Author: kcarls10

WINTER 2023

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CHN 410/510/ Chinese Literature/ Professor Steve Durrant

Few would dispute the claim in the title of this class that the 18th century masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) is the greatest novel to have ever been written in China. The novel can be read primarily as a story of a love triangle, as an account of the decline of a wealthy aristocratic family, as the story of a Peter Pan-like boy who refuses to grow up, as an account of the interactions between Confucianism on the one side and Daoism/Buddhism on the other, as a kind of cosmic drama, as a virtual encyclopedia of Chinese culture in the 18th century, or in all of these ways at once and in other ways as well. It is so rich that an entire discipline, known as “Red Studies” (Chinese hongxue 紅學) has developed around the study of this text. Now, reading Dream presents a problem: the novel is approximately 2500 pages in its best English translation, more than we can tackle in a single quarter. What I intend to do is guide students through a 320-page abbreviation of the novel and then have them read a series of sample chapters in their entirety. There will be a considerable amount of reading, perhaps 750 pages, but students will leave the class with a good idea of this novel, and, I hope, an adequate foundation to become true “dreamers” by continuing on to read the entire text, should they wish to, in the years ahead.

ANTH 161/ Introduction to Cultural Anthropology/ Professor Tami Hill

Cultural Anthropology is the study of individual and groups within the context of culture. Anthropology draws on many disciplines (history, politics, economics, gender studies, philosophy, linguistics) in the exploration, description, and interpretation of how people use culture to make meaning out of their lives. In this course, we will use the lens of various groups, countries, and cultures across the globe to examine the following topics: how humans have organized themselves over time and across space, religion and ritual, social identity, difference and inequality, colonialism and globalization, immigration and refugees.

My goal in this course is to illustrate how anthropology can help us to better understand, interpret, analyze, and appreciate ourselves, our cultures, and the world around us. My main approach is to make the “familiar strange and the strange familiar”—helping us to question our own cultural beliefs and practices which we may take for granted and assume as “natural”—while trying to better understand other cultural practices that we might initially consider strange or bizarre. Basically, I think Cultural Anthropology makes life more interesting and I want to show you why and how this is true through this course.

GEOG 410/510/ Geography Of The Anthropocene/ Professor Scott Warren

In this course we explore the relationship between nature and culture, and the many ways that humans have modified the earth. Many scientists, writers and other observers have asserted that humankind has “come to rival nature” in our ability to shape the earth and its systems (e.g., human-caused climate change). These observers argue that this ability to change nature and shape natural systems to our liking has ushered in a new era of geological history called the “Anthropocene.” We will interrogate this claim, reflect on its significance and theoretical underpinnings, and develop a better understanding of the drivers and consequences of global change.

SPRING 2023 / AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL AGENCY / HC431H / ANITA CHARI

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This class explores the autobiography as a form of both personal and political expression.  We begin by complicating, questioning and demystifying the divide between the personal and political by linking personal stories and histories with narratives of broader social structures, such as capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and colonialism. We will read autobiographies from diverse sources, including letters, quasi-fictionalized autobiographies, poetry, and autobiographies of political activists.  We will also engage with theories of social structure and agency in order to theorize the interface between personal experience and political agency.

 

In this course, we will view the autobiography as a vehicle for making personal experience something that is politically significant.  The autobiography, one could say, births political agency, hence our course title, “Autobiography as Political Agency.”  Therefore, we are reading autobiographies to think about how the autobiography as a form creates possibilities for both individual and collective agency.

Application: Spring-2023-Application-Inside-Out-CHC-431H-Autobiography-as-Political-Agency-1

SPRING 2023 / CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY / GEOG444 / SHAUL COHEN

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Cultural Geography provides a lens for studying popular culture in all its guises, and can be a key tool for understanding the cleavages in society that are referred to as “culture wars”.  Culture, as a human construction, is always dynamic, and always contested.  In this course we will develop the approaches and determine the questions that help us to understand where culture comes from, where it’s going, and how it is determined, shaped, represented, and challenged, from place to place, people to people, time to time.  Culture is power, culture is politics; how can we understand it, and influence it, as it unfolds around us? As we work through the course we are going to explore layers relating to place, space, landscape, identity, and power.  What are these things/processes, how do they work?

In addition to course readings, we will draw upon the world “out there”; landscapes, buildings, magazines, literature, music, dance, film, television, discourse, and so on, to bring many cultural geographies into view.  Your primary task is to read and participate in discussions, to respond in writing to the prompts that I will give you, and to be looking for illustrations of our themes in the world around you.

Application: Spring-Application-Inside-Out-Spring-GEOG-444-Cultural-Geography

SPRING 2023 / ETHICS AND LITERATURE / HC421H / STEVEN SHANKMAN

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We will read Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad, the recently (2019) translated “prequel” to Life and Fate, and Is it Righteous to Be?, a series of interviews with the 20th-century’s greatest philosopher of ethics, Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995). Life and Fate, a panoramic novel modeled on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, was a work of literature that Levinas often referred to in his writings of the last fifteen years of his life. “The essential thing in this book is simply what the character Ikonnikov says – ‘There is neither God nor the Good, but there is goodness’ – which is also my thesis.” Grossman (1905-1964), like Levinas, is careful to distinguish ethics from politics and he, like Levinas, insists that, even in the wake of the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, goodness is still possible.

 

We will discuss Grossman’s novel in the context of Vladimir Putin’s current and brutal invasion of Ukraine, and we will note the moral and tactical significance of the fact that, in Grossman’s Stalingrad, Russia (or, more precisely, the Soviet Union) is being invaded by Nazi Germany, in contrast to the current war, in which Russia is the invader.

 

Application: Spring-2023-Application-Inside-Out-CHC-421H-Ethics-and-Literature

WINTER 2023 / THE STORY OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY / SOC410 / ELLEN SCOTT

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This country was founded on principles of inequality, despite aspirations otherwise stated in the Constitution. In the generations since, the fundamental inequalities based on race, gender and class, as well as other bases of difference and identity, remain foundational to our society. While the way social inequality is exercised and enforced has changed, the fact of our society being built on a bedrock of inequality has persisted, and class inequality is greater now than at any time in the history of this nation. In this course, we will examine the experience of social inequality through the lens of different genres: qualitative social science, fiction, and the personal narrative of memoir. We will read different kinds of texts to explore both the impact and experience of poverty, racism and other forms of inequality, and consider how the texts can teach us about the social structure of inequality in America.

WINTER 2023/ EXISTENTIALISM IN LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY / GERM220M/SCAN220M / JEFFREY S. LIBRETT

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In the modern age, religions, moral codes, and cultural systems come into question. The individual human being finds itself alone and uncertain, in search of value and meaning. Anxiety first becomes an important theme in this period. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this situation gives rise—especially after World War II–to existentialism, a movement in thought that turns around the felt need and desire to discover new ways of orienting oneself ethically and aesthetically in the world. We read and discuss novels, short stories, and philosophical essays that explore the dissolution of old values, and the possibilities for the creation of new ones. All of these texts focus on radical freedom and radical self-responsibility. We examine central works by German, French and Antillais authors from the late 1800s and the 1900s, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Franz Fanon.

Return to Inside-Out Courses

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After what feels like an eternity, we’re excited to announce that the UO Prison Education Program is facilitating another Inside-Out course this fall term! It’s been a long two years without getting inside and outside students together in the classroom. Now, we’ve got a class of 24 students in PHIL 407/HC 421: Mercy and the Rule of Law, taught by Professor Kristen Bell. Everyone is motivated and excited to be back in person, and this is visible in the enthusiasm brought from both inside and outside. We wish students continued success in their studies!

FALL 2022 / MERCY AND THE RULE OF LAW / PHIL407 / KRISTEN BELL

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Philosophers and legal scholars generally define the rule of law as a state of affairs in which law, rather than the whim of individuals, is “in charge” in a society. The first part of the class will delve into what the rule of law is, whether/why it is valuable, and what conditions are needed to maintain the rule of law. The second part of the class will focus on investigating various philosophical accounts of mercy, beginning with Seneca and continuing through contemporary work on the subject. Students will examine competing definitions of mercy, distinguish mercy from related concepts like forgiveness, and identify how mercy may be valuable. The third part of the course delves into an apparent tension between mercy and the rule of law. Mercy is often understood as giving a person less punishment than is required by law. On this understanding, a judge who grants mercy to an individual will be derogating from what the law requires. In doing so, the judge is not upholding the rule of law – rather than faithfully applying the law, the judge is taking charge and ruling according to her own will. Is respect for the rule of law inconsistent with a practice of mercy? If a society values both mercy and the rule of law, how (if at all) should mercy be incorporated into a legal system?

Fall 2022

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PSY 407/507 / Psychological Perspectives on Social Interaction and Influence / Professor Inga Schowengerdt

How does social interaction contribute to what we perceive to be real, believe to be true, and how we behave? What factors and processes determine who, or what, we are influenced by, and how? Can individual and collective practices of interaction and influence catalyze social change and movements? Finally, what can psychology teach us about maximizing our own experience of social interactions use of social influence therein? In this course, we address these questions through the lenses of psychological theory, exploring both foundational research and contemporary applications and innovations. Throughout, we make connections between research to current social issues, ethical issues in investigation and interventions targeting social interaction and influence, and ground our discussion of theory in lived experience.

 

GEOG 410/510 / Power, Culture, and Place / Professor Sanan Moradi

This course is about power, culture and place. These terms are closely entangled with personal and social life. Strangely though, these concepts—and many others related to them—are rarely the subject of conscious reflection. Rather, they commonly seem to lurk in the shadows of the material world and the conscious mind. Inseparable from these concepts is the question of space—its definitions, production, partitions, regulations, in/access, etc. Taking a geographic approach, this course aims to shed light on these concepts, how they shape and are shaped by space, and how they impact personal and collective life. The goal is for the students to engage with concepts and theories in contemporary cultural geography and make connections with their own personal experiences.

 

MATH 111 / College Algebra / Professor Craig Tingey 

Study of functions including graphs, operations and inverses. Includes polynomial, rational, exponential, logarithmic functions and their applications, and systems of equations.

 

GEOG 410/510 / Geography of the Anthropocene: Global Change / Professor Scott Warren

In this course we explore the relationship between nature and culture, and the many ways that humans have modified the earth. Many scientists, writers and other observers have asserted that humankind has “come to rival nature” in our ability to shape the earth and its systems (e.g., human-caused climate change). These observers argue that this ability to change nature and shape natural systems to our liking has ushered in a new era of geological history called the “Anthropocene.” We will interrogate this claim, reflect on its significance and theoretical underpinnings, and develop a better understanding of the drivers and consequences of global change.

 

ANTH 161 / Introduction to Cultural Anthropology / Professor Tami Hill  

Cultural Anthropology is the study of individual and groups within the context of culture. Anthropology draws on many disciplines (history, politics, economics, gender studies, philosophy, linguistics) in the exploration, description, and interpretation of how people use culture to make meaning out of their lives. In this course, we will use the lens of various groups, countries, and cultures across the globe to examine the following topics: how humans have organized themselves over time and across space, religion and ritual, social identity, difference and inequality, colonialism and globalization, immigration and refugees.

My goal in this course is to illustrate how anthropology can help us to better understand, interpret, analyze, and appreciate ourselves, our cultures, and the world around us. My main approach is to make the “familiar strange and the strange familiar”—helping us to question our own cultural beliefs and practices which we may take for granted and assume as “natural”—while trying to better understand other cultural practices that we might initially consider strange or bizarre. Basically, I think Cultural Anthropology makes life more interesting and I want to show you why and how this is true through this course.

Abridged Interview with Steve Durrant

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At the request of one of our inside students, we’ve started asking program staff and instructors why they work with PEP. We’ll be including responses on our website and in our newsletters, so keep an eye out!

Professor Steve Durrant, a professor of Chinese literature who’s been teaching with PEP for several years, shared a little about what motivates him to be involved in the program:

 

“When I think of the world around us, I think of the geographical space that reaches out to other cultures, but I also think of temporal space and history. I’m trying to give the men inside an experience of the world that is both physically–and in most cases, temporally–quite far removed and constrained. There’s that cultural dimension to it.

I also really believe in the transformative power of literature, the way literature challenges us and makes us think of subjects that might not otherwise come up. I believe in the power of literature to make a difference in these men’s lives–and from my experience, it does.

The students are fully alive in so many ways. I learn from them, they give me insight into ways to think about these texts that I haven’t thought about myself. It’s a reciprocal relationship. I get to teach something I like, and it’s always a joy when people respond to that teaching.

Students have mentioned how relevant so many subjects of the Chinese literature courses are to them as incarcerated men. You see that we are all human beings. The men are always able to emotionally and intellectually cross over that seeming gap, the space between where they are and the texts that they’re reading, to identify with and be moved by the things that we’ve been and the material we’ve looked at.”