Supplement
to Spring Newsletter
CVEC
CLASSES SPRING 2007
For
Lifelong Learning
The
Questing Intellect Never
Retires
(Description of Courses on following pages)
Title of Class Instructor
Time
of Class Location
Shakespeare
on the Page and on the Stage George
Soule
Monday 9:30am --
Sherlock
Holmes and the World of the Detective Story
Monday
War
And Peace: What Makes It Great? Jim Wolf
Monday
Consumer
Choices Charles
Carlin
Tuesday 9:30am --
Romantic
Comedy Eric
Nelson
Tuesday
The
War to End All Wars--But Didn’t: section I Bill
Woehrlin
Wednesday 9:30am --
The
War to End All Wars--But Didn’t: section II Bill
Woehrlin
Wednesday 1:30pm -- 3:30pm Village on the Cannon
Mark
Twain Revisited Jim
Holden
Wednesday 1:30pm -- 3:30pm Three Links Conference Room
Sustainability:
Creating an Agenda Bob
Bruce
Wednesday 3:30pm -- 5:30pm Elizabeth
Hutchins
NCRC Room 106
Islam
Then and Now (Lecture Course) Vern
Faillettaz
Thursday 9:30am -- 11:30am Northfield Retirement Community Chapel
It’s Only a Theory: The Copernican Revolution Richard Noer
Thursday 1:30pm -- 3:30pm Village on the Cannon
Great
Decisions: The Middle East, Robert
Flaten
Climate Change and More Larry
Fowler and Jan Mitchell
Thursday 6:30pm -- 8:30pm Northfield Retirement Community Chapel
NCRC
2007 Spring Term - Course Descriptions
Shakespeare
on the Page and on the Stage George
Soule (gsoule@charter.net)
We will read and discuss two contrasting Shakespeare
plays, the comedy As You Like It and the
tragedy Macbeth. After three
classes of discussion of each play, we will be joined by Douglas Scholz-Carlson
of Northfield and the Great River Shakespeare Festival of Winona. He will
share with us his insights as an actor in As
You Like It and a director of Macbeth.
The course will aim at getting to see how the texts of these plays are
interpreted as we read them and how these interpretations are transferred to a
real stage production—or modified in the process. It is expected that
class members will take the opportunity to travel to Winona to attend the
productions of these plays. (Details of these trips will be sent out
later.) The course will not meet on
April 30, but will meet on May 21.
George Soule is a Professor of English Emeritus at Carleton College, where he taught Shakespeare for 34 years. Scholz-Carlson is a noted professional actor and director based in the Twin Cities.
Sherlock Holmes Randolph Cox (cox@rconnect.com)
and the World of the Detective Story
J. Randolph
Cox, Professor Emeritus, St. Olaf
College, where he served 34 years as Reference and Government Documents
Librarian. Having been improving his
mind with sensational fiction for the last fifty years (in the words of John
Dickson Carr) he would like to share some of what he has learned. An
investitured member of the Baker Street Irregulars, he is currently the editor
of Dime Novel Round-Up, a magazine for the collecting, preservation and study
of popular fiction of the past.
War And
Peace: What Makes It Great? Jim Wolf (jwolf2@comcast.net)
War and Peace
is a wonderfully rich book that is on everyone's short list
of The Best Novel Ever Written: it is both epic in its historical
backdrop and intimate in presenting one of the world's favorite love
stories. We will touch on all aspects of this great novel, but we
will focus on the story itself and on Tolstoy's skill in writing
it. There will be reading guides, outlines giving enough context of the
historical backdrop to allow for smooth reading, and hand-outs showing the
characters' family relationships and the various names they may be called
during the course of the story. We will consider the historical context
of the action and how the characters are affected by it as they play out their
lives, but we will concentrate on Tolstoy's narrative and
epic genius in creating this magnificent novel.
Jim Wolf is a long-time student of literature and has previously
taught four literature courses for CVEC. War and Peace has
been one of his favorites since he first read it at a feverish pace
during one week of his junior year in high school almost 50 years
ago. While a graduate student in Comparative Literature at the
University of Minnesota he taught the novel several times. He has read the book more than ten times and
has found something new with every reading. Jim lives in Minneapolis,
works as a computer support manager for the IRS, and is still having too much
fun to retire.
Consumer Choices Charles Carlin (ccarlin@carleton.edu)
This course will emphasize choices that
we consumers confront every day in the super-market, drugstore, kitchen, and
medicine cabinet. How does a shampoo
“nourish” your hair? What does a conditioner
“condition?” Where do you keep your
aspirin? Why does your nose “run” with a
cold? How does Alka Seltzer relieve that
drip, drip, drip of “excess” stomach acid?
We’ll discuss these and other questions, share our practical knowledge,
and perhaps discover together some useful information to improve our decisions
in the marketplace.
Charles Carlin recently
retired after 39 years at Carleton where he taught Organic Chemistry with
passion and gusto. He served as a
Science Advisor to the local FDA laboratory for 32 years and has worked with
the Special Services Division at Scotland Yard.
He was a founding member of the Swedish EPA lab on the Baltic.
Romantic
Comedy Eric
Nelson (nelsoner@stolaf.edu)
Romantic comedy was invented by Shakespeare and
perfected by Jane Austen. When Shakespeare wrote his comedies, they weren't the
high culture classics they are today, but popular entertainment pitched to the
widest audience. Likewise, in Austen's day the novel was also a form of popular
entertainment; Austen herself famously described Pride and Prejudice as "rather too light & bright
& sparkling." Today these works are reverently studied in the
classroom. Makes you wonder: will one day Hollywood movies get that sort of
respect? Actually, that day has arrived. In high schools and colleges young
people are becoming serious students of the art of cinema. Here is your
opportunity to join the fun. We will begin with a backward glance at As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing and
Pride and Prejudice, and then turn to Hollywood romantic comedies from the
Thirties to the present: It Happened One
Night, The Lady Eve, Groundhog Day,
When Harry Met Sally, and Somethin's Gotta Give. In their
exploration of love and marriage, these film comedies celebrate a distinctively
American woman who is smart, confident and independent; in the words of Alexis
de Tocqueville, a woman who is "always mistress of herself." At the
same time we will look at the distinctive way movies tell their stories.
Eric Nelson
is Professor Emeritus of English, St. Olaf College. He holds degrees from Wittenberg and
University of North Carolina. He has completed six courses in a screenwriting
program, done an internship at the Minnesota Film and Television Board, and
taught courses in Film Studies and screenwriting at St Olaf.
The War to
End All Wars--But Didn’t Bill
Woehrlin (wwoehrli@carleton.edu)
No one
wanted or expected the long duration and horrendous suffering of the Great War,
1914-1918. Yet the war came, and claimed more than nine million lives, toppled
four empires and seriously undermined the proud tower of European world
dominance. What can historians offer to EXPLAIN how this tragedy came to be?
William F. Woehrlin, Professor of History Emeritus at Carleton College,
taught Russian history, 19th century Europe, technology in history,
and freshmen seminars on the American Revolution.
Mark Twain
Revisited Jim
Holden (holdenjn@earthlink.net)
In a 2005 Elder Collegium course titled MARK
TWAIN-AMERICA'S DICKENS, we read some of Twain's best-known works such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,
and The Diaries of Adam and Eve.
This time we will read books and short stories less familiar to readers, works
which will focus on a particular aspect of Twain's extraordinary life. So
we will read Life on the Mississippi
(river pilot, journalist, traveler) and Pudd'nhead
Wilson (novelist, dabbler in psychology/sociology). In addition,
we'll read short stories such as Baker's
Bluejay Yarn (humorist) and The Man
That Corrupted Hadleyburg (social critic). We'll also view short film
excerpts about Twain's life, excerpts from the two longer works we will read,
and the complete film based on The Man
That Corrupted Hadleyburg. In addition, in the spirit of this most
entertaining of American characters--a wordsmith of great renown--we hope to
honor Twain by engaging in our own lively conversation.
Jim Holden is a former Northfield High School English teacher
who taught a course on Twain for several years. He is also a former high
school tennis coach and education professor at Gustavus and St. Olaf
Colleges. At St. Olaf he taught courses such as English Methods in the
education department and first year writing courses in the English department.
Sustainability:
Creating an Agenda Bob
Bruce (rkbruce@stolaf.edu)
Elizabeth
Hutchins (eohutchins@gmail.com)
It has been said that we can
not survive with continuous loss or degradation in living systems. Is this what
we see in our present world? Is this a question of sustainability? This class
will provide a forum to examine and define issues of sustainability through a
variety of lenses including energy, agricultural land use, food, politics, and
life balance. Our class sessions will be
enriched by speakers from the colleges and local organizations who will
jumpstart discussions and reflections. We will examine how the issue of
sustainability impacts our local and personal lives, current community efforts,
and frameworks for action. Short readings will be suggested by facilitators,
speakers, and class participants.
Bob Bruce
has an MA (History) from the U. of Wyo, and an MLS from Rutgers. Since then he
has been a librarian/teacher in a variety of places. He has a long term
interest in the environment and sustainability and is co-facilitating this
class in order to learn more and hopefully jump-start some actions.
Elizabeth O. Hutchins has an MS in Library Science from Simmons and an M.
Div. from Harvard University. She has taught in classrooms and libraries on the
East Coast, in Asia, and most recently at St. Olaf College. Locally,
she serves on the Board of the Just Food Co-op and is a member of the
Sustainable Farming Association. She loves being outdoors, has a
passion for paddling on Minnesota rivers, and is striving to live a more
sustainable life style.
Islam Then
and Now (Lecture Course) Vern
Faillettaz (faillett@stolaf.edu)
To understand Islam today, we survey the beginnings
with Muhammad in the 7th century A.D. and the development of Muslim
praxis: the QURAN, the Word of God, the
Hadith, the stories about Muhammad, Shariah, law, and the mystic movement we
know as Sufism. We will focus also on
the rise of Shi’ism. Then we survey the
range of Muslim developments in the modern world and the emergence of Muslim
governments and radical movements and current ferment.
Vern
Faillettaz graduated from the
University of California, Berkeley. He
received a Master of Divinity degree from Luther Theological Seminary, St.
Paul, MN, and a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from the University of Chicago. Vern studied Islam at the Center for the
Study of World Religion at Harvard University and taught an Islam course at St.
Olaf for 20 years. He led the Middle
East Semester from St. Olaf in the eighties.
It’s Only a
Theory: The Copernican Revolution Richard Noer (rnoer@carleton.edu)
In current debates about “intelligent design” vs.
evolution, one side claims that “evolution is only a theory,” while the other
often appears to claim that evolution must be accepted as scientific fact. In this course we’ll study a controversy from
the past that raised many of the same questions: the claim that the earth
“really” revolves about the sun as opposed to a Biblical view that the sun and
all other heavenly bodies revolve about the earth. We’ll look first at the geocentric theory,
universally accepted by the Church and by pre-Copernican scientists, that
explained with remarkable success the apparent motions of the heavens. Then we’ll follow the arguments and evidence
of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton for the view that “in fact” it is
the earth that moves about a stationary sun.
Far from being a case of “enlightened” scientists battling the refusal
of a reactionary Church to accept the “logical truth” of the heliocentric view,
we’ll see that at each stage of the conflict, things were considerably more
subtle and ambiguous than is commonly thought.
Finally, we’ll see whether lessons learned from our study can be applied
to the evolution controversy. The
approach will be non-mathematical and should be accessible to any interested
person.
Rich Noer is
Lawrence McKinley Gould Professor of the Natural Sciences Emeritus at Carleton,
where he taught physics for 38 years. He also developed an interest in the
history and philosophy of science, co-authored a text (Revolutions in
Physics) for liberal-arts students, and taught freshman seminars and
interdisciplinary courses aimed at connecting the sciences with the humanities.
Great
Decisions: The Middle East, Robert Flaten (flaten@rconnect.com), Climate Change and More Larry Fowler and Jan
Mitchell
The
Great Decisions program is produced by the Foreign Policy Association and used
throughout the country by World Affairs Councils. There are 44 Great
Decisions groups in Minnesota with 8400 participants last year. We will
discuss one topic each week for eight weeks. Briefing books will be
available for $12 per person. The topics for this class are, Middle East,
Climate Change, Mexico, Migration, South Africa, War Crimes, Central Asia, and
Children. Great Decisions is
designed as a discussion program. We will have a lecture each week to get
discussion started. We will benefit from some outside speakers, including
returning Rotary exchange students and letters from students now
abroad. Students will be encouraged to participate in the
discussions.
Robert Flaten served as
Ambassador to Rwanda from December 1990 to November 1993 and Deputy Chief of Mission in Israel from 1982 to 1986. He is a Distinguished Lecturer in Political
Science at St. Olaf College. He retired from the
Foreign Service in May 1994 after assignments in France, Pakistan, Israel and the State Department
in Washington.
Larry Fowler has used the Great Decisions
curriculum in his teaching for years. Last year, at the invitation of the
Minnesota International Center, Larry was a guest of the Foreign Policy
Association in New York for participation in the Great Decisions Institute.
Jan Mitchell,
retired from Northfield High School, has taught a Great Decisions program for
high school students, as well as a couple of CVEC classes. She is interested in
foreign policy issues because of her experiences in Denmark as an exchange
student and as teacher in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. She has
degrees from Carleton and from the University of Colorado.