Spring 2008 Seminars
Summer 2008 Seminars
Summer I
NEW 212 HUMANITIES I: Creativity
NEW 237 SOCIAL SCIENCE I: Cooperation and Conflict
NEW 472 SOCIAL SCIENCE II: Social Change
NEW 490 The Story Acorn
NEW 490 Special Topics: Food, Farm, and Culture in Tuscany
Summer II
NEW 273 SOCIAL SCIENCE I
NEW 490 HUMANITIES II: 1968
Fall 2008 Seminars
NEW 100 Introduction to Integrative and Interdisciplinary Studies
NEW 212 HUMANITIES I: Creativity
NEW 226 NATURAL SCIENCE I: Organic Farming
NEW 230 NATURAL SCIENCE I: Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies
NEW 237 SOCIAL SCIENCE I: Cooperation and Conflict
NEW 238 HONORS SOCIAL SCIENCE I
NEW 243 NATURAL SCIENCE I: The Laboratory Experience
NEW 338 New College Review I
NEW 436 SOCIAL SCIENCE II: Public Leadership
NEW 474 SOCIAL SCIENCE II: Survival
NEW 490 Understanding Global Climate Change: Science & Public Perception
NEW 490 Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture
NEW 490 Special Topics: The Story Acorn
NEW 495 Capstone Seminar and Senior Project
NEW 212-001 HUMANITIES I: Creativity (FA, HU)
STAFF
MTWR 2-4:50, 101 Carmichael Hall
This interdisciplinary seminar uses creativity as its organizing principle. Human culture, the creative process, and creative expression are explored through written texts (novels, poetry, essays), film, research, oral and written reports, journals, creative projects, out-of-classroom experiences, and class discussion. This course aims to increase the student’s awareness of the visual arts, music, theatre, creative literature, and dance. In addition, we will consider questions
of values, ethics, and aesthetics as they are represented in the arts and literature.
NEW 237-001 SOCIAL SCIENCE I: Cooperation and Conflict (SB)
Barbara Schlichtman J.D. (bsschlichtman@bama.ua.edu)
MTWR 10-12:50, 101 Carmichael Hall
Cooperation and Conflict is a study in conflict resolution. Students will develop tools to identify needs and interests that fuel conflict while also learning tools to work toward conflict resolution.
NEW 472-001 SOCIAL SCIENCE II: Social Change (W)
Dr. Jerome Rosenberg (jrosenbe@bama.ua.edu)
MTWR 2-4:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
The class will study Genocides and the Holocaust, attempting to understand it as an intense and unparalleled human experience. The causes, events, outcomes and implications are researched through books, films, interviews, tapes, various documentaries and class discussions. This course will look at the historical event, the trends of prejudice, anti-Semitism and mass movements, and the many historical antecedents that led to the Holocaust and are identifiable as contributors to other examples of mass destruction. For the Holocaust, we will study the rise of Nazism, the emergence of the institutions of the Holocaust and the Final Solution, the victims and victimizers, the immediate and long term implications and consequences of the Holocaust and the world today. As a paradigmatic model, the Holocaust will lead us to examine other genocides.
NEW 490-001: The Story Acorn
Billy Field (billyfield@bama.ua.edu)
MTWR 10-12:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
You’re going to learn the elements that go into a good story – and you’re going to put them in your story -- the one you write, or the one you and your group write. It takes a strong acorn to grow a strong oak tree. It takes a strong story-acorn to grow a strong story. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do in this class – write a strong story and then make it into a movie. It does not have to be long, but it needs to be about something you care about. It can be a documentary or a narrative movie. Interested in environmental issues? Make a movie about that. Interested in a local artist? The struggle of an artist is always a good story. The basis of a story is a problem. Find a problem about which you have a passion, turn that passion into a story and then a movie. Learn camera, lighting, how to record good audio, how to edit digitally and how to work with actors.
Class will break into production groups. Each group will consist of between 2 and 4 students, so everybody gets to play. If you want to work alone, that’s fine.
Course taught, led and inspired by Billy Field, who spent fifteen years in Hollywood working for MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers and more.
If you want to learn to write a strong story, turn that story into a movie, then broadcast that movie to the world over the internet, this is the course for you.
NEW 490-870 Special Topics: Food, Farm, and Culture in Tuscany
Dr. Julia Cherry (julia.cherry@ua.edu)
Tuscany, Italy!!!
This seminar enrolls 14 students from The University of Alabama for a hands-on, two-week course at the Spannocchia Foundation, a beautifully renovated, twelfth-century agricultural estate. While at Spannocchia, students will participate in workshops, lectures, discussions, and tours on local sustainable agriculture (vineyards, olive groves, vegetable crops), animal husbandry (bees and pigs), field-to-table cooking, the Tuscan cultural landscape, and the international slow food movement. The slow food movement—in contrast to “fast food”—started in Italy and emphasizes local sustainable farming and the key role played by well-prepared meals and leisurely dining in nourishing both family and community. A course reader and writing assignments are required of all students. Dr. Cherry will partner with the staff at Spannocchia to provide the instruction, which will be in English, with Italian immersion classes available to students as an elective. The course will include one-day fieldtrips to nearby Florence and to Siena (with dining at slow food restaurants), as well as to an organic cheese farm, agriturismo farm, and fine winery. Students and faculty will live onsite in renovated historic farm buildings and dine together on meals that they and the staff prepare largely from the bounty of Spannocchia itself. The course will allow students to compare sustainable agriculture practices within the United States with such practices elsewhere and to gain an understanding of the global significance of the growing slow food movement. This 4.0 credit hour seminar is designated as an upper level Humanities II seminar in New College.
NEW 273-026 SOCIAL SCIENCE I (SB)
Dr. Jerome Rosenberg (jrosenbe@bama.ua.edu)
MTWR 2-4:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
This introductory Social Science Seminar will look at methods of analysis such as the Inquiry Model, Ethics Analysis Model, and Nature of Science Model. We will focus on a number of major social issues to be determined by general class interest and then examine the ethical dimensions of those issues. Web ethics may also be a topic.
NEW 490-026 HUMANITIES II: 1968
Dr. Jim Hall (jhall2@nc.ua.edu)
MTWR 10-12:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
During the summer of its 40th anniversary, we’ll pursue an interdisciplinary consideration of that annis mirabilis “1968” with an eye to measuring (a) the usefulness of studying a single year as a measure of cultural and social change, and (b) the particular character of that year. “1968” has been alternately figured as richly utopian and archly dystopian; it is either seen as the high point in a twentieth century trajectory towards human liberation, or as the ultimate breakdown in enlightenment values, the end of civility, reason, and tradition.
And just what did take place in 1968? The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Czech resistance to Soviet Communism, the emergence of Black Power, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, student revolutions in Paris and Mexico City, the riots in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, and rich cultural expression in poetry, music, drama, fiction, and the visual arts.
We’ll use Mark Kurlansky’s 1968: The Year That Rocked the World as our anchor and sample as much primary material as we possibly can over a month. Students will investigate 1968 in Alabama and UA history, and will be expected to vigorous and enthusiastic conversation partners. There should be a series of short papers and an opportunity to pursue a topic of individual interest.
NEW 100-001: Introduction to Integrative and Interdisciplinary Studies
Dr. Catherine M. Roach (croach@nc.ua.edu)
W 10-11:50
This course, completed by all New Collegians, usually within their first two semesters in New College, aims to help students better understand the opportunities provided by New College, as well as expose them to some of the ideas behind interdisciplinary study and some of the themes that New College classes will cover. There will be required readings on the idea of interdisciplinarity as well as projects and presentations.
Appropriate to its academic subject matter, this course seeks to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. We want to bring you fully into New College and get you up to speed on rules and regulations and give you the support you need to succeed on your academic journey. We want to introduce you to the situation of innovative college programs like New College and hopefully make you feel part of an extended American educational tradition. We want to begin the task of making you into critical, engaged, and skillful interdisciplinary thinkers. And, finally, we want to give you the opportunity to come together as a community of learners.
NEW 212-001,002 HUMANITIES I: Creativity (FA, HU)
001: STAFF, TR 9:30-11:20, 101 Carmichael Hall
002: STAFF, MW 9-10:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
This interdisciplinary seminar uses creativity as its organizing
principle. Human culture, the creative process, and creative expression
are explored through written texts (novels, poetry, essays), film,
research, oral and written reports, journals, creative projects, out-of-
classroom experiences, and class discussion. This course aims to
increase the student’s awareness of the visual arts, music, theatre,
creative literature, and dance. In addition, we will consider questions
of values, ethics, and aesthetics as they are represented in the arts
and literature.
NEW 226-001,002 NATURAL SCIENCE I: Organic Farming
Dr. Joe Brown (joebrown@bama.ua.edu; 348-0418)
BOTH SECTIONS: W 11-12:50 101 Carmichael Hall
001: T 3-4:50 (at the farm)
002: R 3-4:50 (at the farm)
This is an experiential learning course designed to teach students the basics of organic farming (healthy soil life, composting, cover crops, seedling transplantation, insect control, harvesting, etc.) while also addressing fundamental questions behind organic farming: Why do it? What is the problem with the industrial agriculture model? How does our food production fit into an analysis of current environmental problems and solutions? What is the role of food in culture, especially in light of the growing “food revolution” represented by the slow food movement, the “eat local” movement, and the growth of organics? The course takes place on a working organic farm that is one of the oldest Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in the country. For the four months of the course, the students are actively involved with the planning, growing, and harvesting of produce at the organic farm. Half of the class time will be spent in the fields and greenhouse of the farm, learning how organic farming works by doing the work itself. We will work in the greenhouse, start seeds, plan the garden, make compost, evaluate soil, prepare beds, plant seeds, transplant seedlings, weed, hoe, and harvest.
Fairly extensive readings—in the philosophy and how-to’s of organic farming—also form an important part of the course. Our on-campus discussion section every Tuesday is devoted to discussion of the readings. Students are required to write weekly response papers (1-2 pgs).
NEW 230-001 NATURAL SCIENCE I: Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies
Dr. Michael Steinberg (mksteinberg@as.ua.edu; 348-0349)
TR 12-1:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
This course provides a multi- and interdisciplinary survey of major environmental concepts, issues, and controversies. As a survey course, it covers a lot of material at the expense of detailed examinations of any one issue or concept. However, it is necessarily broad and supports an integrated approach to basic environmental literacy from a scientific perspective. The study of environmental problems is inherently interdisciplinary. One cannot understand the origin of environmental problems and impact or potential solutions without analyzing the behavior of natural systems as well as their interaction with economic, political and cultural factors. Thus examining various environmental issues in a current events context will be an important part of this class.
NEW 237-001,002,003 SOCIAL SCIENCE I: Cooperation and Conflict (SB)
001: Barbara Schlichtman J.D. (bsschlichtman@bama.ua.edu)
TR 2:30-4:20, 101 Carmichael Hall
002: STAFF, MW 9-10:50, 101 Carmichael Hall
003: STAFF, TR 11:30-1:20, 101 Carmichael Hall
Cooperation and Conflict is a study in conflict resolution. Students
will develop tools to identify needs and interests that fuel conflict
while also learning tools to work toward conflict resolution.
NEW 238-001 HONORS SOCIAL SCIENCE I (SB)
Dr. Marysia Galbraith (mgalbrai@nc.ua.edu)
MW 2-3:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
This honors seminar draws upon various social science disciplines to
explore the bases of cooperation and conflict. What causes social
groups to get along and work together? What makes them disagree and
resort to fighting? The seminar explores these questions in relation
to un-centralized societies, poverty, and immigration. Through seminar
discussions and deliberation, students learn to understand the
perspectives of others and to develop informed opinions of their own.
The course includes a service learning component
NEW 243-001,002 NATURAL SCIENCE I: The Laboratory Experience (N)
001: Dr. Julia Cherry (Julia.cherry@ua.edu)
T 3-6:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
002: Dr. Joe Brown (joebrown@bama.ua.edu; 348-0418)
W 3-6:50, 101 Carmichael Hall
This seminar demonstrates how laboratory and field research play an essential role in the understanding and advancement of science. Several multidisciplinary experiments and exercises are performed in physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and ecology in an effort to increase scientific literacy and to provide knowledge for addressing the scientific basis of real-world problems through service learning. As a service learning course, students are expected to complete hours outside of the regularly scheduled class period. The course assignments have been designed with this obligation in mind. Examples of assignments include laboratory write-ups, presentations and discussions of science in the news, completion of 16 hours of service learning, a reflective essay, and journal entries on assigned topics. Readings are taken from a variety of sources providing fundamental scientific knowledge and detailing important scientific discoveries. This 4.0 credit hour seminar is designated as a natural science (N) course with a lab. No prerequisites.
NEW 338-001: New College Review I
STAFF
W 5-6:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
This workshop provides students with practical experience in writing and publishing a special interest publication, the New College Review. Students gain experience in thematic approaches to a publication, conceptual formation for an audience, socially responsible publishing, and writing and editing persuasive essays. Students are strongly encouraged to take both NEW 338 and NEW 339 in sequence.
NEW 436-001 SOCIAL SCIENCE II: Public Leadership (W)
STAFF
TBA
This semester helps students develop the understanding and skills necessary for the practice of public leadership. The course emphasizes framing public issues for discussion and leading the decision making necessary to set the direction of public policy.
NEW 474-001 SOCIAL SCIENCE II: Survival (W)
Dr. Jerome Rosenberg (jrosenbe@bama.ua.edu)
R 5-8:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
In this seminar, students study the nature of human and societal survival under extreme conditions. Topics range from issues of a global nature to violent crime, prejudice, and disease. Causes, effects, and possible solutions are all considered.
NEW 490-001: Understanding Global Climate Change: Science & Public Perception
Dr. Julia Cherry (julia.cherry@ua.edu)
MW 12-1:50, 109 Carmichael Hall
This seminar is designed to introduce students to the scientific body of evidence surrounding global climate change so that they can evaluate arguments for and against climate change and global warming. In addition to the science of global climate change, this seminar covers public perception and coverage of the topic in the media. Resources used in the course are taken from a variety of sources including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), primary scientific articles, popular magazines and other media outlets, and fictional accounts of climate change from movies and novels. This 4.0 credit hour seminar is designated as an upper level Natural Sciences II seminar in New College.
NEW 490-002: Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture
Dr. Catherine M. Roach (croach@nc.ua.edu)
R 2-4:30, 109 Carmichael Hall
This seminar focuses on issues of gender and sexuality. It is relevant to male as well as female students. Through readings and discussion, the course examines the cultural complex of contemporary American popular culture.
Questions we will examine include:
What constitutes “femininity” and “masculinity” in 21st century American popular culture? How is sexuality shaped, influenced, and “policed” in society? To what degree does society and culture impose gender roles and sexual practices on individuals, and to what degree (and with what consequences) are individuals free to craft their own gender identities and sexual lifestyles? Is gender a “performance”? How have gender roles changed, for both women and men, as a result of feminism, the women’s movement, the men’s movement, the gay and lesbian rights movement? How do we evaluate these changes?
As a case study that springs from research the professor is presently conducting: what do we make of the phenomena of exotic dancing, of the wider category of sex work, and of the prevalence of “striptease culture” in the mainstream popular culture today? Is the woman stripper exploited and degraded by a patriarchal culture that treats her as a sex object, or can this be an empowering and enjoyable profession compatible with feminist principles? What is “sex-positive feminism” and what do you make of its claims?
NEW 490-003: Special Topics: The Story Acorn
Billy Field (billyfield@bama.ua.edu)
T 3-5:30, 109 Oliver-Barnard Hall
You’re going to learn the elements that go into a good story – and you’re going to put them in your story -- the one you write, or the one you and your group write. It takes a strong acorn to grow a strong oak tree. It takes a strong story-acorn to grow a strong story. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do in this class – write a strong story and then make it into a movie. It does not have to be long, but it needs to be about something you care about. It can be a documentary or a narrative movie. Interested in environmental issues? Make a movie about that. Interested in a local artist? The struggle of an artist is always a good story. The basis of a story is a problem. Find a problem about which you have a passion, turn that passion into a story and then a movie. Learn camera, lighting, how to record good audio, how to edit digitally and how to work with actors.
Class will break into production groups. Each group will consist of between 2 and 4 students, so everybody gets to play. If you want to work alone, that’s fine.
Course taught, led and inspired by Billy Field, who spent fifteen years in Hollywood working for MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers and more.
If you want to learn to write a strong story, turn that story into a movie, then broadcast that movie to the world over the internet, this is the course for you.
NEW 495-001: Capstone Seminar and Senior Project
Dr. Catherine M. Roach (croach@nc.ua.edu)
W 10-11:50
The senior project, completed by all New College students in their senior year, gives students the opportunity to put into practice interdisciplinary and integrative methods of scholarship while refining their knowledge of their depth study area. Projects must result in a piece of interdisciplinary writing and a half-hour oral presentation at our New College Senior Research Symposium, and may include other components as well.
