Apparently My beautiful almost poetic description was lost when I interrupted entry for an hour or more. I’ll enter it later from Memory [here goes]:
We start by delving deep into some very hard [and some easy] readings to build a common vocabulary and philosophical base, working at the rate of 1/2 to one full book per week for almost half the course. Required reaction papers are shared in triplicate each week and the discussion is framed around questions supplied by the students; these discussion questions are crucial. They are the "price of admission" to each seminar session.
Our common readings ROCK: Highlights include a radical science 'zine, L Fleck's "Genesis & Development of a Scientific Fact," R Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass," M Foucault's "Order of Things" and the professor's two co-authored books. Somehow a caring and supportive community is created; it's necessity for compassionate holding of a wide variety of backgrounds and positions on academic and intellectual matters. The work of reconstructing one's own discipline, creative enterprise, or knowledge work requires such container. New Ways of Knowing are not easy to come by.
Soon enough we turn into a forum for each participant's version of reconstructive knowledge -- our own attempt at building critical insight, progressive action, ecological sensitivity and the identity of wisdom with compassion into everything we do. Each person takes some time to lead a discussion around their own work, its future direction (& execution) and the stage it currently has achieved. Remarkably, we actually fulfill at least some of the course's lofty goals for almost all its participants.
The course is a form of time-travel. It is not just about what one learns in its 14 sessions but also what effect it has in the future. The class prepares for later stages, whatever the level a student enters. This year those levels range from a rare 2nd semester "first-year" to some whose work is already passable for dv3 -- needing only a semester of residence to graduate; as well as the more usual preparation -- still doing the division 3 or about to enter it.
We start by delving deep into some very hard [and some easy] readings to build a common vocabulary and philosophical base, working at the rate of 1/2 to one full book per week for almost half the course. Required reaction papers are shared in triplicate each week and the discussion is framed around questions supplied by the students; these discussion questions are crucial. They are the "price of admission" to each seminar session.
Our common readings ROCK: Highlights include a radical science 'zine, L Fleck's "Genesis & Development of a Scientific Fact," R Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass," M Foucault's "Order of Things" and the professor's two co-authored books. Somehow a caring and supportive community is created; it's necessity for compassionate holding of a wide variety of backgrounds and positions on academic and intellectual matters. The work of reconstructing one's own discipline, creative enterprise, or knowledge work requires such container. New Ways of Knowing are not easy to come by.
Soon enough we turn into a forum for each participant's version of reconstructive knowledge -- our own attempt at building critical insight, progressive action, ecological sensitivity and the identity of wisdom with compassion into everything we do. Each person takes some time to lead a discussion around their own work, its future direction (& execution) and the stage it currently has achieved. Remarkably, we actually fulfill at least some of the course's lofty goals for almost all its participants.
The course is a form of time-travel. It is not just about what one learns in its 14 sessions but also what effect it has in the future. The class prepares for later stages, whatever the level a student enters. This year those levels range from a rare 2nd semester "first-year" to some whose work is already passable for dv3 -- needing only a semester of residence to graduate; as well as the more usual preparation -- still doing the division 3 or about to enter it.
- Teacher: Herbert Bernstein