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2004-2005 Seminars 1. Staging
America The "crash" of the stock market and the subsequent depression of the 1930s inspired many Americans to seek alternative forms of government. Convinced that the economic catastrophe proved that Capitalism was a failure and buoyed by the myths of the Soviet experiment, thousands of Americans turned to the arts to explore alternative forms of organizing society. Labor battles, racial justice, and Red scares all competed for space and attention in painting, writing, and song. The struggle was particularly intense in the theatre, where the newly emergent Federal Theatre Project competed with Broadway and other venues to stage versions of how a more just society could be represented and how a better United States could be imagined. This seminar will examine some of the most vivid of those productions, ranging from the Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre through the intense critique of Elmer RiceŐs We, The People and concluding with Thornton Wilder's dark valentine, Our Town. Faculty: Barry Witham Associated Event: Our Town, INTIMAN Theatre, Oct 8-Nov 20 2. Civil
Rights and Labor Historians have been re-examining the Civil Rights Movement, lengthening it and broadening it. Instead of just the 1950s and 1960s, we now talk about the "long civil rights movement" starting in the 1930s. And instead of just southern-based events and organizations, we now understand that civil rights breakthroughs began in northern and western cities, including Seattle, and that they often depended upon relationships to another movement, the CIO unions launched in the 1930s. This seminar examines the long civil rights movement and the links to the labor movement both in a national and local context. We will read current scholarship by historians on the relationship between the two movements. We will also explore the materials that are being collected as part of the Seattle Labor and Civil Rights Project and think about ways they can work in the classroom. Faculty: James Gregory Associated Event: Brown v. the Board of Education: An Evening with Juan Williams, Humanities Washington, Nov 5 3. Irish
History and Modern Irish Writing: Yeats to the Present Ireland has produced some of the most influential writers of the last two centuries. Many poets and novelists, whether Protestant or Catholic, feel a particular responsibility to reflect the political as well as the social context of the periods they depict, although they often have different aims and methods. Some artists make use of political events both as a setting and a theme of their novels, in hopes of shaping history by engaging cultural memories and mobilizing political sentiments; others use political events as background in the development of a narrative or lyric expression. This seminar will examine specific events in Irish history—the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell, the 1913 Strike, the 1916 Easter Rebellion, the Black and Tans period, the civil war of 1921-22, and the recent troubles in Northern Ireland—as well as the literary representations of those events by IrelandŐs most prominent writers of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, Roddy Doyle, and Seamus Heaney. Faculty: Hazard Adams Associated Event: An Evening with Roddy Doyle, Seattle Arts & Lectures, Nov 15 4. Spain,
Empire, and the "New World" This seminar explores a pivotal chapter in imperial history, the remarkable expansion of Spain in the early modern period and its dramatic conquest of the so-called "New World." By the mid-sixteenth century, Hapsburg Spain had emerged as EuropeŐs unrivaled super-power, with an empire stretching from Madrid to Havana and allies answering from Vienna to the Philippines. Yet following a century of meteoric growth and spectacular cultural production—literary experimentation, artistic innovation, religious reformation—Spain entered a period of sustained decline and stagnation. Criticism was sharp and focused above all on the colonial experiment in the Americas. The "enterprise of the Indies" was debated largely in literature, and this seminar will interrogate seminal samples of early Americana—letters of the voyagers, narratives of the Conquista, descriptions of the Indians—to understand the vicissitudes of early modern empire. Faculty: Benjamin Schmidt Associated
Event: Spain
in the Age of Exploration, 1492-1819, Seattle Art Museum, Oct 16-Jan
2 5. Science
and Religion: Darwin, Geology, and Evolution The fossils in the Burgess Shale point to many fascinating issues in the history and philosophy of science. This workshop explores two of them—the question of science and religion, and the question of historicism. Fossil discoveries convinced many nineteenth-century naturalists and geologists of the theory of Darwinian evolution, which they eagerly opposed to traditional religious narratives of the history of life and of the earth. Debates over evolution set in place cultural fault lines between science and religion which remain today. We will discuss the common "conflict" supposed between science and religion, considering different positions in the debates and new ideas about this rocky relationship. We will also explore how fossil discoveries affected nineteenth-century thinking about history, as well as more recent ideas about the "historicity" of science. Is science outside history, a cumulative process of progress? Or is scientific knowledge inside history, a product of its time and place, shaped by the local interests and the contexts of its practitioners? Faculty: Simon Werrett Associated
Event: The
Burgess Shale: EvolutionŐs Big Bang, the Burke Museum, Nov 4-Mar 6
6. The
Blues: As Form, As Genre, As Feeling What is the "blues," and why has the word itself come to have such resonance within—and beyond—American culture? In this seminar, we will investigate many different musical manifestations of the blues: the "blues songs" of the early twentieth century; the "classic" or "city" blues of Bessie Smith and her contemporaries; the rural blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and others; the "white man's blues" of country music; the essential role of blues in the development of jazz; the post-World War II electric blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and its evolution into rock 'n' roll; the adaptations of the blues by the Beatles and other "British invasion" bands of the 1960s; later developments, including the recent "blues revival"; and even the migration of blues into the formal concert hall, as in GershwinŐs immortal "Rhapsody in Blue." We will also consider the larger significance of the "blues" as a term loaded with cultural, racial, and emotional connotations. Faculty: Larry Starr Associated
Event: Ma
Rainey's Black Bottom, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Jan 22-Feb 19
This seminar will serve as an introduction to the varied and vibrant poetries being written in English around the world at the turn of the twenty-first century, as well as an open discussion about the future of poetry. We will pay particular attention to the complex interplay between "global" and "local" in recent verse. While we live in an era of intensified particularism, in which groups (national, racial, ethnic) claim and advance distinct poetic traditions, we have also seen the emergence of new, inter- or transnational poetries (diasporic, Internet-based, global jet-setting). What kinds of poetry "travel" well across boundaries? How and why? We will read well-known poets such as Agha Shahid Ali, Anne Carson, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott alongside less famous but no less rewarding authors such as Kamau Braithwaite, Medbh McGuckian, Lisa Robertson, and Hone Tuwhare. Faculty: Brian Reed Associated
Event: Poetry Series, Seattle
Arts & Lectures, Feb-Apr 8.Frankenstein:
A Story of Modernity Why do we enjoy stories of human-made monsters run amok? What might such stories reveal about the hopes and fears of the society that tells them? Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein forms the basic text for this seminar. We will consider ShelleyŐs text in some detail, introduce important aspects of that book's historical context, and explore Shelley's story of a man and his monster-gone-wild as a commentary on "modernity"—a situation characterized by new relations among humanity, God, nature, technology, gender, family, and reproduction. We will also examine subsequent re-workings of Frankenstein in fiction and film, and consider how basic features of the story surface in contemporary discussions of cloning, stem cell research, prenatal testing, and other bioethical issues. How and why has this story attained the status of a shared cultural myth? Which elements have changed over time and which have persisted? How and why does the story remain so compelling? Faculty: Janelle S. Taylor Associated Event: Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature, UW Odegaard Library, Mar 5-Apr 15 9. A
Confluence of Cultures: Lewis & Clark from a Native American Perspective
It would be simplistic to attribute two hundred years of white and Indian relations to the Corps of Discovery, yet the almost mythic status that has been conferred on Lewis and Clark makes them a useful avenue for exploring the changes in American society that followed them. On one hand, the expedition opened up opportunities for thousands of emigrants, new scientific developments, and nearly incredible possibilities for national expansion and growth. On the other hand, the expedition brought about the spread of disease, the loss of Indian lands, attempts to eradicate Indian religion and culture through government policy, and even the destruction of the land itself. By examining "Indian voices" and Indian perspectives, this seminar will look at Lewis and Clark and the changes they wrought through "Indian eyes." Faculty: Tom Grayson Colonnese Associated Event: Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America, MOHAI, Apr 2-May 30 10. A
Story of U.S. Slavery: Questions, Debates, Histories In this seminar we will talk about some of the persistent questions and debates facing students of American slavery, focusing on three clusters of questions. First, why were Africans enslaved? Was it racism or simply economic interest that enabled Europeans to exploit the African slave trade? How did the idea of African or black "racial" difference emerge over time in relation to the development of plantation slavery? Second, how did the enslaved survive and resist bondage? How did culture change in the forced migration from Africa to the Americas? What was their day-to-day life like? Finally, what was the effect of slavery on the concept and realization of American freedom? Slavery and freedom appear to be opposites, but in U.S. history, such has not been the case. One of the newest developments in slavery studies is the pursuit of understanding just how slavery, in fact, helped to create American freedom. Faculty: Stephanie M. H. Camp Associated
Event: Edward P. Jones, Seattle
Arts & Lectures, Apr 20 11. Colonialism
and Performance Art in Islamic Asia A large majority of the world's Muslims live in Asia, and the cultural and performance practices of Islamic Asia are some of the richest traditions in the world. This seminar focuses on what happens to Islamic performance traditions when European rule comes to India and Indonesia. We will explore Javanese shadow theatre traditions as well as Islamic music in the Hindu courts of British India, investigating how Islamic arts reflect complex negotiations among many players: southern Asians who made the pilgrimage to Mecca; performers and musicians who served the colonial regimes; those whose art drew upon India's and Java's deep village traditions; and farmers who needed potent rituals to ensure good harvests. The resulting blend of Islamic and local practices furnished new resources of sustenance, of resistance, and of adaptation under the difficult conditions of colonial rule. While unique in themselves, the processes at work in the meeting of Islam, art, and politics are quite significant for other parts of the world. Faculty: Laurie J. Sears Associated Event: UW Conference on Asian Islam, University of Washington, May 5-8 12. Chinese
Painting and Cultural Encounters Chinese painting is the only visual tradition in world art that rivals the European painting tradition in terms of its quantity, diversity, and complexity. This seminar aims to demonstrate how scholars can use visual materials as primary sources to analyze and interpret cultural changes. In addition to the on-site examination of original works of art, we will link different painting styles to a broader cultural context. We will consider how artistic tastes and patronages of different social classes (imperial court, literati, merchants, popular audience) and regions (Suzhou, Mt. Huang, Nanjing, Shanghai) compete, intersect, and synthesize. We will also discuss the challenge artists might have faced in choosing between the old models established by China's cultural heroes and the new trends introduced by the Jesuit missionaries from Europe after the seventeenth century. Faculty: Shih-shan Susan Huang Associated Event: The Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Chinese Paintings, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Mar 17-Jun 19
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