Community Seminars
CNW 101 16: Theatre in Performance
MWF 11:30
Profs. Dale Daigle and Michele Volansky
In this course, students will study the various components of theatre performance (acting, directing, design, playwriting, and dramaturgy), and the collaborative process involved in assembling these components into a live theatre performance. Group attendance at live performances will provide material for the study of the critical tools employed in evaluating stage performance. Students will gain experience in each of the above components through individual assignments and group projects. Focusing on the process of collective creation, students will develop a group performance as a culmination of their course work.
CNW 101 42: Readin', Writin' and Fishin' on the Eastern Shore
MWF 11:30
Prof. Sandy Hiortdahl
This course examines life on Maryland's Eastern Shore from a variety of perspectives, including literary, cultural, social, and environmental. While we will focus primarily on fiction and creative non-fiction that examines this diverse region between the Chesapeake and the Atlantic, we will also take the opportunity to step outside and explore the farms, rivers, and local establishments of this wonderful place. Students will see the Eastern Shore in new ways and be given the opportunity to embrace its many contradictions, from the "sho'men" to the local traditions of "breezin' the freeze" to the family farms and the legacies of those who have given much to the area.
CNW 101 43: Writing on Water
TTh 2:30
Prof. Meredith Davies Hadaway
Explore the Chester River and its tributaries through reading and writing in multiple genres. Emphasis will be on critical and creative response to discoveries made through the writings of others, your own writing, and excursions afloat to such places as Fossil Rock, Mummies Cove, and Eastern Neck Island.
CNW 102 13: The Wisdom of Mistakes and Failures
TTh 10:00
Prof. Michael Davenport
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sure sign that you're not trying anything very innovative." (Woody Allen)
Much of today's life is concerned with how to avoid mistakes and failing. But what if this idea itself is a mistake? Mistakes, after all, are essential to learning and progress, and so are failures. The glue in Post-It notes, for example, was invented accidentally by a scientist looking for other kinds of adhesives. It took years for his company to realize that the new, weaker glue had any value. Thomas Edison tried out thousands of plant fibers over many years trying to find the right filament of the light bulb before discovering that cotton worked best. When asked how it felt to fail so often and for so long, he reputedly replied, "I didn't fail. I found a thousand ways that didn't work." And in one of history's more notable mistakes, Christopher Columbus went looking for a westward passage to India but found America instead.
In this course we will read a variety of texts about failures and mistakes. We will examine failures across many key areas in our society such as business, entertainment, and sports, to see what they can tell us about our past, present, and future, and to learn when a mistake can be "useful." We will look at errors that affect one's personal life, to those that have larger impact on communities, nations, and the world. The course will include a field trip pertinent to the readings.
By the end of this course, you will understand the potential value of mistakes and failure, and how a "mistake-positive attitude" can help you to achieve success, regardless of your endeavor. You will be able to sensibly assess the risk of different kinds of mistakes. You will understand the importance of taking risks and learning from mistakes, how to turn apparent failure into success, and how these important concepts have a major impact on the world we live in.
CNW 102 22: History & Philosophy of Sports in America: 1607 - Present
TTh 1:00
Prof. Thomas Finnegan
This course will provide both the historical and philosophical background which has influenced both the development of and impact on American life. The course will incorporate the religious, social, political, educational, and economic factors which have contributed to the pervasive condition of sports in America today at all levels of society. In developing a uniquely American perspective on both the inherent values and importance of sports in our daily lives, the course will explore the major themes and factors which have created this perspective.
Some of the major themes would include: the number and diversity of contributions to our American culture (including sports) which developed from the customs of many countries and societies; how sports in our present day culture have come to symbolize the "good life" as promised in the Declaration of Independence regarding life liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the development of a social stratification within sports due to social and economic realities that created a class system of "wealthy" and "poor" sports relative to one's social and economic position; finally, the confluence of industrialization, technology, immigration, urbanization, and racial integration in the adaptation and development of our sporting heritage from leisure exercise and games to the professional multi-million dollar industry that exists today.
Other specific topics that will be addressed include: educational rationale for sports in the extra-curriculum; the rise of the American sports hero; growth of professional sports; the impact of the media (newspapers, radio, television) on sports and society; the role that professional sports have with regard to minorities and equal opportunity; development of women's opportunities in sports; historical development and perspective of present day issues in intercollegiate and professional sports; and a concluding evaluation of the future course of American sports.
CNW 102 26: America on Film
MW 6:30
Prof. Beverly Wolff
This "Nation" CNW seminar explores the role of film as a powerful medium for both shaping and reflecting American values, social structures, and history. Students will study film and companion literary works and will be engaged in understanding, interpreting, and exposing such figures of our national heritage as the cowboy, the gangster, the independent woman, and the athlete. We will discuss the elements of bigotry, rugged individualism, and capitalism as they are mirrored in American film. Students will be expected to become active viewers of film and to develop critical writing, reading, and thinking skills.
CNW 102 45: 20th Century American Life Reflected in Drama
MW 2:30
Prof. Michele Volansky
In this course, students will study plays by significant American playwrights of the past century to consider the issues they present and the techniques they use to express their often controversial ideas on the condition and direction of contemporary American life. The discussions and writing assignments will concentrate on the literary aspects of the works as well as consider the views expressed on a variety of topical issues, such as immigration, racial prejudice, the roles of women, attitudes toward sexual orientation in athletics and in society in general, the use and abuse of alcohol and drugs, communication within the family or the lack of it, as well as their presentation of the American family.
Works to be studied will include: O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night; William's Streetcar Named Desire; Miller's Death of a Salesman; Wilson's Fences; Kushner's Angels in America; Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs; Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, and Greenberg's Take Me Out.
Members of the class will be required to attend two productions offered by the Washington College Drama Department and/or The Riverside Players, and, if one of the plays studied in the course is in professional production, travel with the class to see it. Students will express their own responses to the works read for class and those seen on stage, both in discussion and in papers of varying lengths and forms, but they also will be required to use the resource materials available in the College's Miller Library, as well as those on the world wide web, in preparation for oral reports and several of the written assignments.
It is the expectation that during the semester students will work with the instructor and the College's writing tutors to strengthen their academic writing skills, to work with members of the Miller Library staff to better understand and use library resources and those of the world wide web, and with various instructors from OIT and one another to continue the development of computer skills (e-mail, word processing, network research and others).
CNW 102 50: The Spirit of Enterprise
MWF 11:30
Prof. Scott Pearson
This course will examine enterprises and entrepreneurs in history, literature, entertainment, and life. We'll consider modern entrepreneurs and their impact on technology, business, economics, and culture.
We'll ask:
- What does it take to be an entrepreneur?
- What are the challenges and the rewards?
- How have entrepreneurs affected the course of history and the development of technology?
- How do entrepreneurs benefit society?
- Why is microenterprise so important for addressing poverty in the developing world?
- Why do so many small enterprises fail, or get stuck in a rut, while other entrepreneurs, like Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, Oprah Winfrey, or Bill Gates, go on to build empires?
CNW 102 64: Generals, Cowboys, & Company Men: Leaders & Followers in the American Tradition
Prof. Michael Harvey
MW 1:30
Americans are ambivalent about leadership. On the one hand, the American political and cultural tradition celebrates the authority and leadership of great individual leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight Eisenhower. On the other hand, Americans mistrust authority and celebrate the lonely individual: the most heroic figure in American mythology is the cowboy, unfenced and unfettered by ties to others. In this course we'll read a variety of texts from literature, history, and the social sciences, to better understand the complexities of the American leadership tradition. We'll read about leaders and followers from the Founding to the present. We'll also explore local leadership, meeting with civic, political, and business leaders from Chestertown and environs. The course includes a trip to the nation's capital to see how some of the nation's leaders (and followers) are commemorated.
CNW 102 67: Information and Communication in America
TTh 6:30
Prof. David Dudek
The course will cover information technology and information dissemination in the United States from the time of the town crier to today's internet. First, the focus will be on the history of the technology used to bring information to society, and how the change in technology revolutionized the delivery of information. The course will take a close look at the public that receives information and at some of the institutions that control it: the media, corporations, and government. The power of information and its worth to various people and institutions will be studied. There will be a focus on the cultural conditions that give need to the various forms of information and the methods in which they are delivered.
The course includes individual meetings with the writing center, writing assignments, experiential learning opportunities, library instruction, web page creation, oral presentations, and written examinations. The main goal is to create independent thinkers, supply them with the tools to locate, evaluate, process, and utilize information sources. Upon completion of this course, students will know the importance of evaluation and clear presentation of information.
CNW 102 68: 1607 and All That: Jamestown, the Chesapeake & America's Origins
TTh 2:30
Prof. Adam Goodheart
Four hundred years ago, the cultures of three continents—Europe, North America, and shortly thereafter, Africa—came together at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to form the nucleus of a new society. In the spring of 2007, the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the continent's first permanent English settlement, will be celebrated nationally and internationally. This class will explore both the roots and the legacy of Jamestown. We will look at history, archaeology, literature, landscape, ecology, and legend (such as the much-retold, much-debated story of Pocahontas) to discover the myriad ways that a tiny outpost on the edge of a vast wilderness shaped the identity of the future American nation.
Over the course of the semester, we will experiment with different ways of investigating the past, and of connecting that past to the present. The class will be taught seminar-style, based not on lectures but on classroom discussions in which we share our thoughts and ideas about the reading. We will also learn to work with a variety of historical sources—from 17th-century artifacts to online databases.
CNW 102 69: Life Changers: Disruptive Technologies & the Human Condition
MWF 10:30
Prof. Susan Vowels
Clayton Christensen coined the term "disruptive technology" in his 1997 classic The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail to describe innovative infant technologies that unexpectedly supplant mature stable technologies. Numerous case studies in the world of business and information technology provide fascinating windows into the life changing impacts of innovations such as cell phones, the Internet, and blogs. We'll look through those windows, and we'll also look back in time to disruptive technologies that have had profound implications for our modern world, including the automobile, the telegraph, movable type and the written word.
Students will have the opportunity to search for other instances of disruptive technologies impinging on past, current or future American life, sharing their findings through both written essays and oral presentations. The outcome will be a richer understanding of the multi-faceted impacts on the human condition that spring from the infusion of disruptive technologies.
CNW 102 70: Red States, Blue States: Religion and Culture in American Politics
MWF 1:30
Prof. Melissa Deckman
Are we a divided nation when it comes to politics? As our national elections become more heated and as many political elites and interest groups become more vitriolic in their tone and speech, many have argued that there exists a culture war in American politics. In this course, we will examine how we are divided politically as a nation, particularly along religious, cultural and class lines. We will also link these concepts to recent trends in public opinion, policy making, and voting in national elections. We seek to address whether (and to what extent) a culture war actually exists and shapes politics in the United States.
CNW 102 71: The Babe, Scarface Al and Silent Cal: How the '20s Changed American Culture
Prof. Thomas Finnegan
TTh 10:00
This course will begin with the impact of American participation in World War I and the cultural influences brought home from Europe. Women took on different roles during the war and found it to be a liberating experience. A new literate middle class demanded new forms of information and entertainment and new forms of technologies satisfied these demands. The desire for stimulation and novelty will be contrasted with the desire for restraint, as manifested by Prohibition. The decade will mark the advent of the demographic shift of the population from rural areas to urban centers, the arrival of the sports star, the movie idols, and the consumer culture.
CNW 102 72: Religion in America
TTh 10:00 Prof. Michael McClureIn America, religion has taken myriad shapes and has manifested functional diversity as in no other culture. At its best, America's religions encompass images of understanding, beauty, truth and wholeness—they serve as guide and symbol-system for the human spirit. At its worst, religion is an immovable force that impedes the advancement of these ideals—its questing, seeking, and defining aspects often invite separateness, support elitism, and encourage closed-mindedness and violence. One thing is certain, whether we like it or not, Americans are affected by religion and we move forward in dialogue with religious forms.
This course will consider the diversity that is American religion, specifically how religion has been radically changed and redefined in its circuitous path through American history. We will consider how religion continues to shape basic ideas of what it means to be a human being and, by extension, its influence on the functioning of society. It is the aim of the course to approach the readings and class discussions with open-mindedness, specifically in the spirit of tolerance and acceptance. In the process of our considerations, the student's personal religious beliefs, if any are held, may be challenged but the hope here is that the consideration of other points of view will expand rather than limit religious, spiritual and intellectual possibilities.
CNW 102 73: Religion in America
TTh 11:30
Prof. Michael McClure
(Same as CNW 102 72. See course description above.)
CNW 102 74: Exploring America
TTh 8:30
Prof. Joachim Scholz
The enormous range of America's landscapes and the great variety of its people have fascinated all those who have tried to explore and understand this country's many dimensions. This course will start with the analysis of two of America's classical explorations: John Smith's chronicle of his adventures around the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 and the Lewis and Clark diaries of the Western expedition of 1804-1806. But explorations of America did not stop as soon as its territory was completely charted. Modern travelers and travelogues continue to explore many of America's best-known and least-known wonders. The course will focus on original travel accounts of different times and different perspectives that are united in their fascination with the ever changing contours of America.
CNW 102 75: "He Belongs to the Ages": Lincoln & His Legacy in the American Mind
MW 3:30
Prof. Jacob Spencer
We will begin with a close reading of selected Lincoln speeches and letters, with proper attention to their historical context. For the vast remainder of the course, we will consider how other American intellectuals—including poets, essayists, historians, artists, composers, and filmmakers—have interpreted Lincoln and his legacy, from 1865 to the present. The course's interdisciplinary scope will allow us to sense how the legacy of a great public figure shapes, and is shaped by, different types of discourse and media. Students will gain an appreciation for Lincoln's own political and artistic merits, as well as a general sense of how certain public myths arise in a democratic society and endure through changing historical contexts.