“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.” 
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 

How do spoken, written, and body language shape the ways we perceive, communicate, create meaning, and build communities? In this program, we will explore these questions through the interconnected study of linguistics, creative writing, literature, and embodied leadership. Students will participate in a visiting writer's series that includes eco-poets and making sense of climate change through a campus wide film series. The program includes a required multi-day field trip in October, offering opportunities for experiential learning that integrates the program's themes. Learning will take place through lectures, seminars, workshops, collaborative projects, movement practices, and participation in Evergreen's all-campus lecture series.   

A central focus of the program is nonverbal communication and the creative possibilities of attention, perception, and description. We will examine how meaning is conveyed not only through words but also through gesture, movement, emotion, silence, and sensory experience. By comparing spoken language, written language, and body language, students will develop new ways of understanding communication, creativity, and human relationships. 

Through linguistics, we will analyze human communication systems, how language works at multiple levels, from sounds, signs, and words to sentences, discourse, and communities of speakers. We will examine how people actually use language in everyday life, with its tacit knowledge, inference, improvisation, and cultural context, often in ways that differ from standardized grammatical rules. As we uncover the hidden principles that connect sounds (or signs) with meaning, we will continually return to the question: What do we know when we know a language? These investigations will help support our experiments in storytelling and movement.  

The creative writing and literature component centers on playing with the aesthetic dimensions of communication through creative writing in a range of forms, close reading, critical writing, and collaborative workshops. We will study how creative writers create meaning through metaphor, dialogue, narrative, imagery, and form while developing our own voices through poetry, fiction, and cross-genre writing experiments. Creative writing will serve as a laboratory for experimenting with language, perception, and imagination, exploring how evocative writing enlivens and relies upon sensory perception for writers and readers.  

Embodied leadership explores communication as a lived, physical experience. Through somatic and contemplative movement practices, students will develop capacities for introspection, sensory awareness, interoception (the internal state of your body), and relational presence. Learning to notice and describe our own embodied experience expands our ability to communicate with others, navigate complexity, and cultivate thoughtful, creative leadership within our communities. 

Students will be expected to work toward first-year college competencies in writing, critical reading, critical thinking, and information literacy. This program will include contemplative practices that will help us slow down, think, feel, study, and create. To foster connection, attention, and focus we will minimize digital technologies; students will receive printed syllabi and readings, complete written assignments on paper, and engage in handwritten notetaking and in-class writing. Except for students with approved accommodations, personal electronic devices (including phones and laptops) will not be used during class. 

This program is coordinated with Greener Foundations for first-year students in fall quarter. Greener Foundations is Evergreen’s in-person introductory student success course, which provides first-year students with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive at Evergreen. Students expected to take Greener Foundations in fall should use CRN 10016 to register for a 2-credit Greener Foundations course in addition to this program for 14-credits. When using this CRN students will take additional steps to complete their registration, more information can be found at the Greener Foundations Registration Help Wiki.

First-year students who are not expected to take Greener Foundations or have been granted an exemption should use CRN 10015 to register for this program for 16-credits. Find more details about who isn't expected to take Greener Foundations on the Greener Foundations website.

Anticipated credit equivalencies: