TEACHING RELIGION CRITICALLY

• Seminar Leader: John H. Smith, Professor, German, and Director, Humanities Center

The goal of this seminar is not to be critical of religion but to explore ways of analyzing religion, i.e. of bringing academic tools to bear on religious issues. The motivation for the seminar arises from the fact that new approaches to such matters as class, race, gender, sexuality have received a considerable amount of (justified) attention over the past 10-20 years, whereas religion, which is clearly a major factor in our communities, has been largely excluded from the classroom at all levels of education. Of course, this exclusion arises for understandable reasons (concern over separation of church and state, concern over inappropriate proselytizing, concern over negative approaches to personal beliefs). But the premise of this seminar is that we must find ways of dealing with religious issues, even deep matters of faith, with the same analytical frame of mind that we bring to other academic subjects.

The seminar will begin with three readings from the history of modern Western thought on Judeo-Christianity: (1) the debate between Erasmus and Luther on freedom of the will (a founding discussion of the Reformation in the 16th century), (2) the theological writings of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (an Enlightenment attempt to view religion rationally), and (3) the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche (probably the most influential attacks on religion/Christianity in modern times). We will examine through these texts the major ways in which Western culture developed what has come to be called "secular humanism."

After the first break, we will turn to the interests of the participants in the class. These might include such topics as: approaches to world religions, the notion of "civic religion" in American thought, religious issues in literature, contemporary debates concerning religious instruction and public education, other philosophies of religion.

We should do the following three things in the seminar:

1. Grapple with some interesting books from the past that influenced modern thinking on religion;
2. Practice amongst ourselves ways of dealing with religious issues "critically"; and
3. Pave the way for individual projects that will translate into curricular units.

INVENTING AMERICA

• Seminar Leaders: Michael Clark, Director of the Humanities Core Seminar & Professor, English and Comparative Literature; Jacobo Sefamí, Chair & Professor, Spanish and Portuguese; and Steven Topik, Chair & Professor, History

We will study some different ways that the exploration and discovery of "America" has been conducted, imagined, and recorded. We will begin with a brief examination of material from great civilizations that flourished on the American continents before the arrival of Columbus: the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans. The next section of the seminar focuses on the Spanish contact with those peoples, and we will study how European images of indigenous peoples in the New World changed during the Enlightenment.

We will then examine some early works from the British colonization of New England and a text from the years just before and after the Revolutionary War that produced the United States as a new nation and "the American" as a new character on the historical stage. The seminar will conclude by considering how one of those states, California, came to symbolize America for many Americans, Europeans, and Asians who came here seeking their fortunes and following their dreams.

Here is the reading list. Note that there is a film listed, too, and that we also would be paying significant attention to visual materials such as pre-columbian codices, the Aztec Sunstone, various engravings, and some attention to Thomas Cole's paintings later in the seminar.

Common Readings & Films

1. A reader/seminarpack wish several shorter pieces, including readings from Columbus's journal, a Puritan sermon from New England, etc.
2. Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain
3. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways
4. Voltaire, Candide
5. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko or Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
6. Mary Rowlandson, The Captive
7. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer
8. Film: Cabeza de Vaca

THE HARDY PERSONALITY IN THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE

• Seminar Leaders: Salvatore Maddi, Professor, Psychology and Social Behavior and Deborah Khoshaba, Director, Program Development, and Training, Hardiness Institute

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, will conduct the seminar.

The seminar has two aims. The first is 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 is 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 encourage feedback from participants as to the use of hardiness training with K-12 students.

• Seminar Leader: Stephen D. Franklin, Assistant Director, Office of Academic Computing & Lecturer, Department of Information and Computer Science

This seminar will combine a discussion of the underlying computer and networking technologies generally identified as "the Internet," "the World Wide Web," or, simply, "the Web" with an exploration of how these technologies are being used to extend and enhance existing educational environments.

The seminar will explore both general and discipline-specific ways in which this technology is being used, the opportunities it presents, and the challenges (educational, technical, economic, and social) to its effective integration with existing educational practices and priorities.

Approximately half of the seminar sessions will involve various UCI faculty, other than the seminar leader, who actively use this technology in a range of disciplines. They will share their personal experiences, visions, and (yes) frustrations in incorporating the continually changing technological possibilities with the necessary practical imperatives of their principal academic obligations. UCI faculty who will be invited to offer seminar sessions may include the following: Jean-Claude Falmagne, Professor, Cognitive Sciences and Developer of Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS); Robert Garfias, Professor, Anthropology (including Ethnomusicology); Daniel Stokols, Professor, Urban and Regional Planning; Peter J. Bryant, Professor, Developmental and Cell Biology; and Michael P. Clark, Professor, English and Comparative Literature.

Seminar fellows will develop curriculum units which focus on some aspect of incorporating the educationally appropriate use of this new technology into their classrooms either as a pervasive tool linked to multiple parts of the curriculum or as an enhancement and extension of the resources brought to bear on a particular component of the existing curriculum.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ORANGE COUNTY

• Seminar Leader: Peter J. Bryant, Director, Developmental Biology Center & Professor, Developmental and Cell Biology

In this seminar we explore the natural history of Orange County and the threats to the survival of habitats and the species that depend on them. The County provides examples of terrestrial, riparian and coastal habitats, and supports a variety of endangered and threatened species, but also supports one of the fastest-growing human populations in the nation as well as a thriving economy supporting urbanization, habitat destruction, resource consumption and waste. We will develop curriculum units that explore different natural habitat types in relation to these conflicts with human encroachment. The goals are to help Fellows recognize the extent of biological diversity in natural habitats and the degree to which this is lost in urbanized areas, the aesthetic, cultural and material values of natural resources, and the legislative, political and regulatory issues involved in preserving natural resources in the face of urbanization.

Possible curriculum units might include:

• The values of Orange County's wildlife
• Swamp of the frogs: reconstruction of the natural history of prehistoric
• Orange County
• Exotic species and attempts to control them in various habitats
• The California gnatcatcher and development in the foothills
• Toll roads and the loss of coastal sage scrub
• Effects of channelization on riparian habitats
• Ocean water quality and the effects of sewage
• Oil pollution from identified as well as unknown sources
• Tide pools and the effects of increased use for educational purposes
• Creating wildlife habitat: butterfly gardening, habitat restoration

In the process of researching and creating curriculum units, Fellows will learn to use the Internet and the resources available there. The following two web sites will be particularly useful:

• http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/Titlpage.htm
  (This is Peter’s hypertext book on Biodiversity and Conservation.)
  
  
• http://mamba.bio.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/Teachers/index.htm

U.S. LITERARY CULTURE AND GLOBALIZATION

• Seminar Leader: John C. Rowe, Professor, English and Comparative Literature; Acting Director, African American Studies

We will study literary works that treat U.S. society, politics, and culture as the United States became a national and then a global power -- the same period in which economic and political expansion by the first-world nations resulted in the accelerated movement of peoples, goods, and ideas we have come to call "globalization." Often "globalization" is identifed primarily with post-industrial economic conditions and thus the post-World War II historical period, but we will consider "globalization" as a process that accompanies the industrial revolution and its various consequences -- rapid technological development, European colonial expansion, urbanization, and the organization of labor. For our purposes, "globalization" will begin in the American 1840s and include our present moment.

For our seminar, we will look at literary texts that both interpret and criticize the U.S. role in these processes of nineteenth and twentieth-century globalization. We will look at some familiar literary texts, and we will read some less familiar works often considered marginal to "literature" and yet of great value in teaching the issues in this seminar or in a course with related interests. The topic of the course will give us a good chance to consider how women and minorities were treated in relation to historically specific ideas of "American" identity and, later, "global" citizenship (often treated by the writers as "cosmopolitanism").

Primary Readings:

• Herman Melville, Benito Cereno, in Billy Budd and Other Stories (Penguin Classics paperback)
• Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (The Feminist Press paper)
• John Rollin Ridge, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (University of Oklahoma Press paper)
• Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Norton Critical Edition (W. W. Norton paper)
• W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (The Feminist Press paper)
• John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks (University of Nebraska Press paper)
• Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Harper and Row paper)

Critical Readings:

• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (Verso Press paper)
• Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Random House/ Vintage paper)

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT? PROBABILITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

• Seminar Leader: Amelia Regan, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

I put together a short description for a seminar in applied probability and statistics. This is a much shorter version of a probability class which uses only limited math (no calculus) which I am developing for non-engineering majors here at UCI. The focus of this seminar will be fundamental ideas of statistics and probability and how these relate to real world events. Case studies will be based upon chance events reported in newspapers or other news media journals such as Nature, Science and Chance.

Based on the Chance model (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/course.html), some of the following topics will be covered:

Air safety, Scoring streaks and records in sports, Statistics, expert witnesses, and the courts , The undercount problem in the 1990 U.S. Census, The use of DNA fingerprinting in the courts, Paradoxes in probability and statistics , Coincidences, Random and pseudo-random sequences, The reliability of political polls and Card shuffling, lotteries, and other gambling issues.

Seminar fellows will be able to develop curriculum units which focus on analyzing current events and articles concerning these using basic probabilistic analysis.

aregan@uci.edu
http://www.its.uci.edu/~acregan/

Revised: Thursday, September 13, 2001