and annual incomes place even poor Americans among the most privileged people on earth. Even so, there are gross inequalities inside the U.S. Factors of personal identity, including race, class, and gender, predict with uncanny precision the range of life choices available to any given individual. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Cities are rife with violence, the political system is polarized and corrupt, and personal lives of rich and poor are marked by addiction, excess, apathy, and want. This program questions how this has happened: How do the personal identities and everyday lives of a people come together to shape social, economic, and political conditions in a nation like the United States? How do such conditions, in turn, shape individual identities and lives? What institutions have framed and enforced these conditions over time? What institutions currently sustain them? How do diverse Americans understand and react to these conditions? What can we do to make things better now? To find answers, we will focus on two institutions fundamental to personal identity and social control in the American present and past – law and commerce. We will examine how property law and the criminal justice system in particular have shaped American history, how history has shaped them, and how both have managed personal identities through social control.In fall quarter, we will study the diverse array of social, economic, and political relationships that developed in the U.S. from settlement to the end of slavery. In winter, we will examine changes in relationships from the closing of the western frontier through the present. In spring, we will place our own lives in proximate context with exploration of contemporary theories of personal identity and social control. In all quarters, we will make a visual study of "the outlaw" as a trope both romanticized and reviled in American folklore and popular culture. We will also place U.S. economic development into a general global context. Interdisciplinary readings will include legal studies, legal history, social and economic history, critical race studies, visual studies, and feminist theory. Classes will include discussion seminars, writing workshops, lectures, student panel presentations, library study periods, and occasional film screenings.Program assignments will help us grow in the art and craft of clear communication and well-supported argumentation. They will include critical reading, academic writing, research in peer-reviewed literature, and public outreach and speaking. A digital photography component will explore "the outlaw" through visual expression. In spring, internship opportunities and individualized learning plans will bring program themes to social outreach agencies and groups in our local community.This program will offer appropriate support to all students ready to do advanced work. Activities will support student peer-to-peer teaching, personal responsibility for learning and achievement, contemplative study habits, and intensive skills development. Transfer students are welcome. | Julianne Unsel Artee Young | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | |||
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Chico Herbison and Frances V. Rains
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | —Lawson Fusao Inada, Japanese American poetFor Nikkei (Japanese emigrants and their descendants, including “war brides” and a “mixed-race” population) in the United States, World War II was a historical, cultural, social, and political watershed. Permanent settlements of immigrant Japanese were first established on the U.S. mainland in the latter half of the 19 century and, in spite of anti-Japanese sentiment and legislative efforts, those communities grew and flourished. However, they would be forever transformed with the outbreak of war and the subsequent removal, detention, and incarceration of 110,000 Nikkei in ten “War Relocation Camps” spread across the country, from California to Arkansas. Forcibly uprooted and imprisoned, families left behind tangible assets (homes, businesses, bank accounts), but perhaps more devastating were the ensuing collapse of communities and the loss of a way of life. They were allowed to take with them, into the unknown, “only what they could carry.” Students in this program will explore the rich history and culture of Nikkei, from their first arrival in this country, through the traumatic events of the World War II period, and beyond. Although we will examine the overall experience of Nikkei in the U.S., our particular focus will be on those in the Pacific Northwest. Accompanying us on our interdisciplinary journey will be historical studies, oral testimony, fiction and poetry, photographs and film, and music, among other texts and tools. We will immerse ourselves in topics such as the earliest Japanese immigration; the 19 - and 20 -century struggles against discrimination and exclusion; the World War II watershed years (including an examination of the often-overlooked resistance movement in the camps, and the legendary exploits of Nikkei soldiers in both theaters of the war); the post-war efforts by Nikkei to reassemble their lives and, for some, to seek redress and reparations; the saga of Japanese “war brides” (women who married U.S. servicemen in Occupied Japan and eventually migrated stateside); and the world of “mixed-race” Nikkei. It is only through such an immersion that we will begin to understand the ways in which this population carried, and continues to carry, “strength, dignity and soul.”Each student will read a series of seminar books and articles related to program topics and themes, participate in weekly seminars and write weekly seminar papers, participate in workshops, and screen and critically analyze films. In addition, there will be field trips to Pacific Northwest locations with Nikkei historical and cultural connections. Finally, students will complete substantial, individual research projects and make summative presentations of their work. | Chico Herbison Frances V. Rains | Mon Mon Wed Thu Thu | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Chico Herbison
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Program | JR–SRJunior - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 14Winter | (1) Queue up Danger Mouse’s magnificent mash-up, . (2) Traverse the rich critical and cultural landscape of Kevin Young’s . (3) Enter the outrageous world of , whose author, Paul Beatty, was described by writer Jessica Hagedorn as “a nineties Richard Pryor peaking ecstatically on acid.” (4) Discover an aesthetic—variously called “new black,” “post-soul,” and “post-black”—shaped and powered by a group of contemporary African Americans scholars and artists who complicate, in both bold and nuanced fashion, definitions and discussions of this thing called “blackness.” Scholar Mark Anthony Neal employs the “post-soul” label to describe “the political, social, and cultural experiences of the African-American community since the end of the civil rights and Black Power movements.” On the front lines of capturing those experiences is a group of contemporary African American artists whose explorations of the race-identity nexus consistently eschew essentialist notions and, instead, embrace cultural hybridity, multivocality, intersectionality, and intertextuality . . . they insist on “the greyness of blackness.” This program is designed for students seeking advanced study of African American culture in general, and contemporary African American literature in particular. Our primary texts will be fiction: Paul Beatty’s , Danzy Senna’s , Colson Whitehead’s , Percival Everett’s , Jake Lamar’s , and Darius James’s , among others. Our supplemental texts will include essays, poetry, drama, film, and hip-hop music.We will devote two weekly seminars (one facilitated by students) to close readings of written texts, and engage in equally close readings of film and music. In addition to short weekly writing assignments, there will be a major research paper (20–25 pages). Field trips will include museum visits, off-campus films, and music venues. | Chico Herbison | Tue Tue Thu Thu Fri | Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | ||||
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Chico Herbison
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | —Mary Frosch This two-quarter program will explore the complex ways in which American individuals, groups and the United States itself come of age. We will immerse ourselves in rites (and rights) of passage as captured in art—primarily through literature and writing, but also as revealed in film, music and other forms. Individuals and groups, on lifelong journeys, navigate relationships, encounter crises, grow and change and move from childhood to adulthood. Like Joseph Campbell’s archetypal hero, people leave home (literally and/or figuratively), encounter and slay demons (recognize and solve problems) and return home forever transformed: they come of age (live happily ever after). Stories of passage from “the Old World” (both voluntary and coerced) set beside stories from the people who already were here chronicle the further realignment and redefinition of this nation, often in destructive ways. American literature explores racial, gender and other forms of “passing.” All of the Americas experienced critical convergences of social, cultural, political and other forces that moved them from infancy through childhood to adolescence to…what? Military involvement abroad, continuing domestic turmoil and various cultural divides mark an uneasy passage into our 21st century. We will focus on “minority” voices who will help us to define the "American" story. In fall quarter, we will read a wide range of ethnic “minority” fiction and nonfiction and will write our personal accounts of passages in essay and creative nonfiction forms. In winter quarter, we will shift from ethnicity to other forms of “minority” status, including those associated with class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, position (as in family) and ability. Winter quarter's writing will be nonfiction and adaptations to fiction. Throughout the program, students will work individually and collaboratively to strengthen their critical and creative writing skills and, ultimately, to tell their own coming-of-age stories. | Chico Herbison | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | ||||
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Anthony Zaragoza and Savvina Chowdhury
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Program | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | Political economy asks basic but often overlooked questions: who has what, who does what work, why, how it got to be that way and how to change it. Given this starting point, what do some of the most basic and everyday things around us look like through the lens of political economy? How could we better understand our food system, popular culture and social movements using this interdisciplinary set of questions and perspectives? For example, we'll look at how apples are grown and harvested, , and what's grown out of the Occupy Movement, each as its own window into the way the economic system we were born into works, and how people just like us are responding to it and trying to remake the world. Through these explorations of food systems, popular culture and social movements, we will get a better understanding of the ways in which society itself becomes hierarchical and divided by race, class, gender and sexuality. In fall quarter, our guiding question will ask how capitalism evolved and came to be the way it is. How did relationships based on food, popular culture and social movements influence and become influenced by the emergence, development and concrete workings of U.S. political economy in the 20 century? In tandem with the evolution of the capitalist system, we will examine competing historical visions of political economy put forth by indigenous struggles, immigrant struggles, anti-slavery struggles, the feminist movement, the labor movement. At the same time, we will emphasize the lives of exploited and marginalized people as they encountered capitalism as an economic system. Through this work we will work to become better readers of our texts and of the world. In winter quarter, we will examine the interrelationship between the U.S. political economy and the changing global system, as well as U.S. foreign policy. We will study the causes and consequences of the globalization of capital and its effects on our daily lives, international migration, the role of multilateral institutions and the meaning of various trade agreements and regional organizations and alliances. We will look at the impact of the global order on our food system and explore the politics of culture, as people negotiate and contest new emerging regimes of labor, property and citizenship. Through protests, revolutions and riots, social movements continue to raise core questions regarding democracy, power, equality and the relationship between citizens, the state and the global economy, providing fruitful alternative analytical perspectives for the study of capitalist globalization and transnational networks. This quarter's work will allow us to deepen and strengthen our analytical skills.In spring, we will focus our efforts to learn from diverse, community-based institutions that offer us alternative visions of how to organize social and economic activity, in accordance with the basic principles of human rights, ethical labor practices and cooperative work and decision-making, through processes that respect the integrity of our environment and ecology. Working in conjunction with Evergreen's Center for Community-Based Learning and Action, schools, advocacy groups, veteran's rights groups and other nonprofit organizations, students are invited to examine strategies put forward by popular education models, immigrant rights advocates, gay/lesbian/transgender advocates and community-based economic models. In our last quarter, we will work to further develop our communication skills, organization and accountability. | Anthony Zaragoza Savvina Chowdhury | Freshmen FR | Fall |