Network Summer 2009 will be held from June 8 to June 12, 2009 at New York University's Washington Square campus.
Please note: The application deadline for Network Summer 2009 has passed.
The following seminars are being offered for Network Summer 2009:
Art, Public Policy and Politics
Changing Places, Changing Faces: Recent Immigrant Settlement in the United States and Its Consequences
Chemical Biology: Introduction to HIV Drug Design
Ethics in Practice
New Technologies for Teaching and Learning
Reading Richard Wright
Reading, Writing, and Service Learning
Teaching and Learning About Evolution 150 Years After the Origins of Species
The African Roots of Jazz
Women in Film
ART, PUBLIC POLICY AND POLITICS
The Program
This seminar offers an examination of art and civil society and the role of the arts in creating and sustaining our communities. We welcome faculty from all disciplines to learn how economic, political and social factors affect the arts.
From the post-Civil War period through the 1950’s, the scions of America’s wealthiest families created many arts organizations. In the affluent 1960’s, the rise of the largest middle class in history and concurrent major growth in the arts fostered the development of professional arts administration education in colleges and universities across the United States and Europe. The visual arts in particular became an arena for new career opportunities, the creation of new arts organizations, social mobility and even prestige for its supporters. New avenues of creative freedom were opened through the power of the Women’s and Civil Rights movements.
Concurrent with the development of new art forms and increased leisure time over the last fifty years was the expanded role of the arts presenter: museums, galleries and arts institutions proliferated. The interconnecting effects of government policies, market forces, and political influence, as well as a new regard for the artist, have all changed the place of the arts in American society. In more recent years, art forms from non-Western countries have gained greater recognition and expanded our global understanding of the arts.
Our seminar will examine the history and development of art, public policy and politics to enable faculty and their students to take an active role in their home arts communities. The structure, background and challenges of national and local arts organizations will be examined. Resources and creative opportunities in participants’ home campuses and communities will be identified with a view to developing your abilities to foster multi-focused arts activities. Seminar participants will report on the challenges facing their campus and community arts organizations or on projects they would like to initiate.
The seminar will include guest lectures from public policy experts and representatives of various New York City art museums. Discussions on the quality and relevance of museums during uncertain economic times along with a museum field trip will also be part of the week’s activities. Readings will includes selections from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Richard Caves’s Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce, Joni M. Sherbo, Ruth Ann Stewart, & Margaret Wyszomirski's Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States, Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, and Howard Zinn’s Artists in A Time of War.
Conveners:
Sandra Lang is director of the Visual Arts Administration M.A. Program and a clinical associate professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions, at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. She has previously served as administrative director of the Art Advisory Service at The Museum of Modern Art, and executive director of Independent Curators International. Lang was president of ArtTable, a national association of women leaders in the arts, from 1992-1994 and president of the International Association of Art Advisors (IAPAA) from 2003-2004.
Laurin Raiken is chairman of the Interdisciplinary Arts Program of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and associate faculty of arts and public policy at Tisch School of the Arts, both at New York University. He is a past recipient of the NYU Great Teachers Award. Raiken is a founder and community director of the New York Free Theater (dedicated to fighting racism) and founder and chair of the Foundation for the Community of Artists. A leader in the artists’ housing movement, Raiken was a founding member of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Artist Certification Committee.
CHANGING PLACES, CHANGING FACES: RECENT IMMIGRANT SETTLEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
The Program
Since the 1980s, international migration to the United States has grown dramatically. Studies have documented widespread growth of immigrants in U.S. suburban and non-metropolitan communities not known as common destinations in the past as well as in large metropolitan areas that have attracted immigrants for more than 100 years. In this seminar, we examine new patterns and trends in U.S. immigration settlement and their social and economic implications for communities nationwide.
Prior to September 11, 2001, immigration policy reforms centered on concerns to safeguard U.S. borders from Mexicans and others crossing without legal documents. During the early 1990s, local border enforcement buildup efforts emerged east to west as many favored a strategy of building walls and holding the line as answers to the problem of undocumented crossings. Since September 11, however, U.S. immigration has become an international security issue. Governed by the new Department of Homeland Security, U.S. borders now operate at their highest levels of alert, enforced by border guards and at times the U.S. military and National Guard. One consequence of these tightening borders is an increase in the undocumented population residing in the United States. This seminar examines these issues and their implications for immigrant and native born populations in the United States. We also investigate the policies that govern entry and settlement, the gendered state of U.S. immigration, and differences between refugees and other immigrants.
The seminar should benefit faculty from the social sciences and the humanities especially those in anthropology, economics, history, political science, and sociology.
Convener:
Katherine Donato is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her broad interests focus on topics related to social stratification and demography, especially international migration between Mexico and the United States. Her research has addressed questions related to the impact of U.S. immigration policy on the labor market incorporation of migrants, the process of immigrant incorporation in new U.S. destinations, and how the processes of health and migration unfold over the life course. With funding from The National Science and Russell Sage Foundations and the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies, Dr. Donato is working on a tri-city project that examines immigrant parent involvement in Chicago, New York, and Nashville. Her publications have appeared in many journals including Demography, Social Forces, International Migration Review, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Together with colleagues, she has recently edited a forthcoming volume entitled Continental Divides: International Migration in the Americas.
CHEMICAL BIOLOGY: INTRODUCTION TO HIV DRUG DESIGN
The Program
Research at the interface of chemistry and biology is one of the most dynamic and rapidly developing areas of scientific discovery. The combination of synthetic and physical organic chemistry with molecular biology and bioinformatics opens exciting avenues for new advances and for training future scientists. In contrast, undergraduate courses seldom emphasize the relationships among mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology courses. This seminar will focus on the case study of HIV viral infection, highlighting current approaches in chemical biology and enabling participants to introduce this interdisciplinary area into their own courses. We invite faculty teams, composed of a chemist and biologist, from participating institutions to attend.
The sessions will include an overview of contemporary chemical biology and an exploration of the life cycle of HIV, the successful design of inhibitors that target virus-specific processes, and the current challenges to developing vaccines. Participants will gain access to on-line resources on HIV and bio-informatic tools that can assist in efforts to overcome the ability of HIV to mutate rapidly and evade current treatments. Current research efforts to target HIV fusion using synthetic protein helices (Paramjit Arora), and research on multivalent gold nanoparticles (Christian Melander, assistant professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University) will be presented, as well as recent research on natural antiviral proteins (Dan Malamud, professor of basic science and craniofacial biology and director of the HIV/AIDS Research Program at NYU's College of Dentistry). In addition, Ivo Lorenz (principal scientist at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) will report on recent work at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) to develop HIV vaccines and will lead a tour of the new IAVI laboratory facilities in Brooklyn. Participant teams will be encouraged to develop a teaching module or computer laboratory chemistry and biology classes at their home institutions. Ample opportunities for pedagogical discussions and reports on successful class and laboratory practices will be available.
Conveners:
Neville Kallenbach (Coordinator) is director of science projects for the Faculty Resource Network and professor of chemistry at New York University. He received his B.S. (1958) in chemistry from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University (1961) with Lars Onsager (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1968). After NSF and NIH Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of California, San Diego with Bruno Zimm, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1964, where he became professor of biology in 1972. In 1987, he was appointed professor and chairman of the Chemistry Department at NYU, a position he held until 1995.
Paramjit Arora is an associate professor of chemistry at New York University. He holds a B.S. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. He was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at California Institute of Technology before beginning his independent career at NYU. Dr. Arora’s research is centered on the development of synthetic inhibitors for biomolecular interactions. He has received several awards for his work including NYU’s Golden Dozen Teaching Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award, and the James D. Watson Investigator Award for Research.
ETHICS IN PRACTICE
The Program
This program is co-sponsored by the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University.
Living and learning how to live a moral life in practical terms is increasingly complex given the broad range of opportunities, choices, and challenges facing citizens in a global, highly technological world.
In this seminar, we will focus on a series of difficult issues facing us -- e.g. war, terrorism, famine relief, genetic engineering, rights to privacy, assisted suicide -- that seem to demand both private and public action, even though such actions themselves often seem hard to justify and their consequences difficult to predict.
We will look at the ideas of a range of thinkers, both ancient and modern, that address the nature of moral deliberation and action in difficult contexts (Plato, Thucydides, Lucretius, Nagel, Williams, O'Neill, etc.). We will also discuss problems of moral practice with individuals who are actually faced with making such decisions or with carrying out public policies in which ethical choices are put to the test.
How can the discussion of ethics and its practice best be introduced into the undergraduate curriculum? To offer provisional answers to this question, we will examine the ethics of various practices from the realms of law, business, the military, and scientific research. We will move from reflections on these topics to concrete strategies for shaping a curriculum for college students.
Guest speakers from various arenas will be invited to address the group and lead discussion.
Convener:
Phillip Mitsis is Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization. Formerly Mellon Professor at Cornell University, he has held visiting positions at Pittsburgh, Princeton, and Aberdeen. He is a recipient of fellowships from the ACLS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Howard Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. He is author of Epicurus' Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability, and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy and Mega Nepios: The Addressee in Didactic Epic. At present he is working on a book about John Locke.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
The Program
How can new technologies (e-portfolios, social networking, blogs, wikis, etc.) be used to enhance or support teaching and learning? Can these technologies move us from a "transactional" mode of teaching and learning (single delivery in specific time and place) towards a more robust, lifelong engagement with learning where students are increasingly producers of knowledge? Technologies come and go. Is Web 2.0 the latest fad? Or can we harness these new technologies to help redefine the "learning environment"?
This seminar will provide faculty members with a deeper understanding of new technologies and how they may be used to inform our teaching practice. Readings and discussion will provide context and insight into how these new technologies can help us respond to the new education and assessment landscape emerging as a result of changing student demographics, new demands on the curriculum due to a rapidly changing social, economic, and global environment, and increasing use of technologies by students for social networking and "infotainment.”
This interactive seminar will combine demonstrations, readings and discussion with hands-on opportunities to explore and design within the framework of these new technologies. Guest presenters will be invited to speak on topics related to the use of new technologies for teaching and learning.
The seminar is designed for faculty participants who are comfortable with basic computer tools (Google, e-mail, Microsoft Word) and are familiar with at least one technology application used for teaching and learning (course management system, assessment tool, etc.).
Convener:
Jan Plass (Coordinator) is Associate Professor of Educational Communication and Technology at New York University and director of the ECT program at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Dr. Plass is interested in how cognitive science and learning sciences can inform the design of educational environments, including educational simulations and games. His current research projects focus on the design of computer simulations for science education (Molecules & Minds) and on the design and study of game-like environments (NYU Games for Learning Institute). He conducts these and other projects as part the Center for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (CREATE) at NYU, which he also directs (see createlabs.org).
Maaike Bouwmeester is vice president of product development at TaskStream, an online software provider of e-portfolio, survey, assessment, and learning tools. For the past nine years, she has worked extensively with faculty and IT personnel at many colleges and universities across the United States to develop and implement technology for teaching and learning. Maaike has presented at various conferences and given numerous workshops on how e-portfolios may be used for both learning and assessment. In collaboration with Howard Gardner, director of Harvard Project Zero and author of several books on multiple intelligence theory, she is currently researching how Web 2.0 technologies can facilitate knowledge production by cultivating the role of the student as producer of knowledge and supporting student reflection.
READING RICHARD WRIGHT
The Program
The 2008 celebration of the Richard Wright Centennial provided opportunities for many readers to discover the works of an outstanding twentieth-century American writer. Although American cultural literacy requires knowledge of the titles Native Son and Black Boy, it leaves such titles as The Outsider, Black Power, The Color Curtain, and The Long Dream in outer darkness. General readers usually do not know that Wright’s early reputation was based on his proletarian poetry and the powerful short fiction collected in Uncle Tom’s Children (1938). The Centennial was an occasion for reexamining all of Wright’s published works and for asking questions about what his legacy can contribute to twenty-first century literary and cultural thought. How should the legacy of Richard Wright (1908-1960) be read?
It is profitable to examine our reading strategies and how those interpretive moves are affected by critical commentary. Much of the response to Wright from the 1940s to the present has focused on his work as racialized discourses on matters of sociology, politics, alienation, struggles to be freed from colonial domination and ideological fetters, and cultural nationalism. Even very recent speculation about the postcolonial and “Black Atlantic” aspects of Wright’s works give scant attention to his poetics. Such response fosters the idea that Wright’s works are historical documents rather than aesthetic products. More attention ought to be given to Wright’s artistry, to his manipulation of language and use of rhetoric, and to his aesthetic. As we read Wright’s fiction and nonfiction, we should want to know how meaning emerges from considerations of language as a medium shaped by history and culture. Inquiry about reading and meaning illuminates the artistic properties of Wright’s oeuvre.
Our seminar will begin with Louise Rosenblatt’s theory that the reader “assuming the aesthetic stance, selects out and synthesizes – interinanimates – his responses to the author’s pattern of words” (The Reader, the Text, the Poem 53). We will test the possibilities and limits of the theory through self-conscious readings of Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) and Black Boy (1945; restored edition 1991). One outcome of the seminar should be new ideas about what an engaged and historicized encounter with Wright’s works might entail.
Convener:
Jerry W. Ward, Jr., professor of English and African world studies at Dillard University, earned a B.S. in mathematics from Tougaloo College (1964) and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia (1978). He is one of the co-founders of the Richard Wright Circle and co-editor of the Richard Wright Encyclopedia (Greenwood 2008). He wrote the introduction for the 1993 paperback edition of Black Boy. He taught at Tougaloo College for thirty-two years and has been a member of the Dillard University faculty since 2002. He was convenor of a Faculty Resource Network Seminar in June 1993. Ward has been a program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985), a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1999-2000), and the Moss Chair of Excellence in English at the University of Memphis (1996). His poems and articles have appeared in such periodicals as the Mississippi Quarterly, The Black Scholar, ADE Bulletin, Callaloo, Xavier Review, African American Review, Drumvoices Revue, and Georgia Review. He is co-editor of Redefining American Literary History (1990) and Black Southern Voices (1992); he compiled and edited Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African American Poetry (1997); his most recent publication is THE KATRINA PAPERS: A Journal of Trauma and Recovery (2008).
READING, WRITING, AND SERVICE LEARNING
The Program
This course will introduce teachers to a model for community outreach in an undergraduate writing program, a model developed in the last seven years at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
The Gallatin Writing Program sponsors two projects that connect students with adults and high school students: The Literacy Project and Great World Texts. The Literacy Project, which began in 2001, consists of a service-learning course that combines the academic study of the adult literacy/ESOL field with volunteer work at five partner institutions; a weekly writing class with undergraduate student-teachers at one of the partner sites; publications including The Literacy Review, an annual compilation of the best writing by adults in literacy/ ESOL programs throughout New York City edited, photographed, and designed by undergraduates; and the annual all-day, free Literacy Review Workshops in Teaching Writing to Adults. In Great World Texts, initiated in fall 2008 at Gallatin, students and faculty in a service-learning course collaborate with students and faculty in New York City high schools in reading a canonical or “contemporary classic” literary work (this year, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel, Weep Not, Child), creating writing and art related to the work, and presenting them at a celebration.
Seminar readings will include works by John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and publications of the Gallatin Writing Program. An undergraduate editor of the Literacy Review and an undergraduate mentor for Great World Texts will share their experiences with seminar participants. We also will view videos of the Literacy Review and Great World Texts final presentations, and there will be a field trip to a writing class for immigrants.
Convener:
June Foley has been the first director of the Writing Program at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individual Study since fall 2002. Her first-year writing seminars include “Meta-morphoses” and “Writers on Writing.” Her advanced writing courses include “Writing Your Life: the Memoir,” “Writing as Social Action,” and “New York City Stories.” Dr. Foley received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from NYU. She won a Literacy Recognition Award from the Literacy Assistance Center of New York in 2008 for developing the Literacy Project.
TEACHING AND LEARNING ABOUT EVOLUTION 150 YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES
The Program
This workshop is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Origins at New York University
The famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once claimed that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” The year 2009 marks two important anniversaries for biology –200 years since Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the publication of his seminal work Origin of Species. The Origin of Species, which sold out in a single day (November 24, 1859), put a name and face on a theory that had been floating around more than a century before. It also sparked a debate that has continued for one hundred and fifty years.
The seminar will focus on evolutionary science and education. It will include lectures, discussions and hands-on classes to teach educators about major topics in primate and human evolution and to examine the science behind evolutionary theory. Classes will rely on a wide range of resources to study morphology and comparative anatomy (fossil casts, 3D virtual models). We will introduce participants to the genetic databases used to test models of evolutionary history. These skills will then be applied to real questions about the human fossil record (e.g., do two fossils represent the same or different species?). The seminar will incorporate web-based resources that will be made available to all participants after its completion.
We will also focus on strategies for teaching evolution, how to address frequently asked questions, the evidence for human evolution as well as the arguments against evolution. We will engage in discussions of questions including: What is evolutionary theory? Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? What can morphology and genetics tell us about the process and pattern of evolution? What is the evidence for human evolution? Why do scientists sometimes interpret fossil evidence differently? Recently, the question of whether or not an alternative to evolutionary theory should be taught has resurfaced in several states (e.g., Texas, Pennsylvania, Kansas). Pertinent to this debate, we plan to devote a session to addressing evolution and creationism, covering many of its current manifestations (Scientific creationism, intelligent design, etc.)
This seminar is suitable for participants who are interested in furthering their knowledge of evolutionary science and developing effective methods for teaching evolution in the classroom.
Conveners:
Shara Bailey received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 2002, was a post-doctoral fellow at George Washington University until 2004, and research scientist for the Max Planck Institute - Leipzig until 2006. She has been an assistant professor at New York University since 2005. Bailey’s research focuses on the later stages of human evolution and dental anthropology. She has worked extensively on Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans from Europe, including the earliest known modern humans from the site of Pestera cu Oase in Romania. She has collected dental morphometric data on nearly every Neanderthal and Upper Paleolithic modern human specimen available for study and has built an extensive comparative database of contemporary and fossil human dental morphometrics. She recently published a co-edited volume (with Jean-Jacques Hublin) on Dental Perspectives on Human Evolution with Springer Press. In addition to fossil hominids, she is involved in projects investigating dental variation and systematics of extant hominoids.
Todd Disotell is a professor of anthropology at New York University. He received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from Harvard, both in anthropology. His interests focus on primate and human evolution at all levels from the populational to the supra-ordinal. His research encompasses primate evolution and mammalian evolution, molecular systematics and phylogenetic analysis, human evolution and human variation, population genetics, molecular evolution, evolution of disease, phylogeography, bioinformatics and computer modeling, ancient DNA, and conservation genetics. Over the last 16 years he has taught courses including Molecular Evolution, Human Variation, Skeletal Morphology, Systematic Methodologies, Molecular Lab Techniques, Human Genetics & Biology, Phylogenetic Analysis, Human Evolution, Introduction to Biological Anthropology, Molecular Evolution of the Primates, Race, Science and Politics, Emerging Diseases, and Genes. He has published over 50 articles and book chapters and leads a large research group in the New York University Molecular Primatology Laboratories.
THE AFRICAN ROOTS OF JAZZ
The Program
This program is co-sponsored by the Office of Global Programs and Africa House at New York University.
This seminar covers the circular musical trans-Atlantic connection between Africa and the New World that began in the days of slavery and resulted in jazz and other forms of Black Diasporic popular performance. By various routes these African American forms of music were introduced to Africa where they resonated and impacted on the development of local, popular music, dance and drama.
The seminar will therefore bring together researchers working on both sides of the Black ‘Afro’ Atlantic and will touch on the following points. The African retentions in American jazz and blues as well as early examples of Black Diasporic music ‘returning home’ to Africa. These include the introduction of Jamaican goombay to West Africa by ‘maroon’ freed-slaves from 1800, the catalytic effect on Ghanaian highlife of the brass-band calypsos of West Indian colonial regiments stationed in Africa during the late 19th century, and the African craze for ragtime and minstrelsy in the early 1900’s introduced through music-scores, early records and visiting African American groups.
During the Second World War, American and British troops operating in Africa brought swing jazz-music with them, which influenced the dance-band style of Ghanaian and Nigerian highlife that in turn became the musical zeitgeist of the independence era. This jazz influence was augmented in the 1950’s by African tours of Louis Armstrong. Furthermore, the Ghanaian highlife drummer Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba) moved on to jazz in the mid-fifties when he began to release a string of Afro-jazz recordings in the US that influenced Max Roach and other jazz musicians. Then soul music hit Africa in the 1960’s, which in the 1970’s became transmuted into Afro-soul, Afro-funk and the Afro-beat of Nigeria’s Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Currently, it is American hiphop and rap and Jamaican reggae and raga that has crossed the Atlantic and is becoming Africanised. At the same time the popular music of Africa itself is criss-crossing back over the Atlantic in the form of ‘World Music’.
This seminar will help throw light on the complex trans-Atlantic criss-crossing of African and New World popular performance that goes back centuries and is still going on today.
Conveners:
John Collins came to Ghana in 1952 and has been involved in the West African music scene since 1969. Collins obtained a degree in sociology and archaeology from the University of Ghana in 1972 and his doctorate in ethnomusicology from SUNY Buffalo in 1994. He has written seven books and numerous journalistic and academic publications on African popular and neo-traditional music. In 1987, Collins was made an honorary life-member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). Collins has previously served as technical director of the joint University of Ghana/Mainz African Music Re-documentation Project and consultant for the World Bank’s Assistance to the African Music Industry project. He currently chairs the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation (BAPMAF) in Accra and is a professor in the Music Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, from where he runs (with Aaron Bebe Sukura) the Local Dimension highlife band.
Michael White is a professor of African-American music and Spanish at Xavier University of Louisiana. He performs, writes and lectures on jazz, and is among a very few current clarinetists to develop an original authentic interpretation of the exciting New Orleans style. He currently serves as a commissioner of the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and has coordinated, performed in and hosted numerous jazz programs for Jazz at Lincoln Center and other organizations. In 1981, White founded The Original Liberty Jazz Band with the express intent of preserving the musical heritage of New Orleans. He has performed and recorded with noted musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Lionel Hampton, and Marcus Roberts. He was awarded the rank of Chevalier of Arts and Letters by the French Government in 1987 and a National Heritage Fellowship Award by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2008.
WOMEN IN FILM
The Program
How can we account for the appeal of the screen persona of Lillian Gish to the 1910s and 1920s, for that of Barbara Stanwyck to the 1930s and 1940s, of Marilyn Monroe to the 1950s, of Pam Grier or Jane Fonda to the 1970s, or of Halle Berry or Angelina Jolie today? Their popularity must be understood in relation to the specific social and cultural contexts in which they appeared. Each persona possessed great resonance for its own era but can hardly be imagined affecting a different one in a similar way. Imagine a Hollywood film featuring Pam Grier in the 1920s or one with Lillian Gish today? Gender images that resonate deeply for one era can seem preposterous for another. Why, and what pedagogical pertinence does this issue have?
This seminar explores the diversity of representations of women visible in (primarily Hollywood) films over the past century and establishes contexts for understanding the socio-cultural significance of some of them. It also examines the presence, and absence, of women behind the camera and addresses questions whose answers vary substantially with the era to which they apply. Those questions include, among others: What is a woman? What agency does she have in determining her fate or in resisting unacceptable options imposed upon her? What are the power relations between women and men? What are the social roles and responsibilities available to women? What is an admirable/subversive/desirable/transgressive woman? and What are progressive and reactionary images of women?
The seminar will draw upon theoretical and critical approaches developed within the fields of women’s studies, feminist film studies, art history, literary studies, gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender studies, and social history; it will explore representations of women with attention to race, sexuality, nationality, age, and genre as well as practices and politics within the film industry. It also will consider filmic images of women with reference to those simultaneously circulating in the culture at large, as well as ways in which such images have changed over time.
Pertinent readings will be made available in advance to seminar members, and films will be shown and discussed in class. The responses to these materials, drawing upon the cultural and pedagogical backgrounds of seminar members, are an important component of the seminar. Guest speakers will share their expertise in this topic as well as its pedagogical applications. The seminar will engage material pertinent to many disciplines, and we will discuss ways in which we can incorporate its content into diverse curricula.
Convener:
William Luhr is professor of English at Saint Peter’s College and co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. His recent books include Screening Genders (co-edited with Krin Gabbard, Rutgers University Press, 2008) and Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying -- Third Edition (co-authored with Peter Lehman, Blackwell Publishing, 2008). He has just completed a book on film noir for Blackwell Publishing.