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.

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.

Four hours.

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.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to a number of concepts pertaining to diversity and social justice. Through the provided readings, documentaries and guest speakers, students will explore issues of gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, religion, ability and race. The goal of the course is to prepare self- reflective students equipped with an awareness of national and international social justice initiatives. Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to explore the role that diversity serves in their lives as well as participate in the creation and organization of cross-cultural activities on campus.

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).

This seminar demonstrates how laboratory and field research plays 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. Examples of assignments include laboratory write-ups, presentations and discussions of science in the news, and service learning projects. Readings are taken from a variety of sources providing fundamental scientific knowledge on topics related to laboratory exercises as well as books describing important scientific discoveries. This 4.0 credit hour seminar is designated as a natural science (N) course with a lab.

NEW 418: Interdisciplinary Art is a core interdisciplinary arts seminar. Recognizing that discipline-based research can be inadequate to illuminate the arts of past eras and future innovations, NEW 418 is grounded in the knowledge, historical measure and creative practice of the visual, performing, graphic, poetic and technological as they collide, embrace, spark, and frequent the other while viewed through a unique lens of interdisciplinary studies and philosophic practice. Faculty and students come together to investigate intensively selected arts topics and art historical periods from multiple perspectives and intelligences to reach across the boundaries of seemingly diverse and varying scholarly art practices that are contemporaneously and increasingly permeable. Dr. Dill’s NEW 418: Seminar in Interdisciplinary Art is an exploration of interrelationships, interdependencies and interactions among the arts with subsequent methodologies to examine singular art forms through the study of other arts and other disciplines. Students and faculty will cross disciplines to analyze the arts in the context of art history, contemporary arts, philosophy, education, ecology and ethnicity. A unique curriculum to “speak the languages” of multifaceted creativity, the goal of this seminar is the balance and synthesis of artist, thinker and global human being.

Suggested pre-requisites but not required: Seminar in Creativity or Book Arts or any creative or performance practice. Course Requirements: Consistently read curricular texts and maintained journal/sketchbook; attendance and active participation in two creative projects: a singular event and a collaborative event. Students will explore collaborative partnerships with seemingly antithetical disciplinary fellows to produce a seminar project.

Enrollment: 12 (Hard Limit)

This seminar 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. The guiding principle for leadership development in this course will be less an emphasis on acquiring new habits or skills, but rather in the answering of the question, “who am I?” We must effectively lead ourselves before we can hope to lead anyone else.

Course readings will be directed towards reinforcing principles learned outside of class through the leadership-based service component of the course, in which students will participate in “mini-internships.”

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.

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?

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?

"Songcraft" will focus on how songs are made—both the artistic elements of words and music as well as the technology of song recording. Our academic consideration of song-making will include a consideration of the 19th and 20th century African American blues in their social contexts; a study of the American folk revival in the tradition of Woody Guthrie; and an in-depth exploration of works by the Canadian-American troubadour Joni Mitchell. A required songwriting workshop will take place on the weekend of February 22nd-24th. The final project will be to present and discuss songs written by members of the class either individually or collaboratively.

The course will be taught in English.

The word Fascism has reappeared on the front page of newspapers and in the headlines of television news. It has returned to haunt political and social life in our forever-changing world. Fascism is associated with the events that led to the Second World War. There are, however, aspects of Fascism that are strictly literary and that have a theoretical and psychological component. Mussolini, the politician and the writer, flirted with a philosophy rooted in the idealism of the 1800s, while writers like Pirandello underscored the theatrical aspects of Fascism, the multiplication of personae as well as an “obsession with a plot,” and interpretation/argumentation without restraint. We will explore these and other related topics in the readings and films in this course while focusing on the interest in Fascism that carried over from the early 1900s onward (from Roberto Rossellini’s film Rome Open City, to Alberto Moravia’s The Conformist, to Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum).

This interdisciplinary, largely hands-on course will examine current approaches to sustainability and “green” design in the built environment. Our focus will be primarily on housing in Alabama. The course will draw on the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) framework developed by the United States Green Building Council, which is the industry standard for sustainable buildings. This course will involve significant out of class time commitments and field work. Please make an appointment with the instructor if considering enrolling.

This course surveys nature writing in several traditions with a close eye on the ways in which nature is inscribed in language and expressed by literary forms. It also examines the evolution of empirical, scientific awareness of nature. Through close readings of a wide variety of literature, we will explore the theory and practice of writing about nature—especially the description of landscapes, wildlife, plant life and a variety of ecosystems where human nature has integrated itself or set itself apart from nature as the literal and figurative ground of human being. We will study the nature essay as it has been used by philosophers, politicos, literary writers, naturalists and scientists. And we will give ourselves a strong intellectual and creative background in thinking about contemporary issues related to nature and the environment. This course also contains a field component.

Speculative fiction/film have often imagined possible futures for our civilization as u- or dys-topian. Sometimes “hard”-science is emphasized (hence “science fiction”), but as frequently social-science alternative-models such as those of Ursula Le Guin—the daughter of a noted anthropologist. We will explore several ecotopias in a collection edited by Kim Stanley Robinson, but also look at the history of modern environmental thought, including the various Green movements and future studies, as in Alex Steffen’s Worldchanging.

We’ll look at environmental ethics with strong critiques of the capitalist system—challenging the “religion of the Market,” for instance, and a range of recent films such as Twelve Monkeys, Children of Men, and the grade school classic Fern Gully, perhaps selections from the BBC Planet Earth series (trivialized for American audiences by the entertainment channel).

And novels/films such as post-holocaust flics like The Postman or Thirst will also figure in to what I term an “imaginal athletics,” as we see the importance of symbols and imaginative projections of “nature”—which will certainly shape future politics and scientific research.

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.