spring 2012
Second Year Seminars HOPR 2953
HOPR 2953, Section 901: Narrative Self
Wednesday, 12 – 1:40 pm
Ed de st. Aubin, Associate Professor/Assistant Chair - Psychology
Narrative psychologists suggest that contemporary adults define themselves through an identity life story – one’s reconstructed past, perceived present and anticipated future. We tell ourselves and others stories about who we were and who we want to be. Such stories are core to self-understanding and to social interactions. Participants in this seminar will explore different methods for collecting and analyzing these narratives of self. We will learn how to interpret stories for psychological meaning. We will practice three interrelated modes of inquiry: Individual reflective autobiography, group facilitation for emergent knowledge, and psychological content analysis.
HOPR 2953, Section 902: Yoga
Monday/Wednesday, 4 – 4:50 pm
John Su, Associate Professor - English
In this course, we will study the fundamental practices of yoga. Yoga represents a blanket term to describe a wide variety of practices that are both very old and relatively recent. In the process of studying, my hope is that we will open ourselves to pedagogical styles that might be less familiar to students in the American educational system. For this course, we have some more specific learning outcomes. By the end of the semester, depending on your level of commitment to and engagement with the course, you should be able to: 1) practice yoga asanas as part of a daily discipline, and to describe your personal experiences with these practices; 2) articulate how yoga resembles and differs from other contemplative practices that have emerged from other traditions, both Christian and otherwise; 3) critically examine your personal experiences in light of an ongoing contemplative practice.
HOPR 2953, Section 903: Soul Music
Tuesday, 12 pm – 1:40 pm
Mark McDonough, Pastor – Calvary Presbyterian Church
This class will explore ways we use music to alter our states of being, and, as participants share music with others in the class, learning something of the soul of others. Participants will share music they use to reduce stress; motivate to address challenges; cope with sadness and/or grief; communicate love/romance; celebrate triumph; experience a sense of oneness with all of creation; express anger/rage; or to express the joy of being alive. Participants will also research the design of music including, but not limited to, the use of harmony, dissonance, rhythm, tempo, key changes, and instrumentation. Through our research, we will learn how composers and arrangers structure music to evoke desired responses in their listeners.
HOPR 2953, Section 904: Labyrinth
Wednesday, 1 – 2:40 pm
Heather Hathaway, Associate Professor, English
Do you know where you’re headed? Do you know why? Walking the labyrinth as a form of meditation may help you find out. What is a labyrinth? A labyrinth is a winding path, typically circular, that leads to a center and back out again. We bring to the labyrinth our problems, concerns, worries, fears—and in the process of walking the journey—seek clarity, spiritual wholeness, calm. Labyrinths have been used for centuries by seekers to enact a sort of pilgrimage or journey home. When Christian pilgrims could not get to Jerusalem, they walked the labyrinth. More recently, labyrinths have been used by seekers of all faiths and of no faith as a form of meditation. The goal of walking the labyrinth is simply: to find your way “home,” however “home” is constituted for you on that given day. As Donna Shaper and Carole Ann Camp describe in their book, Labyrinths from the Outside In: Walking to Spiritual Insight: “If we cannot solve today’s problems, at least we can walk in a way and with a posture that says we are not mired in the problems. We still hope for ways out. The ways out are less antiknot than they are knotted. We learn that inside the labyrinth. There, we do not deny complexity; rather, we walk with it. Knots and webs and conundrums are the message of the labyrinth. We love them as they are . . . We are free to be with them; they pattern our lives toward home.”
In this course we will approach labyrinths intellectually and spiritually. We will study their origins, history, and functions in different cultures. We will also walk a labyrinth weekly. Ideally, at semester’s end, we will also build and walk our own labyrinth of stones on the lakefront. The goal of this course, as is the true for all of our HOPR 2953s is to integrate the intellectual with the spiritual in ourselves in order to be better learners and leaders in the world.
HOPR 2953, Section 905: Contemplative Writing
Thursday, 2 -3:40 pm
Miriam Hall, Contemplative Art Teacher based in Madison, Wisconsin
Natalie Goldberg wrote Writing Down the Bones in 1987and it was a smash hit. Many people bought it - those who considered themselves writers but not meditators, meditators but not writers; both, neither. It has been in perpetual reprint ever since, and ushered in a strong movement of writing based in mindfulness practice. Goldberg wasn’t the first. Women like Brenda Ueland and Dorothea Brande had their own writing practices, and their works are still in print. The tradition of Contemplative Arts (usually thought of as Calligraphy, Ikebana and Tea Ceremonies) is very old. Applying our minds to art, experiencing what we can just as directly learn from art as we can from meditation and our daily lives, is an old tradition indeed. What Goldberg did was translate that into digestible but not watered-down material, accessible but also firm. The seminar will meet as a small group once a week. We do meditation, a body/breath scan and then 20 minutes of writing on a general theme. I give guiding questions. The second half is spent sharing (or choosing not to, which is fine) and listening to each other. The class spends half its time for each of the two important core teachings: creative process (first half) and compassionate listening (second half). The two are, in fact, inexorably linked, which eventually becomes apparent to all who practice over time.
Third Year Seminars HOPR 3953
HOPR 3953, Section 901: Citizenship and Leisure
Tuesday/Thursday, 3:30 – 4:45 pm
Eugenia Afinoguenova, Associate Professor of Spanish
Everyone understands the importance of the processes of social inclusion and exclusion in the global world. Yet this is not another course in civics. The purpose of this seminar is to elucidate the connection between citizenship and everyday activities that are usually considered apolitical, such as traveling, shopping, watching TV, or playing golf. This theory-intensive course offers an overview of the history and the current understanding of the mutual relations between leisure and citizenship, with emphasis on the concept of governance, cultural capital, consumption and mobility. In the first half of the semester we will trace the history of leisure and its importance for 19th Century social reformers. In the second half of the semester, we will explore how citizenship and leisure intersect in current societies.
HOPR 3953, Section 902: Three Faiths in Medieval Spain
Tuesday/Thursday, 9:30 – 10:45 am
Laura Matthew, Assistant Professor - History
This course asks whether Muslims, Christians, and Jews have ever lived side by side peacefully, by focusing on relations between them in medieval Iberia. The period is often characterized as a golden age of religious tolerance, in which Muslims, Christians and Jews found inspiration in each other’s religious traditions. Peaceful coexistence, or “convivencia,” is said to have ended with the Christian reconquest of the peninsula, beginning in the thirteenth century and culminating in the expulsion and/or conversion of all Jews from the kingdom in 1492 and of all Muslims in 1609. We will revisit this historical narrative, looking at the latest research and drawing some of our own conclusions from poetry, royal edicts, and other writings from the time period.
Fourth Year Seminars HOPR 4953
HOPR 4953, Section 901: Marx, Materialism, and Value
Tuesday/Thursday, 12:30 – 1:45 pm
Jodi Melamed, Associate Professor - English
Anthony Peressini, Associate Professor - Philosophy
What is the secret of labor power that makes its purchasers rich? What can we learn about political and economic modernity from dancing tables? What can the reaction against the French Revolution teach us about the end of the Soviet Union? What is the relationship between chattel slavery and your student loans? How can we imagine value unbound from capitalist globalization? In this course, we will investigate all these questions and more through an in-depth study of the economic, philosophical, and historical writings of Karl Marx. The course will have three components. The first is a systematic account of theories of value in the economic and philosophical writings of Marx. The second is an examination of the theory and practice of Marx’s account of “historical materialism.” The third examines the possible relevance today of Marx’s inquiry into value and materialism and will consist of reading selections from A Brief History of Neoliberalism and The Enigma of Capital by David Harvey, a contemporary Marxist theorist.
HOPR 4953, Section 902: Modernity, Secularism and the Quest for Meaning
Tuesday/Thursday, 4 – 5:15 pm
Stanley Harrison, Associate Professor - Philosophy
The gradual emergence of the “secular age” in the modern West has brought deep challenges. No thoughtful person can avoid asking: How can I finally make sense of my life? What sort of meaning can it have? For many people, traditional religious beliefs have either disappeared altogether or are under severe strain. Many factors are involved, not the least of which is a view of Nature framed by the theory of evolution as well as humans’ increasing scientific and technological prowess. This course will examine various conditions [socio-cultural, technological, religious, etc.] to see how they provide or prevent ways for making sense of our lives. The central issue will be the phenomenon known as “secularization” and the types of social existence which arise when religious beliefs no longer have the public function they once did. Accordingly, we will seek to discern & discuss what some authors call the “spiritual condition” of modernity. Some particular questions will be: If humans have genuine spiritual needs, does the story of “progress” understood in terms of ever-increasing standards of living and technological advances obscure these needs? Does secularization inevitably dissolve all human striving for the “transcendent”? How does secularization alter our views about the ends or purpose of human life? Does religion have any legitimate role to play in public discourse about the good life, or is it doomed to be one more divisive factor? Might secularization actually be a good thing? Can distinctive modern achievements, such as universal human rights, be sustained by what some call an “exclusive humanism,” or is something more needed?
HOPR 4953, Section 903:
Myth and Spirituality in Ancient Greek, Indian, and Native American Thought
Tuesday/Thursday, 11 – 12:15 pm
Melissa Shew, Visiting Assistant Professor - Philosophy
Are myth and spirituality essential to being human? Drawing from diverse inquiries and texts involving the roles of myth and spirituality in human life, this course will examine and challenge the evident proclivity—if not necessity—of human beings’ desires for both. To understand the power of this question and to help students respond to it, this course will draw substantially from Ancient Greek, Indian, and Native American texts. It will first consider how myth and spirituality couch Socrates’ quest for self-knowledge in Ancient Greece. Then it will engage the mythical and spiritual aspects of human life in relation to nature and the gods in Ancient Indian texts. It will culminate in exploring Native American conceptions of spirituality and myth as they relate to human flourishing, and thus also will recoil back to the relationship between spirituality, myth, and self-knowledge. From this framework, students will have an exceptional opportunity in this course to challenge themselves and their world. Sustained discussion and reflection will be incorporated in educationally meaningful ways in order to help students formulate their own responses to this question, and to encourage discussion with their peers. The trajectory of this course is pluralistic, and I anticipate many divergent ways that students will answer this question.
