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2008-09 Teachers as Scholars Seminars Registration is now open! Register online via this link. ***Each TAS seminar is comprised of two sessions. When you register, you are committing to attend both sessions.*** All seminars meet Saturdays, 9am to 1pm, in the Simpson Center for the Humanities, on the University of Washington Seattle campus. All seminars are led by University of Washington faculty and are eligible for clock hour or graduate-level university credit.
1. Understanding Evolution How do big changes in life forms evolve over time? How can our closest living relations be chimpanzees if we look so different? Aimed at teachers wishing to connect the study of natural history with scientific concepts, this partially lab-based seminar reveals how evolution works by studying casts of chimpanzee skulls, fossil humans—including Lucy, the most complete and best preserved of any erect-walking human ancestor—and modern humans. We will engage the burgeoning field of evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) as we explore fundamental mechanisms of evolution. Becca Price is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (Bothell), and Adjunct Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture. A biologist, she aims to increase scientific literacy by helping people of all ages understand the basics of evolutionary thinking. In her research she uses a rich fossil record of marine snails to compare changes in shell shape that occur over time scales of millions of years to those visible within a human lifetime. Back By Popular Demand! Wired whizzes or techno-slaves? Today’s communication technologies—cell-phone texting, social networking, and online gaming—generate daily media reports which invariably position young people, parents, and teachers between a rock and a hard place: how to keep up without selling out. How can educators engage technology in ways useful and meaningful to young people? Through cultural, historical, and experiential approaches, this seminar examines popular (mis)perceptions of new communication technologies, their increasingly prevalent role in daily life, and effective ways of framing the technology/education relationship. Crispin Thurlow is faculty in the departments of Communication and of Linguistics. 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 was a 2007-2008 research fellow with the Simpson Center for the Humanities and a 2007 Distinguished Teaching Award recipient. 3. Sherman Alexie on Page and Screen - SOLD OUT Widely acclaimed as an important American literary voice, Sherman Alexie is a contemporary storyteller whose work spans the genres of poetry, fiction, and film. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who has moved from the Rez to the urban center, Alexie brings into focus the experiences of contemporary American Indians in the Northwest, and speaks with special power to young people. This seminar will look at how Alexie shapes his stories thematically and stylistically to engage readers, while exploring the cultural traditions, historical struggles and social issues that inform them. Tom Grayson Colonnese, Santee Sioux, is Professor and Director of American Indian Studies, teaches literature, film, and history. He is author of The Vietnam War in American Literature, and the co-author of American Indian Novelists, with the late Choctaw author, Louis Owens. He has also written two volumes of The Encyclopedia of the North American Indian, as well as many short stories and articles. 4. Artists and Intellectuals as Icons When Oscar Wilde quipped that “only shallow people do not judge by appearances,” he captured something central to a media culture of modern celebrity. Why do we keep looking? In this seminar we’ll look at artists and intellectuals as style-makers and theorists of style. Tracing a history of fashion and self-fashioning that begins with Wilde and ends with Annie Leibovitz, the seminar will provide a vocabulary and framework for reading images—specifically, photographic portraiture—and our fascination with particular figures. Trendsetting literati such as Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag will guide our readings. Jessica Burstein, Associate Professor of English and Women Studies, teaches classes on modernism, literature, culture, and fashion. She is the author of Cold Modernism and writes regular columns for the Chronicle of Higher Education. She wears Viktor & Rolf (“If you have to ask, you can't afford it”) and channels Dorothy Parker. Back By Popular Demand! 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 Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Tempest, and Henry V, we will consider how directors then and now have confronted the difficulties associated with staging conflicts of sex, race, and empire. Odai Johnson is Associate Professor in Theatre History and Head of the Ph.D. program in the School of Drama. 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. 6. A Human Rights for the 21st Century Since the United Nations’ official declaration in 1948, basic human rights have become a movement, legal system, and moral call to action. But what are human rights? Is a global moral system possible in a culturally various world? This seminar investigates the philosophy, history, and evolution of rights in light of critical current issues from Darfur to Tibet, and asks how U.S. political and educational systems might answer the pressing question, “What is to be done?” Bruce Kochis is a Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (Bothell) Program. His current research is a comparative analysis of the construction and implementation of human rights in developed and developing societies. A 2000 recipient of the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award, he is a founder of the University of Washington’s Human Rights Education and Research Network and its former director. 7. Teaching Racial Literacy - SOLD OUT How can schools build a deeper understanding of race and more effective skills for responding to racism and its effects? In most U.S. educational and political institutions, race talk today centers on colorblindness. In this seminar, we will analyze this discourse, including its limits for characterizing the work of power and race. In the process, we’ll investigate the primary assumptions, identities, and social practices impeding racial literacy and introduce a more productive, alternative framework—race cognizance—to enhance racial literacy in multiple contexts. Jonathan Warren is Associate Professor in the Jackson School of International Studies. He has published widely on the broad themes of racial identity formations, racism and antiracism in Brazil and the United States. This seminar and an edited volume draw upon his collaborative work on race with teachers, administrators and parents in the Seattle Public Schools. 8. Graphic Novels: Reading the New Genre The graphic novel’s emergence as a popular reading genre challenges current concepts of reading and writing. Incorporating this genre into our classrooms may encourage student reading, but we must also cultivate critical approaches that simultaneously recognize graphic novels’ similarities to other narrative forms and their significant differences and departures from those traditions. Through the graphic novel, this seminar asks what it means to read or be literate and explores the implications of reading and writing as avenues to literacy in other forms. Caroline Simpson, Associate Professor in the English Department, teaches contemporary literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on histories of race in the United States and theories of visual culture. She is the author of An Absent Present: Japanese Americans and the Making of Postwar American Culture, 1945-1961. 9. Youth in Global Times Global transformations in economic prospects and cultural possibilities have catapulted young people to the center of political life internationally. Tellingly, the World Bank focused its 2007 World Development Report on youth transitions to adulthood. But how can we connect the struggles of youth elsewhere with our own students’ concerns? Looking at challenges like privatized education, destabilized employment, and intensified policing here and elsewhere, this seminar offers comparative contexts for reflecting on and engaging with youth experiences around the world. Craig Jeffrey, Associate Professor of International Studies and Geography, researches youth activism, social development, education, and the political geography of caste conflict, with particular attention to India. His books include Degrees Without Freedom: Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India and Telling Young Lives: Portraits in Global Youth. 10. Ethics and Climate Change Climate change ranks among the most important international problems today. Growing gaps in wealth and influence and the rise of consumer lifestyles globally only compound the challenges to moral understanding and action. This seminar examines the ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions that this environmental crisis poses—from the uncertainties of scientific knowledge and policy-making to the requirements of international and intergenerational justice and the moral responsibilities of individuals—so that we might better meet the future. Stephen Gardiner is Associate Professor of Philosophy and faculty in the Program on Values in Society. He specializes in ethical theory, political philosophy, and environmental ethics; he also teaches topics in applied ethics and philosophy of economics. He is the author many articles on these subjects, together with the forthcoming book, A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics, and Moral Corruption. ***Each TAS seminar is comprised of two sessions. When you register, you are committing to attend both sessions.***
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