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2007-08 Teachers as Scholars Seminars 1. Biotechnology & the Artistic Imagination Biotechnologies change how we relate to the world and each other. Artists working at the boundaries between biology and art compel us to consider the implications. Experimenting with biotechniques like cloning and genetic manipulation, they foreground ethical issues and raise critical questions about the nature of life. This seminar will look at work in the field of BioArt to ask what it reveals about the relationship between art and science and how we can rethink our relationship to other organisms. Phillip Thurtle is faculty in the Comparative History of Ideas Program at the University of Washington. He is author of The Emergence of Genetic Rationality, co-author of Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information, and co-editor of Data Made Flesh and Semiotic Flesh. 2. Representing Justice How does popular culture represent the law, lawyers, and legal processes aiming to advance social justice or civil rights? Drawing upon scholarly research and sources ranging from classic to contemporary film, The Simpsons to Court TV, this seminar balances a serious analysis of mass entertainment with an entertaining approach to serious issues. Do these popular representations stimulate larger inquiries into law’s relationship to justice, equality, violence, and social change? How do they compare to—even influence—legal practice? Michael McCann is Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship at the University of Washington and founding director of both the interdisciplinary Comparative Law and Society Studies (CLASS) Center and the undergraduate Law, Societies, and Justice program. McCann teaches courses on law and society and received a university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award in 1989. His most recent book is Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis. 3. War & Society | Pictures & Words We increasingly shape our knowledge of modern warfare and the world through visual media. With violence and representations of violence inextricably linked on the battlefield and in everyday life, what can visual media tell us about war today? Through popular films, video games, comics, graphic novels, photography, and descriptive prose, we will investigate cultural differences in the definition of war, group violence as social control, gender, memorialization, and technology’s impact on how war is conducted and understood. Danny Hoffman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. He teaches courses on the anthropology of Africa, violence, visual anthropology, and ethnographic methods. His publications include work on militia movements in Sierra Leone and Liberia and on fieldwork in unstable contexts. He also has worked as a photojournalist in Africa and the Balkans. 4. Aliens & Citizens in U.S. History Immigration and immigrant rights stand among the most heated contemporary debates. Regulation of U.S. borders, reform of a system the president calls “broken,” and mobilization among immigrants for worker and citizen rights frequently make headlines. Attending to how race and gender have historically shaped understandings of citizenship, this seminar will examine our characterization as a “nation of immigrants” through legal statutes and decisions, as well as through movements to exclude or assimilate those deemed alien. Moon-Ho Jung, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, teaches courses on race, politics, and Asian American history. He is the author of Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation and is currently working on a new book project on radicalism, anti-radicalism, and the U.S. empire before World War II. 5. Environmental Aesthetics Evidence suggests people are motivated to environmental protection more by beauty than duty. Indeed, much U.S. environmental legislation since the 1960s appeals to moral and aesthetic considerations. But how do we measure nature’s aesthetic value? This question provokes a range of responses, from the claim that nature’s beauty can be measured by formal properties to the argument that is it found through science. This seminar will survey the different philosophies of environmental aesthetics and their policy implications. Andrew Light, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, holds a joint appointment with the Evans School of Public Affairs and an adjunct appointment with the Department of Geography. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy at Lancaster University (UK), and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. Author and editor of 16 books in environmental ethics and policy, philosophy of technology, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics, he is currently finishing a book on ethical issues in restoration ecology.
6. Latinos in U.S. Popular Music Latino artists such as Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Ritchie Valens, Selena, and Daddy Yankee have carried their cultural experience, heritage, and creativity into mainstream U.S. music. Through close-listening in genres ranging from mambo, salsa, and conjunto to jazz, rock, and hip hop, participants will identify cultural linkages across the Americas and explore the impact Latinos have made. We will investigate the significance these artists and styles hold for Latino communities and expand the story of American popular culture. Marisol Berríos-Miranda is a Puerto Rican ethnomusicologist who researches and writes about popular music in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She is adjunct Lecturer at the University of Washington, Seattle, and is guest curator for the Experience Music Project exhibit: American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music.
7. Staging Shakespeare Then & Now Odai Johnson, UW Drama Jan 19 & Feb 2, 9am-1pm UW Simpson Center Related Event: Roméo et Juliette and interview with the choreographer, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Jan 30, 6-9:30pm Elizabethan theatre culture profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s composition choices. This seminar will investigate the force of staging practices, theatre conventions, and architecture on the shape and meaning of his plays and will survey techniques employed by modern productions aspiring to recover Shakespeare’s theatre. Drawing upon Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, and Taming of the Shrew, we also will consider how directors then and now have confronted larger problems, such as staging witchcraft, misogyny, and anti-Semitism. Odai Johnson is Associate Professor in theatre history and head of the Ph.D. program in the School of Drama at the University of Washington. His books include Rehearsing the Revolution, The Colonial American Stage: A Documentary Calendar, and Absence and Memory on the Colonial American Stage. He is resident researcher for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's reconstruction of the Douglass Theatre. He has also worked as a playwright and dramaturg at Sundance and Wordbridge. 8. Jane Austen: Satire & Sentiment The last of Jane Austen’s great novels, Persuasion is also her most intimate and sexual, despite its outwardly PG scenes and speeches. Through it we glimpse the author rebelling against the assumptions and values undergirding her world. We will study Persuasion in light of Austen’s powerful social critique as well as her heroine’s intensely inward drama of personal desire and changing consciousness as she lives to regret her youthful decision to choose family and money over love. Thomas Lockwood, Professor of English and faculty member of the Textual Studies Program at the University of Washington, specializes in 18th-century English Literature, with current work in Fielding, the novel, theatre history, periodical journalism, and print history. He has published in The Modern Language Review, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, and Philological Quarterly, and he is editor of three volumes on Fielding’s plays. 9. Iran, Women, & Geopolitical Conflict American media coverage of Iran regularly focuses on women’s rights and status. The attention seems disproportionate since the United States has had no diplomatic relations with Iran for thirty years and recent foreign policy has foregrounded security, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. This seminar will place recent debates about Iranian culture and politics in broader perspective through Iran’s history, laws, and civil society. We will emphasize the daily realities of women’s lives and the political effects of America’s persistent media representation. Arzoo Osanloo holds a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Law, Societies, and Justice Program at the University of Washington. Her research interests reflect anthropological inquiries into the realm of law, governance, and the state. Her book, There are No Ladies Here: Women’s Rights and Practice in the Islamic Republic of Iran, is forthcoming by Princeton University Press. Arzoo formerly practiced refugee and immigration law. 10. Young People, New Technologies Wired whizzes or techno-slaves? Young people’s new communication technologies such as instant messaging, texting, and MySpace generate daily media attention—often alarmist. How can we dispel the hype, engage with young people’s use of technology, and support parents in the same? Grounded in scholarly, cultural, and historical perspectives, this seminar will examine popular perceptions of communication technologies and their role in young people’s lives. Teachers will draw on their own experiences while acquiring critical tools for handling technology-related issues. Crispin Thurlow is faculty in the departments of Communication and of Linguistics at the University of Washington. His books include Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction on the Internet, Talking Adolescence: Perspectives on Communication in the Teenage Years, and the forthcoming Tourism Discourse: The Language of Global Mobility. He is a 2007-2008 research fellow with the Simpson Center for the Humanities and a 2007 Distinguished Teaching Award recipient.
11. The Art of Roman Religion Polytheistic religion permeated ancient Roman life: household shrines honored familial spirits; sacrifices at civic temples celebrated state and local deities; festivals punctuated seasons; and religion and politics often overlapped. Art figured importantly within this system. Works of art portrayed gods, goddesses, and their mythologies, and religious rituals incorporated art objects. Because of the close association between art and ritual, this seminar will explore how ancient Roman art both illustrated religious practice and actively constituted religious experience. Margaret Laird is Assistant Professor of Ancient Art & Archaeology in the University of Washington’s Division of Art History. Her research examines how statues and other municipal monuments created community and civic identities in Roman towns. Laird is also the guest curator of the exhibition Roman Art from the Louvre at the Seattle Art Museum (February 19-May 18, 2008). 12. Coming of Age in Black Fiction African-American and African-Caribbean writers rarely represent early childhood experience outside the concerns of adult realities. Novels such as The Bluest Eye, The White Boy Shuffle, and Breath, Eyes, Memory situate coming of age within the particular histories and worldviews of African-descended communities. This seminar examines how such stories of personal development negotiate the representation of a difficult past, the meaning of black identity, and the conditions of community—as well as how the coming-of-age narrative supports these explorations. Habiba Ibrahim is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Washington. Her teaching interests are in contemporary African-American literary criticism and theory, and her research focuses on representations of mixed racialism in American literature and film. Registration opens August 15 for teachers from member schools and school districts, August 31 for teachers from non-member schools and school districts. Register online via this link or call 206.621.2230 x16.
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