FALL TERM
2007 September 17--November 9, 2007
- Shakespeare’s Tragedies In Film James McDonnell
jmcdonne@carleton.edu
Shakespeare's
Tragedies and Film. Many of Shakespeare plays have had
influential or controversial film adaptations. We will discuss three or four
plays and some of their film versions that provide particularly interesting
insights into the possible meanings of Shakespeare's texts. We are likely to
spend much of our time on "Hamlet" and its many versions.
James McDonnell
Professor of English and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus, Carleton College has just retired from Carleton where he
taught for 38 years in the English Department. He started as a specialist in
Victorian literature, but in the past twenty years his interests have changed
to Shakespeare and Irish Literature. Having acted in many productions of
Shakespeare, he has a particular interest in the effect of stage and movie
interpretations on the impact of the plays.
2. STORIES
OF SURVIVAL Jane McDonnell jtmcdonn@carleton.edu
Writing is a second chance at life.
We can re-experience, interpret and make peace with our past lives. This class will focus on excerpts from
recent crisis memoirs and on short personal narratives. Such writing crosses genre boundaries and all
such pieces are powerful testimonies to difficult experiences survived. Illness, divorce, loss of a job or some other
cultural dislocation can be important moments in a life narrative and as such
have given rise to some of the best writing of the late twentieth century. The class will usually read two essay length
pieces per week as preparation for discussion.
I will introduce short in-class writing exercises, and will also provide
the opportunity for developing a longer narrative for individual class members. We will use my book, Living to Tell the Tale; a
Guide to Writing Memoir, Kathryn Rhett's anthology, Survival Stories; Memoirs of Crisis, as well as Xeroxed passages
from other pieces of contemporary writing.
Jane McDonnell recently retired after 35 years of teaching
at Carleton. She taught English and
American Literature, then Women’s and Gender Studies. In 1993 she published a memoir which caused a
brief national stir – a book tour, a number of television and radio interviews,
lots of talks around the country, etc.
After this she developed and taught a writing course on personal
narrative at Carleton, which is the foundation for this course. She is the author of News From the Border; A Mother’s Memoir of her Autistic Son and Living to Tell the Tale; A Guide to Writing
Memoir. She loves to work with
students of all ages.
3. Discover Northfield Area Treasures
Brynhild Rowberg bcrowberg@deskmedia.com
Did you know; that
a Rice County village was founded by a man who challenged
Abraham Lincoln to a duel, was a Civil War general, and served as United States senator for three states successively? That the phrase “conspicuous consumption” was
coined by a man who grew up near Dennison?
That the Cannon
River should be the Canoe River?
That our area has a covered bridge built in 1864? Learn the answers and much more on tours to
area “sights” and “sites” on tours led by Brynnie Rowberg, a local history and
architecture buff. A schedule (subject
to change at the suggestion of the participants) includes visits to the museum
in Red Wing, the Bakken
Museum in Minneapolis, to historic and architectural gems in Owatonna, and an ethnic tour of Rice County. Tours will start at 9:30 and will usually end after lunch. Be prepared to pay some admission charges,
but, heck, the rewards will be worth the fees.
We will see museums, archives, and historical sites while traveling by
van or car. You will get to know
something of the area’s geography, history, and culture in stimulating company.
Brynhild Rowberg, a native of Northfield, served as Foreign Service Officer for 28 years, stationed in Vienna, Prague, Athens, Saigon, Bremen, Taipai as well as in the Department of State in the Office of
Intelligence and Research and Political Officer in the office of Korean
Affairs.
- The Journey From Chant To The Britten War Requiem
Robert Scholz
scholz@stolaf.edu Lecture
This Fall we will try an
alternative schedule format for Bob Scholz’s Lecture
Class. His class will begin one week
before the regular schedule on
Tue Sept 11. Then it will meet on Tue Sept 18. After that the class will meet for 3 weeks on
both Tue and Thur, Sept 25 and 27,
Oct 2 and 4 and Oct 9 and 11. Thus the class will finish earlier than the
other classes. This is an experiment to
determine if alternative
Scheduling formats might serve our faculty and
students.
From the Middle Ages to the
present, the Requiem text has been an inspiration for many of the greatest
composers. In this course the path of discovery will lead from chant and
Ockeghem's early setting to Mozart and Berlioz, who then influenced Brahms and
Verdi. The tradition culminates in what many musicians think to be the
most significant piece of the 20th century; Benjamin Britten's War Requiem,
composed for the dedication of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. The class
will be introduced to the earlier masterworks in the first sessions and will
explore in detail the texts and music of the War Requiem in the concluding
classes.
Robert Scholz is Professor Emeritus of Music at St. Olaf College and former Director of the Chapel Choir and Viking Chorus. In
1995 he received the F. Melius Christiansen award from the American Choral
Directors Association for outstanding contributions to choral music. He
is also a noted composer of classical liturgical music and a national choir
clinician.
This
course will approach the Book of the Psalms as a book of poetic texts that
provide the salt that seasons our perspective for living through times of
terror and trust. Class sessions will focus on close reading and working
together to discover the "varied and resplendent riches" of this book
that stands in the center of the Bible. Topics will include: an introduction
to Hebrew poetry; the "preamble" to the Book of the Psalms (Psalms 1
& 2); basic "types" of Psalms using specific texts as examples; a
summary of major themes in the Psalms; reading and discussion of Psalms
nominated by participants, and consideration of the
book of the Psalms as an edited book. Text: The Book of the Psalms in the
Bible (participants are encouraged to bring a variety of versions/translations
to the sessions -- a common text will be available).
David Quarberg is a retired Lutheran pastor who has served
congregations California, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota. He has an enjoyed an ongoing
interest in and study of the Book of the Psalms throughout his career beginning
with a course in the Psalms in Hebrew during seminary and continuing with
personal study and graduate study with noted Psalm scholars.
6.
The War in Iraq:
History, Origin, and Evolution Hartley Clark (clark@carleton.edu)
Iraq is the Arabic word for Babylon. We will look at the place of Babylon in international history from the third millennium
B.C. to the present, with particular attention to the ethnic, tribal,
linguistic, and religious interplay among its peoples. The end in 1917 of 400
years of rule by the Ottoman Empire. The development of the oil industry. The emergence in Iraq of international
revisionism with the overthrow of the Hashemite king in 1958. The futile Iraqi invasions of Iran and then Kuwait. The American invasion of Iraq, continuing armed resistance, and the quest
for a political settlement. Reading recommendations will be mailed to
persons who register for the course.
Hartley Clark, Ph.D., taught international relations at
Carleton from 1955 until his retirement in 1991. He is known to the Collegium
through his recent courses: “Middle Eastern Oil and International Relations,”
"The Arab Israeli Conflict," "Europe versus the United States," and "Globalization and Why the
World Hates Us."
- Arguing About Art Gary
Iseminger giseming@carleton.edu
Puzzles often arise from our
encounters with art. Just what is supposed
to be wrong with a forgery of a painting?
What is all the fuss about “authentic” performances of music? Why should we care about the fate of wholly
imaginary characters in fiction? In
dealing with such puzzles we find ourselves thrown back on such fundamental
concepts as imitation, truth reality, art itself, where philosophical
discussion and argument are the main tools by means of which we can hope to
achieve some clarity and (at least self-) understanding. We will discuss some of these puzzles with
the aid of opposing essays by contemporary philosophers collected in an
anthology called ARGUING ABOUT ART: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATES, SECOND
EDITION, edited by Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley (Routledge, 2002)
Gary Iseminger taught at Carleton for
over 40 years. He taught the philosophy
of art at Carleton,
the University of Minnesota, Trinity College
Dublin, and Lingnan University in Hong Kong, and has given lecture
series on the subject at St. Olaf and at Uppsala University in Sweden. His book, THE AESTHETIC FUNCTION OF ART,
appeared in late 2004 and he is just beginning to collect and to try to deal
with problems and objections raised by colleagues in the field.
.
8. Doctor Zhivago James
Walker jgw@dwmedia.com
Boris Pasternak spent much of his life as a poet preparing to write a novel in
prose about Russia's new "Time of
Trouble." In "Doctor Zhivago" he expresses his most cherished
ideas about life and the plight of individuals caught up in the storm of
historical change. We will view the film "Doctor Zhivago" and read
the novel (both of which I love—but for different reasons) in the context of Russia's revolutionary
history. Through our discussions we can begin to understand why "Doctor
Zhivago" won for Pasternak the Nobel Prize in Literature and why it is
considered one of the great novels of Russian literature.
James Walker
After eight years in US Army and Naval Intelligence, James Walker, Professor
Emeritus of Russian at St. Olaf
College, received advanced degrees in Slavic
Languages and Literatures at Georgetown
and Indiana Universities. He taught Russian language and literature at
St. Olaf for 30 years and chaired the Department of Russian and East Asian
Languages. He led numerous tours to Russia
and Eastern Europe.
9. . Bauhaus
To Our House LaVern Rippley rippleyl@stolaf.edu
A study of the
architectural movement that began in Weimar Germany
in the year 1919 under founder Walter Gropius with origins in the city of Weimar. It
later moved to Dessau and then Berlin
before departing Nazi Germany in 1938 for the United
States where it functioned most notably in Chicago
and Boston as Gropius headed
departments at Harvard and MIT, and in Chicago
at the IIT. Thematic focuses: Form and
its meaning for the unity of life; fundamentals of the square, circle and
triangle in all of existence; understanding mechanics as coupled to the
kinetics of the body to make "handiworks;" an integration of art into
life with emphasis on furniture, tableware, household utensils, windows etc.;
mass production for the international scene; the artist not as ornament but as
craftsman. Field trips to the S. Olaf
Campus, Minneapolis IDS Center [by Walter Gropius] ,
and perhaps to St. John’s
University Chapel [by Marcel Breuer]—depending on interest.
LaVern Rippley has been at Professor
at St Olaf in the German Department since 1967. He has a Ph. D. from Ohio
State University
in 1965 and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University
of Munich. He is the author of over
200 articles and 17 books, the latest of which is The Chemnitzer Concertina:
A History and an Accolade, 2006.
- The African Experience Joseph L. Mbele mbele@stolaf.edu
A study of the historical and contemporary
experience of the African people through a close look at Chinua Achebe’s novel,
“Things Fall Apart.”
Studying this novel will enable us to look at the life and values of the
Africans before the coming of Europeans and the consequences of the coming of
Europeans, which continue to the present day.
It will also help us to appreciate how the art of story telling, both
oral and written, influences African life.
Joseph L. Mbele, a Tanzanian, teaches in the English
Department at St. Olaf College. Before coming to St. Olaf, he
taught in the Literature Department at the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania. He
teaches mostly Literature in English from around the world. His main research interest is folklore. He has done folklore fieldwork in such places
as Kenya, Tanzania, and the USA, presented papers at conferences around the
world, and published widely. He focuses
on epic traditions, as well as trickster and outlaw tales. Jesse James has been one of his favorite
outlaws.
11.
The History of Northfield Marie Gery voglgery1@msn.com
When
you say you're from Northfield, the usual comment is, "Oh, isn't that where Jesse James robbed the
bank?" Let's take a look at what really went into making Northfield the place it is. Who
lived here? How did Northfield survive the Great
Depression? Why does a small town on a small river have two exceptional
colleges? What brings diversity to Northfield? And, unless you were
born here, what brought you to this village on the Cannon River known for Cows, Colleges, and
Contentment?
Marie Gery is a world famous storyteller and interpreter of
oral history (at least in Northfield). She has thrilled and delighted
many previous Collegium courses.