2013-14 Undergraduate Index A-Z
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Writing [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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Nancy Parkes and Hirsh Diamant
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 12 | 12 | Evening and Weekend | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | In this two-quarter, interdisciplinary program, we will cultivate a “Sense of Wonder” while building skills as writers, activists, artists, and interdisciplinary scholars. Our work will combine theory and practice as we delve into the rich areas of literature, cultural studies, writing, creative arts, contemplative practice, natural history, and environmental/outdoor education. We will explore how we develop roots to the natural world and explore themes related to natural history literature, the Pacific Northwest, and global multicultural traditions that have an intimate connection to place. At the core of our inquiry will be the questions: What enlivens Culture? What motivates change? Working from a rich, interdisciplinary perspective, we will study what it means to be rooted to place and how place connects us to a deep sense of purpose and meaning through word and image, language and tradition, stories and activism, and education and scholarship.Program expectations for education and scholarship: By the end of the two-quarter study, students will: | Nancy Parkes Hirsh Diamant | Mon Wed Sat | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | |||
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Frederica Bowcutt
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | This two-quarter program allows students to learn introductory and advanced plant science material in an interdisciplinary format. The program is suitable for both advanced and first year students who are looking for an opportunity to expand their understanding of plants and challenge themselves. Students will learn about plant anatomy, morphology and systematics. Lectures based on textbook readings will be supplemented with laboratory work. The learning community will explore how present form and function informs us about the evolution of major groups of plants such as mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants. Students will get hands-on experience studying plants under microscopes and in the field. To support their work in the field and lab, students will learn how to maintain a detailed and illustrated nature journal. Instruction will be given in the history and practice of botanical illustration.A central focus of the program is people's relationships with plants for food, fiber, medicine and aesthetics. Economic botany will be studied through seminar texts, films, and lectures that examine agriculture, forestry, herbology and horticulture. Students will examine political economic factors that shape our relations with plants. Through economic and historical lenses, the learning community will inquire about why people have favored some plants and not others or radically changed their preferences, for example considering a former cash crop to be a weed. Readings will examine the significant roles botany has played in colonialism, imperialism and globalization. Students will also investigate the gender politics of botany. For example, botany was used to inculcate "appropriate" middle and upper class values among American women in the 19th century. Initiatives to foster more socially just and environmentally sustainable relations with plants will be investigated.In winter, students will write a major research paper on a plant of their choosing. Through a series of workshops, they will learn to search the scientific literature, manage bibliographic data and interpret and synthesize information, including primary sources. Through their research paper, students will synthesize scientific and cultural information about their plant. | Frederica Bowcutt | Mon Tue Wed Fri | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | |||
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Clyde Barlow
Signature Required:
Winter Spring
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | This is a field and laboratory intensive program integrating chemistry and geology. The landscape and habitation of the Northwest are defined by major geologic events that have shaped and reshaped the landscape. Volcanoes, lava flows, ash flows, glaciers, floods, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and tectonic movements form some of these events. Major events such as glaciation may proceed slowly on a human time scale. Carbon dioxide dependent global warming may, in fact, be a cataclysm in progress. We will examine chemical effects of historic and current geologic processes. This program will study literature about specific events and travel to affected sites. The program will serve as an introduction to physical science with development of skills in chemistry and problem solving. A full year of general chemistry will be offered with a laboratory linked with geology themes. Communication skills will be developed by maintaining laboratory and field journals, writing technical reports, interviewing staff, faculty and administrators, web page development to present information, and oral presentations of laboratory results. Extended (4-5 day) and short (1 day) field trips in Washington and Oregon will be incorporated into the program each quarter.We will study a year of general chemistry with laboratory, differential and integral calculus, geology readings with field trips, interview practices, web-page development and management, technical writing and presentation. This program is intended to be an introduction to Evergreen and quantitative studies for students new to the college. Significant time will be spent meeting and interviewing staff and administrative personnel on campus to become familiar with the functioning and management of the college.Having a program with 12 students and one faculty member provides a unique opportunity to delve into a subject area with a small cadre of fellow students. Students are expected to enhance the learning of their peers. Work in the program will be team focused. Spring quarter will include a major student designed team research component based upon skills and background garnered from two quarters' academic work. | Clyde Barlow | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | |||
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Naima Lowe and Therese Saliba
Signature Required:
Fall Winter
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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 | |||
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Sandra Yannone
Signature Required:
Spring
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 2 | 02 | Day | S 14Spring | This course combines a seminar with a practicum to prepare students to become peer tutors at Evergreen's Writing Center on the Olympia campus. In seminar, we will explore tutoring theories, examine the role of a peer tutor and develop effective tutoring practices. In the practicum, students will observe peer tutoring and graduate to supervised tutoring. The course also will address working with unique populations of learners. Students considering graduate school in related fields will benefit from this course. | Sandra Yannone | Mon | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | ||||
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Marianne Bailey, Shaw Osha (Flores), Bob Haft, Judith Gabriele and Stacey Davis
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | ... ...—Hölderlin, "Bread and Wine" We will study art history, literature, philosophy and music in their social and historical contexts in order to understand the Romantic avant-garde thinkers and artists, outsiders in 19th- and early 20th-century Europe, and their tenuous but fruitful dialogue with mainstream culture and the emerging popular culture of the laboring class. We will emphasize French Romanticism, but will also consider the pan-European nature of the phenomenon. This era offers a figurative battlefield where concepts of art, nature and self, order and chaos, locked swords, testing the limits of rational thought. French language study will be an important component of our weekly work; students will study French at one of four levels, from beginning to advanced.The 19th century was an era of immense political change spanning revolutions, empires and finally the establishment of democracy at home, just as European imperialism spread across Africa and Asia. We will study ways in which average women and men crafted their own identities and responded to the larger social forces of industrialization, the creation of a new working class, the solidification of gender and class roles, the rise of modern cities and the redefinition of the criminal, the socially-acceptable and the outsider.In fall, our work will begin with the paintings, poems and ideas of the early Romantics. The Romantics privileged feeling, intuition and empathy. Like adepts in an ancient mystery cult, they sought to commune with Nature. Romantic philosophers, from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, spoke of Becoming rather than Being. Rejecting Classical order, clarity and restraint, they envisioned a pure art, beyond language and depiction, which speaks musically through color, passion, suggestion, enigmatically, as do dreams.In winter, focus will turn to the late Romantics. Decadents pushed the Romantic temperament and aesthetic to extremes through self parody and the aesthetic of fragmentation. Symbolists attempted to express the inexpressible through their art. Yet Mallarmé, Wilde and Yeats, Moreau and Gauguin, among others, helped prepare the “rites of spring” of the dawning 20th century, the arising vanguard of modernist and postmodern movements.In spring quarter, students may pursue individual research/creative projects on campus or may travel to France for 10 weeks. There they will study in a Rennes, Brittany, language school, do cultural and historical study in Paris and Lyon, as well as make side trips for research of their own.In this program, students will gain a significant grasp of key ideas in art, history and thought within their context, and will have the opportunity to specialize, creating advanced work in their choice of history, art history or writing and literature. We expect strong interest and background in humanities, and considerable self-discipline and motivation. The workload, including French language study, will be substantial and rigorous. Students will work in interdisciplinary all-program sessions and assignments, as well as choose one of three possible seminar groups. These emphasize: 1) literature and philosophy, 2) history, and 3) photography and visual arts, practice and theory. | Marianne Bailey Shaw Osha (Flores) Bob Haft Judith Gabriele Stacey Davis | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | |||
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Ulrike Krotscheck and Marilyn Freeman
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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 | ||||
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Steven Hendricks
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | In this introductory literary arts program, we’ll investigate the tradition of experimental literature by treating literary experiments—our own included—as creative research into the possibilities of language and narrative. The alphabet, the language, the myriad tropes and formulae for literary expression and the archetypal patterns that haunt our stories: we will view these as a vast table of elements that can be combined and synthesized into new substances: new genres, prose forms, syntax, strategies for reading and making meaning...new reasons to write. Our own creative work will provide a rigorous testing ground for literary ideas. Student writing will be examined by faculty and peers on a regular basis with half a mind toward developing one's craft, and the other half toward investigating, for its own sake, the complex relationship between reader, text and writer. Program seminars will emphasize a lineage of exceptional exceptions: novels and short fiction of the last half century by writers who have taken careful stock of shifts in literary and cultural theory. Lectures will introduce students to analytic reading practices, literary criticism and theory. Throughout the program, we'll practice rich and extended reading of just six book-length works (along with short ancillary texts). Thus, just three pairs of authors will shape our studies: (Pair 1) Virginia Woolf and Samuel Becket;(2) Italo Calvino and Harry Mathews; and (3) Thalia Field and Ben Marcus. Each pair will comprise the focal point for a three week unit; each unit will include an in-class exam. Students enrolled in the program should be prepared to read the range of challenging texts, practice the art of writing in the spirit of experimentation and play, conduct independent research into complex questions relevant to program texts and themes, and participate actively in program seminars, workshops and critiques. Interested students should study the program schedule carefully, as there will be extensive in-class work, as with a studio-based program; in our case, studio practice means writing, reading and critique. | Steven Hendricks | Tue Wed Thu Fri | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Spring | ||||
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Leonard Schwartz
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | In this two-quarter program we will read contemporary fiction, poetry, and essays as well as several theoretical texts that pertain to our central inquiries: What kind of knowledge do we encounter in fiction and poetry? What is the relation between the artifice of form and the experience of truth? In what way is the factual (that which we take to be given) also artefactual (that which has been made)? By what powers and strategies do poetry and fiction convey truths?Fall quarter will develop the coordinates of the inquiry via reading, writing, and visitors; winter extends the inquiry into our own writings. Required texts include poetry by modernists such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and Gertrude Stein; and poetry and prose by Robert Duncan (from whom we take our course title) much of which was written in response to the generation of modernists who preceded him. The required texts are extremely diverse formally, but share overlapping preoccupations with memory and amnesia; metaphysics and transformation; realism and perception; and ethics and poetics.Fall quarter will be reading-intensive and comprised of seminars on the required texts; a range of writing exercises aimed towards generating material; and opportunities to hear and dialogue with visiting writers. In this quarter students will learn literary critical vocabulary and close reading skills. Winter quarter will involve an extended writing project and intensive writing workshops in small groups in which we will utilize the skills learned in the first quarter towards critiquing and revising student writing. | Leonard Schwartz | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Don Chalmers
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 2 | 02 | Weekend | F 13 Fall | This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of grant writing and fund raising. After an orientation to contemporary philanthropy and trends, students will learn how to increase the capacity of an organization to be competitive for grants and other donations. We will share ways to plan realistic projects, identify promising funding sources and write clear and compelling components of a grant, based either on guidelines for an actual funder or a generic one. Working individually or in small groups, students will develop their project idea, outline the main components of a grant and prepare a brief common application. | Non-profit grantwriting and fundraising; government resource development. | Don Chalmers | Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | |||
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Ariel Goldberger
Signature Required:
Fall Winter
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | This academic offering is devoted to studies, research and explorations of creativity, imagination and innovation from various disciplinary and inter-disciplinary frames of reference. This program will take the original focus on collaborative education and interdisciplinarity of the college very seriously and will rely on student energy, interest and initiative. Students will be asked to collaborate with the faculty to design, direct, and engage a program of studies focused on the latest developments in the study of creativity, imagination, and innovation. The goal is to endow studies with personal relevance, agency, and passion. The faculty will act as a facilitator and guide helping you when difficulties arise, but may not be able to provide expertise in all areas.Students will be strongly encouraged to pursue their interests, to weave them into the class to create a vibrant learning community, and to organize their studies with unique combinations of subjects, imaginative modes of study, and activities. For example, students may study creativity by blending theory and practice, and through the lens of fields like psychology, myth studies, education, cultural studies, writing, literature, arts, consciousness studies, or any combination, including subjects not mentioned, agreed upon with the faculty. Participants will collaborate with the faculty to design common activities such as seminars, and an independent project, based on team or individual interests. Students are welcome to include, as part of their practicum, or project, internships in fields that foster creativity and imagination, and are advised to initiate the required paperwork with Academic Advising as necessary.Focused individuals with a lively sense of self-direction, discipline, and intellectual curiosity are strongly encouraged to apply. | Ariel Goldberger | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Jon Davies and Zahid Shariff
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Program | JR–SRJunior - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 14Winter | By the time the First World War broke out in 1914, the imperial powers of modern Europe had radically transformed the vast majority of the societies of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. Religious, scientific and discursive practices that legitimized colonial aspirations facilitated colonial rule imposed through military conquests, political subjugation and the exploitation of human and natural resources. How did the experiences of imperialism affect colonized societies? What effects did imperialism have on the imperialists themselves? What lasting effects of imperial subjugation continue to impact relations between the former colonial powers and postcolonial states in the 21st century?We are interested in unpacking the discursive practices of both the colonial past and the neo-colonial present. Through our study of history, literature and political economy, we will examine the ways in which European ideologies, traditions and scientific knowledge legitimized the formation of empire and continue to re-inscribe asymmetrical relations of power today under the guise of modernity, progress and global economic development.We will explore these issues through readings, lectures, films, as well as weekly papers, a well-developed research paper, and a presentation of that paper's findings to the class. | Jon Davies Zahid Shariff | Mon Tue Thu | Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | ||||
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Gail Tremblay
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
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Contract | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | In the fields listed, Gail Tremblay offers opportunities for intermediate and advanced students to create their own course of study, creative practice and research, including internships, community service and study abroad options. Prior to the beginning of the quarter, interested individual students or small groups of students must describe the work to be completed in an Individual Learning or Internship Contract. The faculty sponsor will support students wishing to do work that has 1) skills that the student wishes to learn, 2) a question to be answered, 3) a connection with others who have mastered a particular skill or asked a similar or related question, and 4) an outcome that matters. Areas of study other than those listed above will be considered on a case-by-case basis. 12- or 16-credit options are available. | Gail Tremblay | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | |||
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Laura Citrin and Anne de Marcken (Forbes)
Signature Required:
Winter
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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 | ||||
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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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Steven Hendricks and Jean Mandeberg
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Program | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | What makes a work of art capable of narrative expressiveness? What constitutes a narrative? How do artists invest tangible records, stories, artifacts and objects with meaning, and how do readers work to recuperate or transform those meanings for themselves?Many artists and writers have used objects, visual forms, books and text in combination to create a hybrid language that can carry narrative possibilities. How do such works exploit the possibilities of conventional and nonconventional narrative to stimulate the intellect and the imagination? Does imposing a narrative on a work of visual or sculptural art limit it, reduce it to a single interpretation? How can we navigate the space between object and idea as artists, as readers, as makers of things and makers of meaning?This program will explore such questions through intensive studio work in fine metals and book arts. Equally important will be our study of literature that tests the boundary between narrative and non-narrative and the practice of critical and creative writing. The general program structure will include alternating periods of focused writing, imaginative reading, seminar discussion and extended, deliberate work in the studio.Student projects will be direct responses to the themes and questions of the program: explorations of the nature of narrative, the various ways in which objects can participate in, contain, and create narratives. This unique opportunity to combine book arts and fine metals will persistently require competence in technical skills, unusual patience, attention to detail and materials, and articulate translations between ideas and visual forms.The second quarter of the program will in part evolve from the discoveries of the first and will involve deepening our work in both studios, with the necessary emphasis on thoughtful self-critique and aesthetic rigor. This program will be important and challenging for students in the arts and humanities who think of artists as aesthetic and conceptual problem solvers, seeking new puzzles, forms and possibilities for constructing meaning using words, the book and small-scale sculptural forms. As a first-year program, this program provides specific support for students at the beginning of their Evergreen careers. | Steven Hendricks Jean Mandeberg | Freshmen FR | Fall | ||||
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Miranda Mellis
Signature Required:
Winter
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Program | JR–SRJunior - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | Miranda Mellis | 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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Nancy Parkes
Signature Required:
Spring
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4, 6, 8 | 04 06 08 | Evening | S 14Spring | This course supports the Prior Learning from Experience (PLE) program through which select adults have the unique opportunity to demonstrate college equivalent learning and knowledge stemming from significant professional and cultural experiences. In this rigorous program, students develop an extensive written document made up of a several essays that document and demonstrate college level learning. Through expository writing and research, as well as appendices of prior work, the document analyzes both experience and modes of learning. Students earn credit through a combination of coursework and professional faculty evaluation of the completed document for academic equivalency. Students may take the class for up to a year as they write their document, selecting four, six, or eight credits each quarter up to a cumulative total of 16 credits. Students have extensive opportunities to work with one another in collaborative editing and construction of portfolios. Students completing a PLE Document generally describe their experience as "transformative," helping them to understand the college level equivalence of their professional and life experience, as well as better preparing them for future academic and professional work. | Nancy Parkes | Tue | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | ||||
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Nancy Parkes
Signature Required:
Fall
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4, 6, 8 | 04 06 08 | Evening | F 13 Fall | This course supports the Prior Learning from Experience (PLE) program through which select adults have the unique opportunity to demonstrate college equivalent learning and knowledge stemming from significant professional and cultural experiences. In this rigorous program, students develop an extensive written document made up of a several essays that document and demonstrate college level learning. Through expository writing and research, as well as appendices of prior work, the document analyzes both experience and modes of learning. Students earn credit through a combination of coursework and professional faculty evaluation of the completed document for academic equivalency. Students may take the class for up to a year as they write their document, selecting four, six, or eight credits each quarter up to a cumulative total of 16 credits. Students have extensive opportunities to work with one another in collaborative editing and construction of portfolios. Students completing a PLE Document generally describe their experience as "transformative," helping them to understand the college level equivalence of their professional and life experience, as well as better preparing them for future academic and professional work. | Nancy Parkes | Tue | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Nancy Parkes
Signature Required:
Winter
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4, 6, 8 | 04 06 08 | Evening | W 14Winter | This course supports the Prior Learning from Experience (PLE) program through which select adults have the unique opportunity to demonstrate college equivalent learning and knowledge stemming from significant professional and cultural experiences. In this rigorous program, students develop an extensive written document made up of a several essays that document and demonstrate college level learning. Through expository writing and research, as well as appendices of prior work, the document analyzes both experience and modes of learning. Students earn credit through a combination of coursework and professional faculty evaluation of the completed document for academic equivalency. Students may take the class for up to a year as they write their document, selecting four, six, or eight credits each quarter up to a cumulative total of 16 credits. Students have extensive opportunities to work with one another in collaborative editing and construction of portfolios. Students completing a PLE Document generally describe their experience as "transformative," helping them to understand the college level equivalence of their professional and life experience, as well as better preparing them for future academic and professional work. | Nancy Parkes | Tue | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | ||||
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Michael Vavrus and Jon Davies
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | Throughout U.S. history, people have politically contested the nature and purposes of elementary and secondary education for children and youth. This program will analyze these competing perspectives on public education and the political and economic contexts in which schools exist. Therefore, we will examine public education and schools both broadly, using a macro social, political and economic lens, and narrowly, using a micro, school-level lens.Schools are a human invention with a history. As such, schools change form and adapt in response to social and political pressures. We will examine the significant political, economic and social tensions on what the term “public” in public education means. We will analyze historical patterns of U.S. schooling from political and economic perspectives. This inquiry covers the locally controlled, Protestant Christian origins of public education and its effects on our contemporary, multicultural environment. We also investigate the political and economic debates surrounding the expectations for public education to measure accountability by means of high-stakes standardized tests.At the micro level we will analyze the school as a formal institution that functions to socialize groups of children and youth into specific behaviors and roles. This school-level lens examines this socializing process by primarily focusing on the demographic characteristics of the people who make up the power structures of public schools and the dynamics of their interactions.In a collaborative learning community environment, students will gain experience in engaging in dialogue through a close reading of texts. Among the writing assignments students will have, they will have opportunities to engage in writing short but focused analytic essays. Students can expect to leave this program having developed the analytical reading and writing skills to participate in the current political and economic debates about the purposes of public education, informed by the historical patterns that have created the present climate. | Michael Vavrus Jon Davies | Tue Wed Thu Fri | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Steve Blakeslee
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | F 13 Fall | This course will give students a broad overview of prose writing and help them to broaden, deepen, and improve their own writing practice. We will explore every element of the writing process, learning to brainstorm, structure, draft, critique, rewrite, polish, and share work in progress. The course will also address key principles of good writing, challenges like procrastination and writer’s block, and ways to develop productive writing routines. | Steve Blakeslee | Tue | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Trevor Speller and Abir Biswas
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | This program is dedicated to understanding the back and forth between the physical environment and the written word. How do texts shape what we are able to see in the physical environment? How does one's understanding of the physical environment shape ways of writing and understanding the world? How do we describe it? What do we read into it?In 1815, William Smith produced the first geological map of Great Britain. His investigations were a product of a new way of seeing his physical world. Rather than assuming the earth to be a stable object which remained unchanged since Noah’s flood, Smith drew on his observations, and began to see the earth as a dynamic physical entity. His discoveries came in a time when Enlightenment thinkers were questioning the order of the world, the role of religion and the value of science and industry. The modern science of geology can thus be said to have arisen from a new way of seeing: William Smith was able to read and write about the Earth not only through observations, but because of the set of cultural changes that changed his frame of mind. Importantly, Smith's observations came at a time when poets, novelists and political philosophers were beginning to actively investigate the influence of the natural world on humans and human behavior.We will consider the frames through which we read and write our physical world, through an introduction to foundational concepts in geology and literary study. We will consider how geologists investigate and describe the physical world, and examine concepts including geologic time, plate tectonics, earth materials and the evolution of life. We will consider how writers investigate and describe the natural world in the works of 18th- and 19th-century literature, as well as contemporary literature about the Pacific Northwest. We will read works of poetry, fiction, political philosophy and travel writing. Program texts may include works by John McPhee, Simon Winchester, William Wordsworth, Daniel Defoe and others.Students should expect to participate in lecture, lab and seminar, write critical papers and take examinations. There will also be field trips to locations of geological interest as well as cultural venues. | Trevor Speller Abir Biswas | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Spring | |||||
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Amy Cook and Chico Herbison
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Program | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | —Alicia Imperiale, “Seminal Space: Getting Under the Digital Skin” Organ, membrane, boundary and border. Canvas, map, metaphor and trope. Skin is the identity that all animals present to the world. It has multiple physiological functions and takes a wide variety of forms, from the simple epidermis of a sea anemone to the complex light show of a squid or the intricate system of spines that protects a porcupine. In human culture, skin functions as a marker of “race”/ethnicity, age and gender; provides a canvas on which to create very personal forms of art and cultural narratives; and, in the 21st century, has become a critical site of interface between the “real” and the virtual.In this program we will look at skin through the lenses of biology, culture and art. The biology of skin includes its visual and olfactory role in communication, its structure and physiology and its role in defense of the body from both microbes and large predators. Our exploration of skin in/as culture and art will include encounters with the mythology of “race,” body modification (piercing, tattooing and plastic surgery) and the posthuman meanings of skin (in cyberspace and in the world of cyborgs, androids and prosthetics).Program activities will include lectures; labs in which we will examine the microscopic structure of skin and learn about the various structures that arise from it, including scales, feathers and hair; seminars on a selection of texts (books, films and other texts) that look at skin from a variety of different perspectives; and workshops in which students will explore skin through their own creative writing. Students will have the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of biology and humanities in an interdisciplinary setting, as well as sharpen their critical thinking and reading and college writing skills. | biology and the humanities. | Amy Cook Chico Herbison | Freshmen FR | Spring | ||||
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Julia Zay and Amjad Faur
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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 | ||||
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Leonard Schwartz
Signature Required:
Spring
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SOS | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | Poetics involves language as creative functions (writing, poetry, fiction), language as performance, language as image and language as a tool of thought (philosophy, criticism). Our work will be to calibrate these various activities, which is to say find the relationships between poetic and critical thought.Students are invited to join this learning "community" of culture workers interested in language as a medium of artistic production. This SOS is designed for students who share similar skills and common interests in doing advanced work that may have grown out of previous academic projects and/or programs. Students will work with faculty throughout the quarter; we will design small study groups, collaborative projects and critique groups that will allow students to support one another's work. | Leonard Schwartz | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | |||||
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Sarah Williams
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SOS | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | J.W. Goethe Like the role of bees and seeds in the evolution of agriculture, beads—which often are seeds, shells, wax or bone—have an inside and an outside that commute. Seeds, beads and bees are interpenetrating, reciprocal creations. They form assemblages with centers and their use over time can be a measure of the fertility of mind, spirit and body. This SOS will support students in bead-like studies of biodynamic processes in conjunction with an internship, creative practice or field research project. Whether defined in relationship to agricultural, artistic or somatic practices, biodynamic processes are characterized by interconnected, recursive and iterative movements that form holistic patterns. Thus, students will be guided to reflect on their learning itself as a biodynamic process. To what extent is the subject and object of a liberal arts eduction mutually causative? In what ways might thinking be enlivened if informed by a consciousness of temporal rhythms (e.g., respiration) and cosmic forces such as tides and sunlight?This program is ideal for responsible, enthusiastic and self-motivated students with an interest in developing and reflecting on a substantial project over a substantial period of time. In addition to classroom work, each student will create an individual course of academic learning including an internship (e.g., at a local organic farm), creative practice (e.g., nature writing), or field research project (e.g., discovering the differences—and why they matter—between commercial and biodynamic beekeeping). Collaboration, including shared field-trip opportunities, with the Ecological Agriculture and Practice of Sustainable Agriculture programs will be available. Academic work for each quarter will include weekly group meetings, an annotated bibliography and maintenance of a field journal to document independent project learning. In addition to this independent project component, students will engage in weekly readings and written responses, seminar discussions and a final presentation. Unless designed into students projects and agreed upon in advance, all students will be required to attend and actively participate in this one day of weekly class activities, as well as individual self-assessment meetings with the faculty at mid-quarter and the end of the quarter. Interested students should browse the following authors and texts to explore their ability to think and act biodynamically within an intentional learning community. , edited by David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc; by Wolf Storl; by Charles Ridley; by Catherine Cole; by Gary Snyder; by Robert Bringhurst; by Ruth Ozeki; and : by Rudolf Steiner | Sarah Williams | Tue | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||
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Bill Ransom
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SOS | SO–JRSophomore - Junior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 14Spring | This SOS is designed for students who have a body of writing in poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction that they would like to polish and submit for publication. Students will read and research a broad spectrum of contemporary publications that feature work in their genre of choice and will choose three to five publications to which they will send their work at the close of the quarter. Participants will receive instruction in effective workshop and critique methods, professional submission protocols and rewriting strategies. Groups of three will meet weekly for peer critique workshops, and an all-student meeting will be held weekly for a combined lecture/seminar session. | Bill Ransom | Sophomore SO Junior JR | Spring | |||||
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Marja Eloheimo
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 12 | 12 | Weekend | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | Working as a multidisciplinary project team, this yearlong program has a mission. Students will engage in hands-on work to continue to transform the fledgling ethnobotanical garden at the Evergreen “House of Welcome” Longhouse by refining existing habitat areas and developing the sayuyay Sister Garden (a medicinal portion of the garden patterned after a project on the Skokomish Indian Reservation). Through this work, we will create a valuable educational resource and contribute to multiple communities including Evergreen, local K-12 schools, local First Nations, and a growing global collective of ethnobotanical gardens that promote environmental and cultural diversity and sustainability.During fall quarter, students will become acquainted with the garden and its plants, habitats, history, and existing interpretive materials. We will carry out fieldwork, develop plant identification skills, engage in seasonal garden care, review archival materials, and meet some of the people behind the garden's development. We will also refine specific garden and book designs and implementation plans. Students will have the opportunity to select specific projects for individual and group work.During winter quarter, we will focus on the garden's "story" through continued work on existing signage, a book draft, and/or other interpretive materials such as a web page. Students will work independently on skill development, research, and project planning or implementation in their selected areas of interest. Students will also be active during the winter transplant season and will prepare procurement and planting plans for the spring season.During spring quarter, we will plant and care for the garden and present our interpretive materials to the community, wrapping up all of the work we have begun.This program requires commitment to a meaningful real-world project and strongly encourages yearlong participation. It also cultivates community by nurturing each member's contributions and growth and acknowledges the broader contexts of sustainability and global transformation. | Marja Eloheimo | Sat Sun | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||
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Allen Olson, Douglas Schuler and Emily Lardner
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Program | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 12 | 12 | Evening and Weekend | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | S 14Spring | The promise of a liberal arts education has always had two dimensions: the opportunity to develop personal skills and abilities and the opportunity to develop the skills and abilities needed to engage meaningfully in a diverse society. In this program, we will focus on both aspects while exploring the transformation of ideas and ideas about specific transformations.Our explorations will be set within a context of 'transformations' as viewed from multiple disciplines. For example, we will study the physics of energy transformations within the context of climate change. We will consider transformations in thinking made possible by skillful and attentive reading and writing. We will explore the use of social theory and technology in social transformation. We anticipate additional topics such as transformational geometry and its role in both mathematics education and computer graphics. At the core of this program will be guided instruction at multiple levels in writing and mathematics as well as a general focus on the creation, critique, and communication of ideas.While we study the theme of transformations from disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, we will also look at the role of education and the specific goals of each student. Andrew Delbanco argues that a liberal arts education helps "people take stock of their talents and passions and begin to sort out their lives in a way that is true to themselves and responsible to others." To this end, we will ask each student and the learning community as a whole a variety of questions: In what ways will you and your college classmates transform the world after you graduate from Evergreen? What knowledge and skills will you need to participate in and contribute to these transformations? What do we need to know and be able to do in order to not just survive but thrive in the present? How can you use your education to contribute to the wider public good? How is education itself transformational, and what type of education is best to promote the learning we need?The design and structure of this program attempts to find ways to build on what incoming students already know, especially students who transfer into Evergreen after completing work leading to significant learning in other contexts. Our definition of "transfer student" includes community college transfers as well as veterans of the military and individuals returning to college after starting their careers. The program is also designed to support students who plan to become teachers and need specific credits in mathematics and other areas.The program is based on creating and sustaining cohorts of learners, and we aim to develop a sense of community that extends beyond the first year of a transfer student's time at Evergreen. Students who have participated in the Transformations program are welcome to return in future years to serve as peer mentors, project team members, research associates, or casual observers. A variety of credit options are available for these future roles. | Allen Olson Douglas Schuler Emily Lardner | Mon Wed Sat | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||
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Naima Lowe
Signature Required:
Fall Winter Spring
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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 | |||
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Nancy Parkes
Signature Required:
Spring
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | S 14Spring | This course is designed to help prepare Prior Learning from Experience (PLE) students to write documents that provide evidence of college-level learning from life experience. We will explore various techniques for deriving, clarifying, and expressing meaning from life experience. Students will identify specific knowledge they have gained and will explore various writing techniques available for self-expression. There are also openings in this course for another set of students who will engage in the same readings and preparatory work about effective writing but will engage in creative writing workshops while the PLE students concentrate on learning how to create their PLE documents. Though both groups will follow different writing tracks, we will all share time together supporting and enjoying one another’s work. All students should be prepared to work collaboratively in small groups to discuss ideas and give feedback on each other's writing. | Nancy Parkes | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | ||||
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Nancy Parkes
Signature Required:
Fall
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | F 13 Fall | This course is designed to help prepare Prior Learning from Experience (PLE) students to write documents that provide evidence of college-level learning from life experience. We will explore various techniques for deriving, clarifying, and expressing meaning from life experience. Students will identify specific knowledge they have gained and will explore various writing techniques available for self-expression. There are also openings in this course for another set of students who will engage in the same readings and preparatory work about effective writing but will engage in creative writing workshops while the PLE students concentrate on learning how to create their PLE documents. Though both groups will follow different writing tracks, we will all share time together supporting and enjoying one another’s work. All students should be prepared to work collaboratively in small groups to discuss ideas and give feedback on each other's writing. | Nancy Parkes | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | ||||
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Nancy Parkes
Signature Required:
Winter
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | W 14Winter | This course is designed to help prepare Prior Learning from Experience (PLE) students to write documents that provide evidence of college-level learning from life experience. We will explore various techniques for deriving, clarifying, and expressing meaning from life experience. Students will identify specific knowledge they have gained and will explore various writing techniques available for self-expression. There are also openings in this course for another set of students who will engage in the same readings and preparatory work about effective writing but will engage in creative writing workshops while the PLE students concentrate on learning how to create their PLE documents. Though both groups will follow different writing tracks, we will all share time together supporting and enjoying one another’s work. All students should be prepared to work collaboratively in small groups to discuss ideas and give feedback on each other's writing. | Nancy Parkes | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | ||||
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Sara Huntington
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Program | JR–SRJunior - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 13 Fall | W 14Winter | You write alone but you always write for others: readers matter. Here, you will keep company with great authors and your peers as you master the rhetorical tools needed to write persuasively, compellingly, and beautifully. We will proceed from Annie Dillard’s advice that if you like sentences, then you can become a writer because you have a place to start—not to mention a passion for what makes writing lively and pleasurable. Storytelling will feature prominently in our common work, especially descriptive practices that move prose toward shape and meaning. In other words, we will learn how to show, rather than just tell, a story.We will begin with a review of sentence structure focusing on subjects and verbs, clauses and phrases. With the aim of achieving clarity, students will study editing techniques, especially ways to rewrite overly abstract prose. Working with samples of professional writing, students will learn how to use agent-action analysis, how to start and end sentences and paragraphs, and how to coordinate and balance the parts of longer sentences. Rather than focusing on writing rules, we will approach style as the range of choices available in different rhetorical contexts. Students will also revise a piece of their own writing to identify patterns and problems in their craft. After these trial runs, they will begin original composition in a genre, mode, or vein of their choosing.Readings include three types of texts: those about the practice and theory of rhetoric, from Plato and Aristotle to Stanley Fish and Barbara Tufte; those that exemplify beauty, eloquence and force, from Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy to Darwin and Watson and Crick; and those that fail to persuade, from examples of academic discourse to the ghastly delights of purple prose. Students will search for an author who will teach them how the commitment of close reading fuses with the practice of good writing. Students must reach for the development of aesthetic standards that should inform any piece of writing that’s worth reading and that merits any meaningful critical response.Our work will be collaborative and social. The class blends lectures, student presentations, workshops, and seminar periods. Students will present their work regularly for critique (generally in small sections), and they will enjoy the difficult work of responding to their peers with concrete suggestions. Students from all disciplines are welcome, especially since effective writing and rhetoric is a fundamental part of a good liberal arts education. | Sara Huntington | Junior JR Senior SR | Fall |