1999 Seminar Descriptions
MYTHS AND THEIR TRANSFORMATIONS
- Seminar Leader: Julia Reinhard Lupton
This seminar read stories from several mythological traditions, with special emphasis on the Greco-Roman tradition on the one hand, which formed a conceptual gateway to the problem of mythology, and on stories from the Pacific rim on the other. A recurrent theme was stories of transformation (genesis, metamorphosis, hybridization, death and rebirth, etc.) and the transformation of stories, especially as they cross from antiquity to modernity, from one culture to another, or from verbal to visual expression. The goals of the seminar were
- to refine basic strategies for the analysis of narrative
- to encourage cross-cultural comparison
- to stimulate critical awareness of sources and variants
Often we took a "case-book" rather than a survey approach so that we could look at competing versions of the same story, including modern rewritings. Most seminar meetings included discussion of visual artifacts, since paintings, ritual objects, and architecture can enrich our sense of content, context, and function of myths as well as illuminate the reinterpretation of stories over time. As a group, we discussed ways of using images in the classroom as well as resources for obtaining visual materials. Fellows were able to compare "textbook" versions of myths to more "original" sources and documents: what is changed in versions written for children, and why? How might awareness of these changes, and of the larger worlds behind the stories we teach, change our teaching tools, practices, or objectives?
- The Greek Cosmos
- Meso-America: Modern Perspectives on Ancient Stories
- Meso-America: A Mayan Creation Myth
- China’s Animal Epic: Journey to the West
- China’s Woman Warrior, Ancient and Modern
- Topics determined in response to needs and interests of seminar members. Possible areas to be included: Native American (North America), Norse, African, Japanese
DISCRETE MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
- Seminar Leaders: Jean-Claude Falmagne and Stephen Franklin
This seminar was designed to address topics that illuminate the mathematical underpinnings to computer science, emphasizing systems of logic, numbers, and patterns. Fellows who teach arithmetic and mathematics to elementary and secondary school students were able to construct essays and curriculum plans designed to strengthen students’ understanding of mathematical concepts that will take them beyond rote learning.
Topics and Schedule
- Numbers and Computers (April 20)
- Logical reasoning (April 27 and May 4)
- Assessment (May 4 and May 11)
- Numbers, Names, Networks, and Protocols (May 18)
- Searching the Web (May 25)
- Cryptography (June 1 and June 8)
THE (RE)PRESENTATION OF HISTORY IN FILM AND VIDEO: NARRATIVE AND MEDIA
- Seminar Leader: Thelma Foote
Visual media are fast becoming the principal conveyors of historical knowledge in our culture, as more and more people across the global world learn about history from film and video. A compelling mode of telling stories about the past, history movies raise important questions about how visual narrative constructs meaning form the fragmentary records of by-gone eras.
Some of the questions this seminar addressed were: How does visual narrative render the past meaningful? Why do so many histories construct past events as a story with a beginning, middle, and end—that is as a linear narrative? In what respect do visual narratives differ from written narratives? Why do we accept visual experience as the most reliable form of knowledge? In other words, why do we insist that ‘to see is to know’? How do we account for the enormous power of the filmic spectacle to convey a sense of lived experience, of history unfolding on screen? Are history movies a more convincing way of telling stories about the past than written histories? Does the moving image offer a more convincing representation of historical events than, for example, a written document or even a photograph? How might we incorporate history movies into our history curriculum? How might we move beyond the use of history movies as mere supplements to history textbooks?
- Introduction on "revisioning history" and narrative discourse
- (Re)presenting the Slave’s Experience
- (Re)presenting Slave Resistance I>
- (Re)presenting Slave Resistance II
- (Re)presenting the Civil War
- (Re)presenting WW II
THE HARDY PERSONALITY IN THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE
- Seminar Leaders: Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Khoshaba
Hardiness training was discovered and perfected during 20 years of research and practice. Hardiness training focuses on a particular combination of attitudes and skills that facilitate resiliency under stress and adversity. Through hardiness, people are able to turn stresses and adversity from potentially debilitating circumstances into opportunities, thereby maintaining or enhancing their performance, conduct, morale, stamina, and health. There are now powerful techniques for training hardiness. The founders and developers of hardiness training, Drs. Maddi and Khoshaba, conducted the seminar.
The seminar had two aims. The first was to communicate the nature of hardiness by tracing its history in theory, research, and practice. In particular, the effectiveness of hardiness training in increasing retention and grade point average with high-risk community college students will be detailed. The second was to convey specifics of hardiness training by having participants go through some of the exercises used with working adults. Further, in the spirit of collaboration, Drs. Maddi and Khoshaba encouraged feedback from participants as to the use of hardiness training with K-12 students.
- Seminar Leader: John Dombrink
This seminar examined issues related to the use of the criminal law in areas of morality, through discussion of several activities which have historically been referred to as either vice or victimless crime, and have been criminalized in this society and others at various times. For reasons of both principle and practicality, these acts have been debated in various societies and at various times, and there is less societal consensus about their harm or value.
- What does the legal system do? What is the criminal justice system?
- How are laws made?
- Contested areas of law. The role of the criminal sanction in regulating morality: historical and cross-cultural issues; legal reform 1957 onward.
- Should we be allowed to gamble everywhere?
- Should we outlaw abortion? Should we control pictures on the internet?
- Should we legalize drugs? Should smoking be illegal:
- Should we allow gay marriages? Should dying persons be allowed to hasten their death?
THEORIZING U.S. IDENTITY THROUGH MULTICULTURAL TEXTS
- Seminar Leader: Lindon Barrett
The seminar focused on the way in which changes in social demographics and the legal climate in terms of race and gender yield whole new sets of citizens making claims on historical documents which intentionally excluded them. These changes radically reorder notions of social belonging and the meaning of the national collective. The notions through which one situates oneself as a participant in U.S. society and culture have been re-imagined, and educators at all levels, the institutions at which they teach and conduct research, as well as the students filling classrooms find themselves in challenging intellectual and cultural circumstances as a result. In some ways, the history of the United States can be thought of as a continual and painful reconstruction of economic and geographic alliances, and a general re-imagining of boundaries of community.
How might educators in disciplines examining cultural production consider the ways in which already established notions of U.S identity are represented, challenged, and altered? In what ways can the notion of U.S. identity accommodate multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives? In what ways might pedagogical practices have to be reconsidered to accomplish these tasks? One possible paradigm for beginning to consider these matters include recognizing the ways the personal and intimate lives of various communities might reflect or alter the historical and economic formations of the modern nation-state known as the United States and its social subjects. That is, it bears considering if and how specific different claims made on U.S. identity from a segment of the national community might cause changes in the entire national community. How is this national identity either aspired to or rejected by various peoples? These questions were addressed through investigations of the chosen texts.
The seminar examined how new cultural contacts in the modern period effect the evolution of a U.S. national identity and the cultural practices securing it. The seminar investigated how these issues appear in our classrooms and curricula by discussing texts in which these issues figure prominently.
- U.S. Constitution
- Kindred — Octavia Butler
- Woman Warrior — Maxine Hong Kingston
- How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent — Julia Alvarez
- House Made of Dawn — N. Scott Momaday