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Nixon Summer Courses 2008 |
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ENGLISH 501-01
SEM:
Imagining Science
Scientists tell one kind of story about themselves and their work;
biographers,
historians of
science, and science writers tell another; imaginative writers, yet
another. This
course has two goals: to approach some of the standard 19th-
century works in
the secondary curriculum with an eye to their presentation of
the science of
their day, and to highlight the literary elements of some 20th-
century narratives
by and about scientists, with the goal of helping language-
arts teachers
engage students in thinking about how science is written. 2009
has been declared
the Year of Public Understanding of Science: “A general
public with an
understanding and appreciation of the nature of science is a
prerequisite for a
skilled workforce able to compete in a knowledge-based global
economy.”
Teachers in the humanities have an exciting role to play in building
this understanding.
For part of the course, writer and UI faculty member Joy
Passanante will
offer instruction in strategies for writing about scientific issues.
Gary Williams is the University of Idaho’s first Distinguished
Humanities
Professor.
Texts:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman
Brown and Other Short Stories (Dover Thrift;
0486270602)
*Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Writings of
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Signet Classics; 0451529073)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: A Fully Annotated
Edition (Yale UP; 0300104669)
*Henry David Thoreau,
Material Faith: Thoreau on Science (Mariner;
0395948002)
*Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales (Oxford;
0192832247)
Charles Darwin, Darwin (Norton Critical
Edition; 0393958493)
Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
(Random; 0812973011)
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
(Penguin; 0143038583)
E.O. Wilson, The Creation (Norton;
9780393330489)
Al Gore, An
Inconvenient Truth; Michael Moore, Sicko (films)
Dates: June
8 - July 3, 2008
Credits: Three (3)
Time: MWTR
Instructor: Dr. Gary Williams
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ENGLISH 501-02
SEM:
The Digital Self
Once it was possible to
think of humans as separate from (and superior to) their
technologies. In
this way of thinking, humans used tools as they saw fit, but
ultimately remained
untouched by them. Now, in our hypernetworked digital age,
this point of view
seems far less viable, if not completely wrongheaded. We are
profoundly affected
by technology on all levels, from our social selves all the way
down to the core of
our identities. In this course, we will explore the
implications of the
new technologies for the way we communicate, learn,
remember, and think
of ourselves today. Our reading list will be taken mostly
from the fields of
rhetoric, new media, and technology studies, including
excerpts from
Marshall McLuhan, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia Selfe,
Langdon Winner, Ann
Wysocki, Lawrence Lessig, and others.
Dates: June
8 - July 3, 2008
Credits: Three (3)
Time: MTWR 1:30
PM
Instructor: Dr. Jodie Nicotra
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ENGLISH 501-03
SEM: Power, Politics, and Change:
A History of the English Language
This course will be a mostly nontechnical (in terms of linguistics)
history of
English and in
particular the history of how social and political dynamics have
driven historical
change in the language. Drawing heavily from literary sources
and contemporary
documents we will examine how people’s ways of speaking and
their attitudes
toward theirs and others’ ways of speaking have shaped and
reshaped the
language. We read of Mercians denigrating the speech of the
Northumbrians,
people of Wessex chiding their kinspeople for aping the speech
and other
mannerisms of the Danes, the young novices in Aelfric’s Colloquy
pleading with their
schoolmaster to beat them unmercifully if they should happen
to speak
incorrectly. In the Middle English period, French, Latin, and English
vie
with one another
for status, and as the language begins to shake out, its usages
become increasingly
powerful markers of class membership and aspirations to
class membership.
These are the attitudinal progenitors to Bishop Robert Lowth,
and we are his
attitudinal prodigy: his attitudes sustained in the one-room school
houses of
nineteenth and early twentieth century America and alive and well today
in the ISAT, which
all school children in Idaho must pass in order to receive a high
school diploma.
The course is not completely devoid of linguistics. We’ll look at
what
characteristics of Northumbrian speech distinguished it from Mercian
after
only a couple of
centuries of Anglo-Saxon occupation. We’ll ferret out the
linguistic impact
of the Danish invasion and of cohabitation with English wives and
track the
linguistic hegemony of West Saxon. Most dramatic, of course, comes
the turmoil of the
Middle English period and eventual settling of the linguistic
dust—and numerous
other clichés—as a new standard language emerges and
spreads to the new
(to Europeans) world.
Dates: June 8 - July 3, 2008
Credits: Three
(3)
Time: MTWR
1:30 PM
Instructor: Dr. Steve Chandler
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