2013-14 Catalog

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Title   Offering Standing Credits Credits When F W S Su Description Preparatory Faculty Days of Week Multiple Standings Start Quarters
Activism, Advocacy and Citizenship
Paul McCreary, Pamela Duncan-Pierce, Linda Gaffney, Carl Waluconis, Frances Solomon, Suzanne Simons, Arlen Speights, Barbara Laners, Peter Bacho, Jose Gomez, Gilda Sheppard and Tyrus Smith
  Program JR–SRJunior - Senior 16 16 Day and Evening F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring This year’s program takes a holistic approach to systemic change at the community level. Students will explore the roles and responsibilities of citizens in a representative democracy. We will focus on individual- and community-building practices based on literacy in humanities, social sciences, mathematics, science, media and technology. A major emphasis of this program will be the examination of how citizens effectively advocate and engage in activism to address pressing social, legal, economic and ecological problems. Students will be expected to demonstrate understanding, action and leadership in their areas of interest.During fall quarter, students will study historical notions of leadership and strategies employed to achieve social change through activism and advocacy in institutional and non-institutional settings. Students will reflect on their personal experiences and the world around them in order to understand how they may apply the insights, knowledge and skills to promote civic engagement and foster change.Winter's work will be based upon the foundations built in fall quarter. Students will identify, develop and explore models of advocacy and activism that have led to systemic change. They will enhance their knowledge of contemporary social movements, political interest groups, and scientific and legal advocacy. Students will work actively toward the application of this knowledge by developing collaborative action research projects.In spring quarter, students will join theory with practice, utilizing a variety of expansive methods, from writing to media, in order to demonstrate and communicate their perceptions and findings to a wider audience. They will present their collaborative research projects to the public. The information presented will be directed toward benefiting individual and community capacity as well as communicating a wider understanding of their findings to enhance their own lives, the lives of those in their community and the world that we all share. Paul McCreary Pamela Duncan-Pierce Linda Gaffney Carl Waluconis Frances Solomon Suzanne Simons Arlen Speights Barbara Laners Peter Bacho Jose Gomez Gilda Sheppard Tyrus Smith Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Consuming Cultures revised
Karen Gaul, Rita Pougiales and Julie Russo
  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
Creating Dangerously: Advanced Studies new
Naima Lowe and Therese Saliba
Signature Required: Fall  Winter 
  Program JR–SRJunior - Senior 16 16 Day and Evening F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring This is an opportunity for a small number of Junior-Senior students with a strong background in one or a combination of the following: visual art, art history, literature, creative writing, media theory, cultural studies, critical race studies, or feminist studies. Students with this background will participate in all of the activities and readings of , but also be asked to complete longer and more in-depth assignments and a large-scale project that will be developed over the course of the year. These students will also act as peer mentors for the Freshman-Sophomore students in the class, and will have opportunities for ongoing critique on projects with program faculty. In addition, advanced students will be required to take a year-long, 2-credit sequence in Critical and Cultural Theory offered one evening a week by Greg Mullins. Naima Lowe Therese Saliba Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Culture as History revised
Susan Preciso and Mark Harrison
  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
The Epic and The Everyday revised
Ulrike Krotscheck and Marilyn Freeman
  Program FR–SRFreshmen - Senior 16 16 Day F 13 Fall W 14Winter Must quotidian always be associated with humdrum? Rather, it is perhaps the quotidian—the everyday, the banal—that, in the long run, heroically ensures the survival of the individual and the group as a whole. -Michel Maffesoli, An “epic” is generally defined as a poem or narrative of considerable length, which explores grand themes such as a hero’s journey, or the origin myth of a country or peoples. As an adjective, “epic” refers to something that is larger than life and often extra-ordinary. By contrast, the “everyday” is flatly defined as ordinary and is often seen as boring, trivial, and lacking in grandeur. Yet, the “everyday” has a rich creative history and garners remarkable attention in contemporary art, spiritual practices, and other areas of study and praxis. Our lives are made up of both the epic and the everyday; both are integral components of the human experience. And the tension that exists between the two is rich territory for insight and imagination.This program interrogates how the essence of the epic enters the everyday and how the quotidian gives meaning to the epic.We will juxtapose the exploration of the “epic” as a literary form with the exploration of the “everyday” as a creative practice that engages experiments in text, sound, and image. We will conduct these explorations through readings, film screenings, analyses, lectures, workshops, seminars, and by developing discovery strategies rooted in the creative practices of writing nonfiction and of crafting video essays.During fall quarter students will read ancient Greek epic poetry, myth, and tragedy. These works tap deeply into the human condition, and they explore our most persistent and universal questions, such as the concepts of destiny, power, morality, mortality, and the (in-)evitabilty of fate. As we analyze the grand questions raised by epic texts we will also consider if or how we encounter such themes in everyday life. Conversely, we will examine how everyday life may intersect with epic-scale experiences and insights.To facilitate these considerations students will develop a daily writing practice and craft a variety of creative nonfiction essays—meditative, lyrical, personal, and hybrid forms—and we will factor into our studies exemplars that engage thematically with the everyday. Fall quarter explorations will move off the page to incorporate sound and image as tools for creative and critical inquiry. Students will take a series of electronic media workshops and gain hands-on experience with audiovisual scriptwriting, audio recording, photography, and video editing. Fall quarter will conclude with students applying their creative writing skills and electronic media competencies in collaboratively crafted video essays that blend students' literary works with audio and images to explore the realm between the epic and the everyday.During winter quarter we will deepen our investigations into the epic and the everyday through additional readings and analyses of classic Greek texts and by furthering our audiovisual inquiries. One goal of this quarter will be to advance students’ understanding of various film and adaptation theories to put into practice in their individual work. Winter quarter will conclude with rigorous individual projects that encompass a research paper on sources and methods of adaptation, and an independently made video essay.This is a full-time program emphasizing classical Greek literature and media arts, creative and critical practice, collaborative learning, and individual accountability. Expect assignments to be process-driven, highly structured, and challenging. Students are expected to participate fully in all program activities, and to work about 40 hours per week including class time. If you’re eager to blend the study of Ancient Greek literature with experiments in media arts, then this program is for you. Ulrike Krotscheck Marilyn Freeman Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Human Rights and Wrongs: Literature, Film, Theory
Greg Mullins
Signature Required: Winter 
  Program JR–SRJunior - Senior 16 16 Day and Evening F 13 Fall W 14Winter Human rights law is encoded in the spare language of treaties, but human rights practice comes alive in the materiality of daily life. After a quick tour of human rights law, we will devote our energies in this program toward understanding how human rights accrue force and meaning insofar as they are embedded in cultural practice and specifically, in cultural practices of representation. Our inquiry will be guided by these questions: How do human rights frameworks prevent or redress human wrongs (including atrocities such as torture and genocide)? What leads some people to abuse human rights and other people to respect them? How are human rights struggles pursued using modes of visual and textual representation? What role do cultural forms such as film, literature and public memorials play in either fostering or hindering respect for human rights?The program is designed for students who wish to advance their skills in literary criticism and visual analysis; both literature and film are at the center of the work. The first five weeks of fall quarter will be devoted to legal and philosophical definitions of human rights. We will study critiques of rights from the major ideological camps and students will establish their own assessment of the viability of rights approaches to atrocity and injustice. The second five weeks of fall quarter and six weeks of winter quarter will be devoted to studying works of fiction, films (both feature and documentary), photographs and public memorials that all, in their own ways, attempt to tell human rights stories or open fresh critiques of human rights work. The balance of the winter quarter work will be research projects that result in either a traditional research essay or a more practical implementation of the theory students have learned.Field study will take us, in one day, to memorial parks in Tacoma and Bainbridge Island. A typical week's work will include a film screening, a short lecture followed by discussion and seminars. Students will write weekly one-page papers, two six-page essays in each quarter, an academic statement, a research prospectus fall quarter and a 15- to 20-page research paper (or its equivalent) winter quarter. Students joining fall quarter need not have prior knowledge of human rights, but substantive prior work in literary criticism and/or film criticism and theory will be helpful. Students who wish to join in winter quarter, please note the signature requirement. Greg Mullins Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Interrogating Emotions revised
Laura Citrin and Anne de Marcken (Forbes)
Signature Required: Winter 
  Program SO–SRSophomore - Senior 16 16 Day F 13 Fall W 14Winter What are emotions, sentiments, and feelings? What functions do they serve, both for the individual and for society? In this full-time, two-quarter program, we will use social pyschology, scientific research, creative writing, and literary and film analysis as methods of inquiry into the ways that emotions are connected with cultural ideologies and assumptions. We will study the ways emotions are expressed, avoided, embraced, and rejected according to complex display rules that vary across and within cultures based on gendered, raced, and classed social norms. Underlying all of this discussion will be an analysis of the ways that power operates on and through us to get under our skin and into what feels like our most personal possessions: our emotions. If we read between the lines, what is the subtext of our cultural narratives about fear, love, guilt, anger…? We will look to literature and film for examples of dominant and alternative narratives, and we will experiment with creative writing—fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms—as both a mode of expression and a method of inquiry: a way of looking under the surface of our habitual reactions and cultural norms.Fall QuarterWe'll survey the "big six" emotions: anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise and fear, as well as the socio-moral emotions like embarrassment, contempt, shame, and pride. We will also discuss the field of positive psychology and its analysis of the positive emotions (e.g., joy, hope, interest, love) and the role they play in what positive psychologists refer to as "the good life."  We will consider published psychology research and literature from the field of social psychology, and students will design, propose and lay the groundwork for Winter Quarter research projects. Through analysis of films and literary and critical texts, students will consider how stories convey, evoke, and manipulate our emotions. They will develop fluency with critical terminology and concepts related to narrative, literary and cinematic theories. Through creative writing assignments and workshops, students will cultivate facility with elements of narrative discourse such as scene, summary, description, exposition, and dialogue.Winter QuarterOur interrogation of emotions will continue winter quarter with greater focus on independent, in-depth, and finely-crafted work. In addition to continued reading, screening and discussion of literary, critical and research-based texts, students will conduct the primary research projects approved during Fall Quarter, and will work to develop a portfolio of creative work representative of their inquiry. Winter quarter is an opportunity to participate first-hand in knowledge production within the interdisciplinary domain of affect studies, and to engage directly in the contemporary critical/creative discourse as art-makers.The interrogation of emotions in this program will occur via readings, screenings, lectures, research and creative writing workshops, and student-led seminars. Designed as a two-quarter program, the Fall Quarter will lay the foundation for more in-depth work in Winter. We strongly encourage students to enroll who are interested in sustained inquiry. Laura Citrin Anne de Marcken (Forbes) Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Media Artists Studio
Laurie Meeker
Signature Required: Fall  Winter  Spring 
  Program JR–SRJunior - Senior 16 16 Day F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring This is a program for advanced media students who want to continue to build their skills in media history, theory and production with the support of a learning community. It is designed for students who have already developed some expertise in media production, have academic experience with media history/theory and wish to work on advanced media projects involving research, development, production and exhibition. It provides students with the opportunity to produce yearlong media projects based on individual or collective interests developed out of previous academic projects or programs. Each student or team of students will do extensive pre-production planning and research for a media project to be completed by the end of the academic year. One or two-quarter projects are also possible, but must include research, design, production and editing appropriate to the academic schedule. Students who are interested in one or more of the following are invited to join this learning community of media artists: experimental film and digital video production, media history/theory, documentary, sound design, writing, photography, installation and contemporary art history.The focus of this program is on the development of each student's personal style and creative approach to working with moving images and sound. During the fall, students will engage in a period of idea development, research and reflection, including a 2-3 day retreat for concentrated work. Interdisciplinary research will inform students’ creative work, and will result in a research paper, annotated bibliography and presentation to the group. Grant writing workshops will result in student proposals for individual or collaborative media projects. Fall quarter will also involve opportunities for students to expand their media skills through workshops, exercises and a collaborative project. In particular, cinematography workshops will deepen student understanding of light, exposure and image quality in the 16mm format. Students will also work in teams of 3-4 to develop experimental projects that will enhance their collaborative skills and production experience. Students will also conduct research into new and old media technologies, presenting their findings to the group.During winter quarter, the focus will shift from idea development to the production phase. Students will acquire all their images and production elements for their projects, which could involve production work off campus for an extended period. Students are encouraged to think creatively and broadly about their subject matter and will be able to propose media projects that may require travel to other areas of the United States during the winter production phase. The critique process will be a central focus for the learning community during winter and spring, requiring students to participate regularly in the critical analysis of one another’s creative work. Winter research projects will explore contemporary media artists who have made special contributions to the development of experimental media practice and have attempted to push the technological as well conceptual boundaries of the moving image. Audio production workshops will be offered to expand student expertise with sound design and technology. Students will be encouraged to decide as a group on additional workshops in Web design and online media practices and will choose texts for winter and spring seminars.During spring quarter, each student will complete post-production work, develop a media artist website, explore ways to sustain their work as media artists and participate in a public screening of their work. Laurie Meeker Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Nonfiction Media: Animation, Documentary and Experimental Approaches to the Moving Image revised
Anne Fischel and Ruth Hayes
Signature Required: Fall 
  Program SO–SRSophomore - Senior 16 16 Day F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring   Anne Fischel Ruth Hayes Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Political Economy of Media
Lawrence Mosqueda and Michael Vavrus
Signature Required: Spring 
  Program SO–SRSophomore - Senior 16 16 Day W 14Winter S 14Spring In this program students will investigate how political events are constructed and reported in the media, compared to actual political and economic realities. By media we mean mainstream periodicals, television, radio and films and emerging social media. We also include the growth of Internet blogs, websites, independent media and other media outlets in the 21st century. We will take a historical approach that focuses on U.S. history from the colonial era to contemporary globalization. We will compare corporate media concentration of ownership to community-controlled media and social media. We will examine how issues surrounding race, class and gender are perceived by the media and subsequently by the public. During winter quarter, students will receive a theoretical and historical grounding in the political economy of the media. We will explore the question of who owns the media and what difference this makes to how stories are reported, framed, sourced or just ignored. Films, lectures and readings, along with text-based seminars, will compose the primary structures used by this learning community. Students will regularly engage in a critical reading of and other media outlets. Also during the winter quarter, students will create a research proposal that includes an annotated bibliography. Research projects may either be traditional research papers or equivalent projects determined in collaboration with the faculty, such as an independent media blog or website. During spring quarter, students will devote approximately half of the program time to completing their proposed projects and presenting the results of their research. The remaining program time will focus more in-depth on program themes as we examine contemporary issues through a variety of sources. Lawrence Mosqueda Michael Vavrus Tue Wed Fri Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR Winter
Ready Camera One: We're Live
Sally Cloninger
  Program JR–SRJunior - Senior 16 16 Day S 14Spring Ready Camera One investigates the politics of representation. Therefore, students who choose to enroll should be vitally and sincerely interested in the issues and ideas concerning the representation of gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation in the mass media. Ready Camera One’s focus on gender and identity in American television will be explored in a research project called INTO FOCUS that will combine media research, critical writing, a visual essay, and an oral presentation.This program is also designed for students interested in exploring visual literacy, television production, performance, and media criticism. Students will be introduced to both media deconstruction and media production skills through a series of lecture/screenings as well as workshops and design problems that focus primarily on collaborative multi-camera studio production. In addition to a series of studio exercises, students will complete a collaborative final project that combines media analysis, research, performance and production about broadcast content and ideology.We will take a critical, performative and historical approach as we examine and even emulate the production style and lessons from the early history of 20th century live television as well as more contemporary models. Students will be expected to perform in front of as well as behind the camera and will explore the logistics and aesthetics of multi-camera direction and design. Activities will include training in the CCAM, a multi-camera TV studio facility, instruction in basic performance and writing for television, and an immersive production schedule that requires a professional attitude including perfect attendance and timeliness.No prior media production experience is required. However, Ready Camera One is also an excellent opportunity for students who do have experience in the performing arts or media arts to explore intensive studio production and collaboration. Sally Cloninger Tue Thu Fri Junior JR Senior SR Spring
Still/Moving revised
Julia Zay and Amjad Faur
  Program FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore 16 16 Day F 13 Fall W 14Winter This is an art foundations program invested in opening up the dense histories and meanings of photographic images in their many forms, from still to moving and back again--and the unsettled places between. We explore what it means both to know and to make an image– photographic, moving, and time-based. We will pay equal attention to the history, theory and practice of the photographic image, both still and moving, in the context of visual studies--a field that yokes a broad study of the visual arts with social and cultural history and theory--art history, film/cinema history, and philosophy. Through a critical engagement with still and moving photographic images as well as related forms of visual art, we will map a broad contextual territory and challenge received notions of the boundaries between forms, genres, and mediums.Photography can never be thought of as simply a medium, technology or practice but a convergence of material, history, culture and power. In the Fall, we will start with the unfolding of the Western enlightenment, from the 16th to the 19th century, when optical technologies radically reorganized the senses and methods of knowledge production, posing new questions about temporal, spatial and visual relationships to artists and scientists alike.  We will then move more deeply into the 19th and first half of the 20th century, when photography emerged into an art world dominated by painting, a visual culture organized around print technologies, and societies in the throes of rapid industrialization. Photography initially emerged not out of art contexts but out of the institutions of science and industry, so we will consider, in particular, the ways it was used to produce social categories, shaping dominant discourses of gender, class and criminality. For example, we’ll look at the language of portraiture so central to the emergence of both a middle class and the language of criminal and medical photography. Our materials and techniques will first be limited to those from the 19th century (proto-photography, early processes, hand-built cameras). In winter, we move from the 19th to the long 20th century and the emergence of cinema. We will look at the way early cinema was organized around a fascination with duration, spectacle, and experimentation and on the relationship between photography and cinema, stillness and movement. We will continue to work in still photography, broadening our range of techniques, and add a small amount of 16mm filmmaking to the mix as we explore the larger social and historical contexts and philosophical questions surrounding the relationship between still and moving photographic images. In our creative and intellectual work, we’ll ask many questions about the phenomenon, concept and experience of time--for example, how is a four minute exposure in a still photograph both similar to and different from a four minute continuous shot of film or video of the same subject?In all our work we will focus on building essential skills in practices of attention--learning how to slow down our modes of seeing, experiencing and working. In our photographic practice, this will mean moving away from the pursuit of “finished” images and towards experimental processes and conceptual problem solving. In our work with texts and images, this will mean developing our ability to read and view closely and write with precision and patience. Class sessions will include lectures/screenings, workshops, seminar, critical reading and writing, and critique. In addition to working individually, students can expect to collaborate regularly with their peers on a variety of assignments and larger projects. All along the way we will intentionally examine how our investments in collaboration animate our intellectual and creative work. We will spend significant time in critique to help each other see, describe, evaluate and improve our creative and critical work.  Julia Zay Amjad Faur Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Fall
That's Classic(s)! Explorations in the Ancient and Modern World cancelled
Ulrike Krotscheck
  Program FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore 16 16 Day F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring Why, after 2,000 years of historical perspective, do we still find meaning in the works of Homer and Aristotle, Julius Caesar and Virgil? What can we learn from Athenian experiments in democracy or the formation and fall of the Roman Empire, as an alternative to republicanism? Why are ancient Greek and Roman images and ideas still represented in so much of our contemporary culture? The principles of classical literature, architecture, philosophy, theater and politics still permeate our society in this increasingly multicultural and globalized world. In these three quarters, we will explore the significant and unassailable ways in which ancient Greece and Rome have influenced our understanding of the world and many more tangible aspects of our contemporary culture.Each quarter will focus on a slightly different variation on our theme, and students may either stay in the program for the duration of the year, or join according to their interests in any one quarter. Continuing students over the three quarters will help organize and deliver content for new students, cementing the learning that they have already accomplished by sharing their knowledge with newcomers. On the other hand, new students in the winter and spring will actively participate in the formation of learning communities in which the faculty is not the sole provider of content. This program will support first year and sophomore students in their transition to college, while also providing a solid foundation in the origin of western civilization. It will be an intensive reading- and writing-based experience that will prepare students for upper-level work in the humanities and social sciences. Program activities will also include work on the Academic Statement Initiative.The three quarters will be organized as follows: In the fall, we will begin by learning the history of the ancient world. We will explore how this narrative has been handed down to us through historiography and archaeology, and what information and misinformation we can garner from it. We will study archaeological sites, art and architecture, and interrogate the uses of these visual canons in our own surroundings. In the winter, we will explore the influence of classics in modern films of every genre, from to and ?. We will read and analyze the ancient myths and epics that form the basis for the film interpretations, and discuss both the universal and the not-so-applicable lessons, themes and morals contained in the modern adaptations. The ancient Mediterranean was the stage for the earliest attempts in Western democracy and republicanism. Some of these experiments were more successful; some were less successful. We will examine these political innovations and compare them to our own contemporary systems of government. We will investigate the rights of citizens and the selection of who is allowed to participate in the political process and why. We will discuss the roles (or lack thereof) of foreigners, women and slaves. We'll read Aristotle, Plato and Cicero to understand ancient political ideologies and realities and to analyze how these have helped us build the foundation of our modern political system.   Ulrike Krotscheck Mon Wed Thu Fri Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Fall
Undergraduate Projects in Critical and Creative Practices
Naima Lowe
Signature Required: Fall  Winter  Spring 
  Program SO–SRSophomore - Senior V V Day, Evening and Weekend F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring This is an opportunity for students to work with faculty from a diverse set of disciplines on creative and scholarly projects. Students will come away with invaluable skills in library and archival research practices, visual arts studio practices, laboratory practices, film/media production practices, critical research and writing, and much more. Critical and Creative Practices is comprised of a diverse group of artists, theorists, scientists, mathematicians, writers, filmmakers and other cultural workers whose interdisciplinary fields of study sit at the crossroads between critical theoretical studies and creative engagement. (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. Please go to the catalog view for specific information about each option. Naima Lowe Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR Fall
Undergraduate Projects in Critical and Creative Practices with N. Lowe
Naima Lowe
Signature Required: Fall  Winter  Spring 
  Research SO–SRSophomore - Senior V V Day, Evening and Weekend F 13 Fall W 14Winter S 14Spring This is an opportunity for students to work with faculty from a diverse set of disciplines on creative and scholarly projects. Students will come away with invaluable skills in library and archival research practices, visual arts studio practices, laboratory practices, film/media production practices, critical research and writing, and much more. Critical and Creative Practices is comprised of a diverse group of artists, theorists, scientists, mathematicians, writers, filmmakers and other cultural workers whose interdisciplinary fields of study sit at the crossroads between critical theoretical studies and creative engagement. (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. Naima Lowe Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR Fall