SPRING TERM  March 24 – May 16,  2008

 

1.  Olivia Frey   oliviafrey209@hotmail.com   FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In this course we will take a philosophical and gastronomical tour through literature and memoir, including the folk tales Hansel and Gretel (gingerbread houses), Snow White (poison apples!), Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," Madhur Jaffrey's "Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of Childhood in India," Linda Furiya's "Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in White-Bread America," and mystery writer Diane Mott Davidson's "Catering to Nobody."  Lecture and discussion and eating.  Discussions will focus on background and context of the writers and their works, literary technique, and the role and meaning of food in these literary creations. 
         Food will not be relegated to the realm of abstraction. Each book includes yummy recipes. Members of the class as well as the instructor (not a bad cook herself) will be enlisted to prepare a recipe from each book, so that as class proceeds, we will digest delicious treats as well as provocative ideas.

Olivia Frey, Professor of English Emerita, St. Olaf College, educational entrepreneur. 

 

  1. Michelle Yarmakov  yarma001@juno.com  WHERE IN THE WORLD IS TURKMENISTAN?

Long neglected under Soviet rule, Turkmenistan is quickly becoming an important global player.  For political, strategic and energy reasons, the United States and countries around the world are taking notice of Turkmenistan.  Having a long border with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan took on great significance for the United States after 9/ 11.   In addition to its long border with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan also borders Iran , another area of concern for the United States.  Not only its location interests the United States, though, Turkmenistan also has its own - large- reserves of both natural gas and oil.  Besides energy and strategic issues, we will also discuss the history, geography and cultural life of Turkmenistan, a Sunni Muslim country.  Come learn more about this ancient country that was once at the center of world affairs as  part of the Silk Road and is once again becoming part of world affairs!

Michelle Yarmakov  lived and worked in Turkmenistan for over two years as a US Peace Corps volunteer in the very first group of volunteers to enter Turkmenistan.    Over the past few years, she has enjoyed teaching many people in Edina, Minneapolis and Northfield about Turkmenistan.  She even taught a language class which included Turkmen (and Russian and German and Chinese) all of the four languages that she has studied.  She has a Masters Degree in Russian and studied Russian and Chinese in China.

 

  1. Mary Johnson  mjohnson@stolaf.edu, Billi Faillettaz  faillett@rconnect.com   SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE; A WAY OF BEING

Spiritual Intelligence underlies the things we believe in.  We use it to solve problems of meaning and values.  It helps us develop meaningful and creative lives.  Spiritual intelligence demonstrates the connections between mind and body and spirit.  We will explore how it affects our health and influences our lives.

 Class sessions will emphasize much group discussion.  Recommended reading:   Zohar and Marshall:  SQ: Connecting with our Spiritual Intelligence.

Mary Johnson, PhD, RN, AHN-C, CHTP is a Professor Emeritus from St. Olaf College where she taught in the nursing program for twenty-six years. She has taught imagery, reflexology, Healing Touch and relaxation techniques as well as the principles of Holistic Nursing in workshops for health care providers for many years. She has completed certification in Healing Touch and Advanced Practice in Holistic Nursing. She is presently on the Board of Directors and a Healing Touch provider at Pathways, a health crisis resource center in Minneapolis and teaches a course on energy healing in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.

Billi Faillettaz, RN, BSN St. Olaf College, MSN Mental Health Nursing, U. MN,  served as psychotherapist at the Counseling Center, St Olaf College, and started the student wellness program. In retirement she taught classes in  “Life Stories”, in Olaf Life Long Learning program and at Holden Village.  For the past twelve years she has been an active member of the Twin City Red Cross Stress Team.  She continues her mental health work  with local, state, and national disasters, including 9-ll and Katrina.  

 

4.  Jon Eric Nelson  nelsoner@stolaf.edu  SEEING MOVIES.  

Like all the other arts, movies have their own "language".  Cinematic stories offer us plots and characters and it's these we usually talk about when we discuss a film. There are other elements, however, that are distinctive to movies and that most moviegoers are only vaguely aware of: lighting, composition, focus, shots, cuts.  In this class we'll explore the full range of cinematic art in films from Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" to Fritz Lang's 1931 German thriller, "M". We'll also see a couple film noir classics, "Double Indemnity" and "Out of the Past". 

Eric Nelson is Professor Emeritus of English, St. Olaf College.  He holds degrees from Wittenberg and the 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 screen writing at St. Olaf.

 

 5.  George Soule   gsoule@charter.net   DICKENS AND D H LAWRENCE

 We will read two great English novels, Charles Dickens'  Great Expectations and D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. The first was written in the mid-Nineteenth Century, the second in the opening of the Twentieth.  Both are somewhat autobiographical and center on the struggles of a young man trying to grow up and make his way.  Yet these struggles are vastly different, as are the nature of the women (young and older) they meet along the way.  The worlds of the novel differ vastly too—one early Victorian, the other responding to the great changes at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.  For example, Dickens knew about trains; Lawrence knew about automobiles—and Freud.

George Soule is a Professor Emeritus at Carleton College.  His scholarly interests include Shakespeare and Wordsworth

 

6.  Barbara Evans   barbjevans@aol.com   EXPLORING INNER SPACE WITH ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT  
Hemingway and Wright lived just blocks from each other in Oak Park, Illinois. They changed the way writers write and architects design.  Both expanded the way we think of space.   What movements, influences, conditions and technologies supported their work?  What roles did art, music, and Japanese design (especially gardens) play in their development of literature and architecture?  How do their ideas survive today?   Both enjoyed celebrity and lived personal lives of turmoil and adventure. This course will use the expertise and opinions of its members to explore these ideas with your instructor as your enthusiastic guide.  As we go along, we’ll define what we think creates a sense of space and then we’ll see what Hemingway, Wright and others (artists and composers) have done to add to the richness of literature, architecture, art and music.  We’ll use one text to examine his style.  That text will be The Short Stories: The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway.  This is available in multiple editions and at college bookstores as well as on Amazon.com.  We’ll view Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs through photographs and videos.  I’m looking forward to what you’ll bring to our collective table as I guide our class to some conclusions and many more questions.

Barbara Evans taught American Literature, Drama, Debate and Composition in Rochester, MN for 34 years. She is a graduate of and has been a visiting professor at St. Olaf College, teaching public speaking and first year writing.  Her interests include literary travel (Hemingway, Sandoz, McMurtry and others), amateur photography, and restoration of her arts and crafts home here in Northfield.  Barbara also belongs to a preservation group working to restore the Park Inn, the only remaining Frank Lloyd Wright hotel located in Mason City, Iowa.
 

7.  Robert Flaten (flaten@rconnect.com)  Larry Fowler and Jan Mitchell  Great Decisions

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 $15 per person.  The topics for this class are, Talking to our Enemies, Latin America:  Drift to the Left,  Iraq:  Endgame, Russia, U.S. - China Trade Policy, The European Union at 50, U.S. Defense and Security Policy, and Private Philanthropy.  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.  This year we plan to include high school students to expand the discussion to include intergenerational perspectives.  At the conclusion of the course, we will send policy recommendations to Washington.

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.

 

8.  Bill Woehrlin  wwoehrli@carleton.edu  THE ENLIGHTENMENT; THE PLEASURES AND PERILS OF INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

In the late 17th and 18th centuries, the traditional world view of educated Europeans came under strenuous, critical attack. Long established ideas, inherited from the ancient world and the scholastics of the middle ages, were challenged, and writers who considered themselves “enlightened”  proposed a rich variety of alternatives in almost every field of thought. These alternatives--in science, politics, civic and social thought, religion and economics--, once freed from the domination of religious authority, came to define many of the points of view still at issue today. As an exercise in intellectual history, we will read and discuss a sample of these writings in an attempt to explain their origins and their contributions to the revolutionary events of the 18th century (and perhaps also to our own time).

     In addition to occasional handouts in class, we will use two books: Margaret C. Jacob, THE ENLIGHTENMENT,  and Isaac Kramnick, THE PORTABLE ENLIGHTENMENT READER. I expect the cost of these to be under $30.

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.

 

9  Don Norris  don_norris@q.com  IBSEN'S WOMEN

Ibsen's Women: As Seen Through the Eyes of Lou Salome. The most brilliant woman of her age--lover of Rilke; pursued by Nietzsche who considered her 'the most intelligent of all women';
permitted by Freud to practice psychoanalysis, with Freud himself sending her clients. In 1892, at age 31, she published her masterpiece, Ibsen's Heroines, on six of his women creations: Nora,
Mrs. Alving, Hedwig, Rebecca, Ellida and Hedda. (Amazon has Salome's book listed from $11.46 and has the preferred text for Ibsen's plays, The Complete Major Prose Plays of Ibsen, Rolf Fjelde, plays from $9.98 to $19.90.)"
Don Norris is a retired programmer and analyst formerly at (the defunct) Univac and retired faculty member at the University of Minnesota. He is now continuing his true career of reader, interspersed
with software development for a genealogy program.

           

10..  Riki Kölbl Nelson   rikipoet@yahoo.com   A CHAPTER OF YOUR LIFE

Divide and conquer. In this class you will make a rough  graph of your life, break it down into segments, then choose a specific segment to concentrate on. For that specific segment you will make a limited list of scenes then tackle one after the other.
Exercises include guided visualization of place, time, setting, sensory impressions; free-writing, and
epistolary exchanges. Additional writing between classes will be encouraged though it will not be mandatory. There will be in-class response to your writing and eventually you will be ready to tackle the next segment in the story of your life.    

Riki Kölbl Nelson holds an MA in English literature from UNC, Chapel Hill and an MFA from UMN, Minneapolis. She is cofounder of the writing group Penchant which has endured for more than thirty years. She has published a bilingual collection of poems, Borders/Grenzen and a chapbook, The Fall Heart. Nelson has taught writing (and art) in the honor’s program at UMN, at the Split Rock Arts Program and in the Elder Collegium as well as in the Elderhostel program.