Upcoming Events Spring 2008
The Mediated Classroom: Ways That Computer and Other Technologies Are Transforming the Space of Communication and Relationships (a Conversation on Teaching)
April 1st, 2008
Part of the Technologies, Values and Teaching Series
Co-sponsor: Center for Ethics
Facilitators: Charles Scott, Director, Center for Ethics; Susan Schoenbohm, Program Coordinator, Center for Ethics
Panelists: Jonathan Gilligan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences; John Sloop, Associate Dean, College of Arts & Science and Professor, Department of Communication Studies
12:15PM - 1:30PM, Alumni Hall 205, Lunch Provided
New computer technologies are profoundly changing the ways in which we communicate and relate to one another. Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and wikis, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and virtual worlds such as Second Life enable us to create communal spaces and connect with like-minded individuals a world away. Yet we also may risk losing certain dimensions of communication and community if fewer of our exchanges are actually face to face. How can we make the most of these synchronous and asynchronous technologies and still maintain a true community of scholars? What are the implications of these changes on our classroom teaching?
* PLEASE REGISTER BY CLICKING ON THE WORKSHOP TITLE *
_______________________________________________________________________________
Global Justice Public Lecture Series
This spring the Center for Ethics is co-sponsoring a public lecture series on global justice. The speakers include: Alison Jaggar (University of Colorado, Boulder), Kok-Chor Tan (University of Pennsylvania), David Reidy (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), James Bohman (St. Louis University), and Mathias Risse (Harvard). Click here for a complete schedule.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Workshops on Careers in the Non-Profit Sector
Are you considering a career in the non-profit sector? If so, it is likely that your job will require you to write a variety of different types of pieces – from solicitation letters and brochures to annual reports and follow-up communications to donors and volunteers. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet with representatives from area non-profit organizations and to practice utilizing the writing skills necessary for work in this area. Find out what led these panelists to careers in non-profits and learn more about the differences between writing for your college classes and writing on the job. For more details, including a workshop schedule, click here.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Angela Davis Visiting Scholar: Theories of Slavery Seminar
In April of ’08, Professor Angela Davis will be a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt. She will give an intensive, three-week seminar on the topic of Theories of Slavery and a public lecture on April 4 (topic, time and place TBA). (Bio):
_______________________________________________________________________________
Considering Animals: A Retreat at Dyer Observatory
April 27-May 2, 2008
Facilitated by David Wood
A small group of Vanderbilt faculty will spend a week exploring the ethical, legal, political, religious, scientific and other connections that we humans have with nonhumans, and the prospects for their expansion and transformation.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ethics and Economics Workshop
Led by Forrest Perry and Carrie Hanlin. The group will meet four times and focus on issues that are ethical and economic: the nature of capital and profit-making, the nature of work under capitalism, and alternatives to capitalism. Participants will come from a variety of disciplines and schools at Vanderbilt.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Pedagogy of the Difficult: Exploring the Hard Stuff
Sponsored by the Center for Ethics, Mark Schoenfield, director
May 12-16th
Sometimes it’s the material, sometimes it’s the students and sometimes it’s you; usually, it’s a combination. In this five-day seminar, we will explore conflicts of meaning and value that make teaching difficult and ways to transform those difficulties into learning opportunities. Material and class-room situations can be ethically and conceptually difficult. They can raise sensitive issues, they can impinge on the identity, well-being, and sense of safety of students; they can bring out the best and worst of both students and teachers. In this seminar we will explore these issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Participants will work on developing materials for their own particular courses, think more widely about their professional lives, and consider the kind of classroom space they want to create for students. The course will run 9-4 most days. For more information, please contact Mark Schoenfield, English Dept. (mark.l.schoenfield@vanderbilt.edu) or Susan Schoenbohm, Program Coordinator at the Center for Ethics (s.schoenbohm@vanderbilt.edu).
_______________________________________________________________________________
Teaching Texts: The Hard Stuff of Reading
Sponsored by the Center for Ethics; Mark Schoenfield, director
May 19-23rd
In this seminar, we will use texts from a variety of disciplines to explore the ethics and pedagogy of reading within the context of our classes. “Ethics,” in this context, refers to the ways in which reading and teaching texts involves addressing questions of power, equity, representation, identity and integrity both within the classroom and in the wider culture. Topics will include the theories of representation, connections and disjunctions between language and “facts,” intertextuality, “close-reading,” and textuality as a process of analysis. Participants will design a sequence for teaching a longer text for their own classes, as well as consider the various potentials of different kinds of texts for their classrooms. The course will run 9-4 most days. For more information, please contact Mark Schoenfield, English Dept. (mark.l.schoenfield@vanderbilt.edu) or Susan Schoenbohm, Program Coordinator at the Center for Ethics (s.schoenbohm@vanderbilt.edu).
_______________________________________________________________________________
May Faculty Seminar entitled: “Technology, Commonweal, and the Transformation of Humanity.”
Technological advances over the coming decades – pharmaceutical, bioelectronic, and genetic – promise to transform people in ways that could destabilize or even rupture the common endowments that define us as human. This seminar will be a gathering of a diverse group of scholars from many disciplines with the purpose of studying and discuss the implications of technologically modified people for society and for the very notion of humanity.
The questions this seminar will explore will be inherently multidisciplinary in nature, bringing together the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, as well as medicine, law, engineering, and public policy. The goals in this seminar are to stimulate interest in these issues that will carry over in some form into your teaching and/or research, to compare relevant knowledge from different areas of research, and to bring a broad variety of perspectives into direct contact with each other. Participants need not commit to pursuing these issues further, but should be open to the possibility of doing so.
The seminar will meet for four days, Monday-Thursday May 12-15. There will be morning and afternoon sessions with short reading assignments. For a more detailed syllabus of these session, click here.
_______________________________________________________________________________