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 home / reunions / reunion resource center / reunion 2008 / alumnae college / course descriptions |
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| Sessions I (9 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.)& II (11:15 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.) |
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| Click here for course schedule... |
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| Mini-Classes |
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Option A: Turning Points
Marilyn Schuster, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Study of Women and Gender
This class is based on the first-year seminar that assigns historical and fictional texts that ask questions such as: how have women (and some men) in the Americas understood defining moments in life such as coming of age, coming out, coming to freedom, coming to consciousness? We consider historical events (migrations, internment, war, lynching) as well as personal turning points (falling in love, leaving home, resisting oppression). How can these stories help us understand our own turning points? We will read a sample assignment: "My Last Duchess" by Margaret Atwood.
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Option B: (May 16 only) Popular Culture
Kevin Rozario, Associate Professor, American Studies
What is popular culture? Why has it become such an important topic of academic analysis? What does it mean to study popular culture in a classroom? Data on the amount of time Americans spend online, watching television, or listening to music reveals the extraordinary influence of popular culture on our lives and imaginations, not to mention on the economy. Working through a series of examples (from radio, television, movies), this session will analyze popular culture as a site of creative expression, social instruction, and political conflict.
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Option B: (May 23 only) The Rights and Wrongs of Medicine: Anthropological Perspectives on Bioethics I
Donald Joralemon, Professor, Anthropology
Newspaper headlines routinely report on new ethical dilemmas in our medical and scientific worlds. The resulting debates are typically framed by doctors, philosophers, lawyers, theologians and politicians. So, where are the social scientists? During the first session, we'll have a look at the standard ways that bioethics weighs the rights and wrongs of medicine. Then we will review the history of social science contributions to bioethics and ask why they are so marginal. The second session will be devoted to an anthropological exploration of a couple of thorny issues in medicine. |
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Option C: All Over the Map: Smith Poetry
Ellen Watson, Director, Poetry Center; Anne Boutelle, Senior Lecturer, English Language and Literature
A reading and interactive discussion of the range of poetic voices of Smith faculty from W.H. Auden to the present. How do these voices reflect the broader trends in contemporary poetry? How do poems of radically different sensibilities/strategies conjure feeling, make meaning, and direct our experience of reading? |
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Option D: (May 16 only) The Globalization of American Culture in Historical Perspective
Dan Horowitz, Mary Huggins Gamble Professor, American Studies
For more than a century, American culture—the nation's values, institutions, advertisements, art, and music—influence people around the globe. A wide range of cultural expressions traveled abroad—circuses, amusement parks and Buffalo Bill shows in the late 19th century; movies beginning soon after; African American music, advertising, and Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s—to take a few examples. In preparation, please read from Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through 20th–Century Europe, Harvard University Press, 2005 by Victoria de Grazia (Smith, '68): “A Model Mrs. Consumer,” chapter 9. |
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Option D: (May 23 only) Narratives of Internment
Floyd Cheung, Associate Professor, English Language and Literature
During World War II, the US government put over 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps. A great deal of moving and critical literature and art came out of this experience. While the spring 2007 undergraduate class studied novels and documentaries as well as historical documents and other materials, in this session, we will focus on a few examples, including sketches of camp life by Miné Okubo, photographs by internees and visitors like Ansel Adams, and poetry by Mitsuye Yamada and Sesshu Foster.
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Option E: Adaptation: The Case of Rear Window
Jefferson Hunter, Professor, English Language and Literature
This session will be a case study in adaptation—that creative process which turns something written into something screened, thereby revealing the distinctive qualities of both literature and film. Our example will be Cornell Woolrich's pulp-ficton short story “It Had to Be Murder” (which participants should read before the class) and the film Alfred Hitchcock made of it in 1954, Rear Window (which participants should see, if possible, before the class).
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Option F (May 16 only): When Being Perfect Is No Good At All
Patricia DiBartolo, Associate Professor, Psychology
Many of us live lives in pursuit of perfection—as mothers, spouses, or working women—but often fail to recognize the costs of these strivings. This session will focus on the latest scientific research from clinical psychology on the construct of perfectionism, including its costs, correlates, and controversies. We will examine research revealing the mental health implications for living a perfectionistic life as well as how to channel achievement strivings in a truly productive manner. |
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Option F (May 23 only): Popular Song in the 19th century as a Reflection of Race in America: the Case of “Oh! Susanna”
Richard Sherr, Caroline L. Wall ’27 Professor of Music (Sage 215)
Most know the tune and some of the words of the song "Oh! Susanna". Many probably first learned it as a “folk song” in school. Fewer perhaps, know that the song was composed in 1848 by Stephen Foster to be sung by a white man in blackface in a minstrel show. Even fewer also know the entire original four verses of the lyrics, one of which blithely speaks of mass murder by electrocution of five hundred African Americans. "Oh! Susanna" and songs like it are good examples of how 19th-century American popular culture dealt with racial tensions that existed then and were to explode into the Civil War. This session will look at this question through a detailed musical and contextual analysis of "Oh! Susanna" and similar songs by Foster and others. |
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Option G: A Man’s World, A Woman’s Respect: Reading Black Culture
Kevin Quashie, Associate Professor, Department of Afro- American Studies; member, Program for the Study of Women and Gender
This session is based on an introductory course that guides students in thinking critically about black culture. Our primary goal is to develop a level of cultural literacy. To that end, we will consider how James Brown's classic black power anthem, “It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World,” gains from being paired with Aretha Franklin's spectacular “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”...or even her canonical rendition of Otis Redding's “RESPECT.” How do all three songs reflect but also influence American culture? In engaging these questions, we will explore two prominent characteristics of black cultural arts-first person and doubleness. |
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| 'Read With Us' Book Discussions |
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Option H: Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
Susan VanDyne, Professor, Study of Women and Gender
Stone Diaries by Canadian author Carol Shields is one of the very best historical novels that recreates the unrecorded stories of women. The role of memory and how it works is central to the novel and it uses multiple points of view to unsettle easy answers about meanings of the central female character's life, an ordinary wife and mother. We learn a lot about our culture by examining what we collectively and individually think we understand about human behavior and what we can't fathom, what we remember and what we forget. Shields fascinate me by how precisely she can render the textures of daily life in the Victorian era, and at the same time how her probing of the unconscious resonates with our own contemporary doubts, fears, urges. At heart, the novel is a mystery, and I return to it again and again captivated by what I'm still working to understand. |
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Option I: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi
Janie Vanpee ’72, Professor, French Language and Literature
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood was the first graphic novel assigned as summer reading to new Smith students in 2007. It offers readers an autobiographical perspective of the Islamic Revolution, as written and drawn by Marjane Satrapi, who lived through the turbulent period. Persepolis was chosen because of its simple-but-effective documentation of the growth of a young girl amid the rise of the Islamic Republic. This book discussion will consider topics addressed both in the book and by the book itself.
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| Lunch and Presentation |
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Lunch and Presentation (May 16 only)
Celinda Lake '75, Lake Research
Celinda Lake, a leading political strategist for the Democratic party and one of the nation's foremost experts on electing women candidates, will speak about women's trends, women voters and the upcoming presidential election. Her groundbreaking research on unmarried women in conjunction with Women's Voices Women Vote produced the definitive report to date on this politically powerful and ever-growing demographic group. Lake also co-authored the book, What Women Really Want, with Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, which examines the way women are changing the political landscape in America.
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Lunch and Presentation (May 23 only)
Howard Gold, Professor, Government
Howard Gold, will speak about the American electoral landscape at the conclusion of the primary season. Gold will talk about the parties, their coalitions, the Electoral College, and what lessons can be learned from recent past elections. |
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