PBDS 755

Special Topics: Backgrounds & Ideas

NOTE: This is representative of the syllabi for this course. It is not necessarily the syllabus being used in any one semester.

(Topic Changes from semester to semester. Here's a sample:)

MEMORY AND REMEMBRANCE

This course examines what commemoration is, what forms it takes, and how the public at large shapes and breaths life into monuments. We'll examine the language of remembrance and the media in which it is expressed. We'll look at representations of memory at such sites as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the various proposals for Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. Literature, music, photography and film will also be considered: all are stylized representations or reenactments of memory.

Also to be considered is whether there is an "optimal" time between an event and its remembrance: what is gained by perspective, and is there an ideal gestation for it?

We'll examine the claim that remembrance is an arduous, social activity that takes time, dedication, money and that its real purpose is to defy oblivion. Forgetting is natural, and perhaps necessary, but commemoration delays it in ways which help people mourn and which have marked our landscape in powerful and enduring ways.

Course Objectives:

ƒ¶ Understand our need for memorials and the form they take.

ƒ¶ Understand what makes a memorial "work" and why the accepted concept of memorials changes over time (from, say, a general on horseback to a wall of names).

ƒ¶ Appreciate the malleability/pliability of memory -- how it slips and slides over time and how memorials are a bulwark against our collective amnesia, as well as designs on shaping and preserving memory and freezing it in time.

ƒ¶ Traverse the juncture where psychology, art, history and the personal and communal meet.

REQUIRED READING

No textbook, but there will be many, many handouts from me. Readings will be drawn from many sources, including (possibly):

ƒ¶ Memory, edited by Thomas Butler.

ƒ¶ How Societies Remember by Paul Connerton.

ƒ¶ "Sacred Places, Sacred Occasions and Sacred Environments," by Amos Rappoport. Architectural Digest 9-10:75-82.

ƒ¶ To Heal A Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Jan Scruggs and Joel Swerdlow.

ƒ¶ Holocaust Memorials in History: The Art of Memory by James Young

ƒ¶ At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture by James Young

ƒ¶ On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

ƒ¶ In Fitting Memory: The Art and Politics of Holocaust Memorials by Sybil Milton

ƒ¶ Books or articles about the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and various proposals for the World Trade Center in New York.

ƒ¶ The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt.

ƒ¶ The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

ƒ¶ The Gettysburg Address

If you come across interesting, well-written articles about memory, memorials, etc., please bring them in for class discussion. Let me know at the beginning of the class that you have something to discuss. No textbook, but there will be many, many handouts from me.

RECOMMENDED READING (as well as recommended additions to your library):

ƒ¶ Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Allyn & Bacon, 2000.

ƒ¶ On Writing Well by William Zinsser. HarperCollins, 1998.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

Writing assignments will be given in the number of desired words. The length of an assignment is not arbitrary, although it is somewhat flexible. For a 1,500-word assignment, for example, you don't have to hit that magic number right on the button. On the other hand, don't skimp and write 1,000 words. And don't write a bloated 2,000 words. A general rule of thumb is that going over or under an assigned length by 100 or so words is dandy. Anything excessively above or below that number will be a problem.

Don't be seduced by the numbers! The compression necessary when writing a 500-word essay may be as difficult as the discipline and/or research and/or thinking demanded when taking a 2,500-word essay to full length. Maybe more difficult.

Assignments should be double-spaced in 12-point characters. Always use one-inch margins and indent paragraphs. Do not have an extra space between paragraphs. Those extra spaces disrupt the reading process, turn each paragraph into an isolated island of its own and interrupt the flow of meaning and effect.

REVISIONS

Every writing assignment can be revised twice. The grade for the latest revision will replace previous grades received for that assignment.

No revision will be accepted unless all previous versions of that assignment are stapled to it.

As you revise, keep in mind this passage from Philip Gerard's Creative Nonfiction:

Revision is... re-envisioning your work. Stepping back from it in light of what you know now, what you have written, and determining if you have done what you set out to do. Just because the piece occurred to you in a certain way and you wrote it that way doesn't mean that was the only way, or the best way, to do it.

PROJECTS AND PRESENTATIONS

Each student must:

ƒ¶ Analyze in a half-hour presentation to the class a memorial that you have visited and which the rest of the class has not visited on a field trip. (Graduate students' presentations will be 45-50 minutes.)

OR:

ƒ¶ Present to the class a musical, dramatic or literary memorial of an historical event or a personal or collective loss. (Example: 9/11; the death of a parent, spouse, sibling, pet; the loss of innocence; the War in Iraq and its aftermath; etc.). In this half-hour presentation, explain/discuss why you chose to commemorate a particular event or stage of life; the medium and form of the memorial you designed; and the problems or advantages of working within that form. (Graduate students' presentations will be 45-50 minutes.)

OR:

ƒ¶ Present to the class a redesign for an existing memorial (Lincoln or Vietnam memorials, Washington Monument, etc.) Explain in half an hour why you are dissatisfied with what has already been executed and why your design would be an improvement over it. (Graduate students' presentations will be 45-50 minutes.)

GRADING

Grades will be given on every assignment:

F -- for work that does not satisfy in any way the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course.

C-, C, C+ -- for work that barely satisfies the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course.

B-, B, B+ -- good, solid, commendable work.

A-, A -- work exceedingly accomplished, polished and skilled.

There is no final exam.

Grades received for your writing assignments will account for 60 percent of your final grade; your project/presentation will account for 30 percent; class participation and attendance will account for 10 percent. Also influencing the final grade will be your progress and improvement as a writer and a thinker over the course of the semester.

Grading will also consider creativity, imagination, honesty, discipline and ability to

integrate, develop and appreciate ideas from various disciplines, such as history,

psychology, art, music and literature.

Class participation is not class attendance. "Attendance" means being bodily and (hopefully) mentally present from the beginning to the end of each class. "Participation" means you are contributing to the class with comments, insights, readings you have discovered on your own, yelps of revelation, groans of dismay, holy/transcendent/beatific visions. (But please: NO speaking in tongues.)

Any assignment not turned in during the class when it is due will lose half a letter grade. Assignments more than one week late will lose a full letter grade.

No assignment can be e-mailed to me.

Excessive and repeated tardiness will adversely affect your grade, as will more than two absences.

PLAGIARISM:

It is illegal and unethical to use someone else's work without properly crediting the source. If you are not sure whether to credit a source or to quote or paraphrase or use original language, please ask me in advance Ü or err on the side of citing the source you are using. If I discover you've plagiarized material for this course, I will follow the university's policy of academic integrity. (See the UB Student handbook for this policy.) Under that policy, the consequences of plagiarism can include failing the course and being expelled from the university.

OFFICE HOURS

My office #, phone # and e-mail address are in the top left corner of the first page of this syllabus. This semester, I'll be in my office on Wednesdays and Thursdays from about 4-5:15 p.m.

I'll accommodate any student who wants to meet with me, but an appointment is advisable. Please call or e-mail to schedule a meeting. If a before- or after-class meeting is inconvenient for you, I'll try to adjust my schedule -- within reason -- so we can meet at another time.

THE WEEKS AHEAD...

Note: This is a rough overview of the semester. Readings, writing assignments, and class discussions may change as the semester proceeds.

Week 1: Jan. 29

The lay of the land: overview of the course

Week 2: Feb. 5

Due: 750 words on the appropriateness of a memorial and how the shape, form, intent,and the event being commemorated Ü reflect the cultural/political/historic climate in which it is designed.

Readings: on the Lincoln memorial and the proposed (in 1923) National Mammy Memorial.

Week 3: Feb. 12

Guest lecturer on the role and uses of history: Ronald P. Legon, U/B professor, Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies; director, Denit Honors Program

Readings: on the uses/abuses/psychology of memory and material from Ron Legon on history.

Week 4: Feb. 19

Due: 750 words on how your own memory of a specific event has changed over the years; how the changes may have reflected what was occurring contemporaneously in your life.

Reading: excerpts from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' On Death and Dying.

Week 5: Feb. 26

Guest lecturer on grief and mourning: Helene Goldberg, lecturer at Dept. of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University

Readings: on memorials in Washington, DC and from Helene Goldberg on grief and mourning

Week 6: March 4

Due: 750 words on your own grieving (for anything Ü a parent, child, pet, a national event, etc.) Consider if your mourning/grieving was different than other people you know who were also in mourning. Consider the form of your mourning, and how effective it was. Also consider if the form relied entirely on traditional practices from your own faith, or if it was something you devised and was idiosyncratic to you, or if it was a blend of tradition and innovation. Consider why you relied on tradition or innovation at a moment like this.

CLASS PRESENTATION: five-minute student presentations on memorials in Washington, D.C.: Lincoln, Vietnam, Korea, FDR, Jefferson, Washington. (We'll do four of these, with two students presenting on each.)

Discuss: How each memorial evolved; designs that were originally proposed; how each of these designs may have had a different intent or reflected a different aspect of the person or the event being commemorated; how successful these memorials have been, etc∞.

IMPORTANT: This class and the following week's will run from 5:30 to about 6:30 p.m. After that, I'll meet individually with students for 10-15 minute sessions in my office (Room 504) to review progress to date, discuss any problems, review proposal for the end-of-the-semester project/presentation.

Week 7: March 11

NO CLASS

Week 8: March 18

Field trip to Washington, D.C. memorials Ü Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial,

Jefferson Memorial, FDR, Korea, etc.

MARCH 25 Ü NO CLASS/SPRING BREAK

Week 9: April 1

Guest lecturer: John Durel, museum consultant

Special event: A Passover Seder and a discussion of Good Friday and Easter and how religious narratives are vehicles of remembrance. (FYI: Passover starts Monday, April 5; Good Friday is April 9; Easter is April 11.)

READING: Materials on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and on Holocaust remembrance, in general. Excerpts from Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking.

Week 10: April 9

IMPORTANT: THIS IS A FRIDAY!!

Field trip to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

We'll meet at the 15^th Street Entrance to the museum at noon, then tour the museum and have a debriefing at 2:30 p.m. in Classroom B.

Week 11: April 15

Guest lecturer: Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking. Talk begins at 8:00 p.m. in auditorium in Business Center.

Week 12: April 22

Student Presentations

Readings: on the rhetoric of remembrance Ü The Gettysburg Address, 9/11 speeches, etc.

Week 13: April 29

Student Presentations

Readings: on proposals for the World Trade Center memorial

Week 14: May 6

Student Presentations

Week 15: May 13

There is NO final exam, but you are expected to attend this class for general discussion about the course.




			PBDS 755 Special Topics: Backgrounds & Ideas NOTE: This is representative of the syllabi for this course. It is not necessarily the syllabus being used in any one semester. (Topic Changes from semester to semester. Here's a sample:) MEMORY AND REMEMBRANCE This course examines what commemoration is, what forms it takes, and how the public at large shapes and breaths life into monuments. We'll examine the language of remembrance and the media in which it is expressed. We'll look at representations of memory at such sites as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the various proposals for Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. Literature, music, photography and film will also be considered: all are stylized representations or reenactments of memory. Also to be considered is whether there is an "optimal" time between an event and its remembrance: what is gained by perspective, and is there an ideal gestation for it? We'll examine the claim that remembrance is an arduous, social activity that takes time, dedication, money and that its real purpose is to defy oblivion. Forgetting is natural, and perhaps necessary, but commemoration delays it in ways which help people mourn and which have marked our landscape in powerful and enduring ways. Course Objectives: ƒ¶ Understand our need for memorials and the form they take. ƒ¶ Understand what makes a memorial "work" and why the accepted concept of memorials changes over time (from, say, a general on horseback to a wall of names). ƒ¶ Appreciate the malleability/pliability of memory -- how it slips and slides over time and how memorials are a bulwark against our collective amnesia, as well as designs on shaping and preserving memory and freezing it in time. ƒ¶ Traverse the juncture where psychology, art, history and the personal and communal meet. REQUIRED READING No textbook, but there will be many, many handouts from me. Readings will be drawn from many sources, including (possibly): ƒ¶ Memory, edited by Thomas Butler. ƒ¶ How Societies Remember by Paul Connerton. ƒ¶ "Sacred Places, Sacred Occasions and Sacred Environments," by Amos Rappoport. Architectural Digest 9-10:75-82. ƒ¶ To Heal A Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Jan Scruggs and Joel Swerdlow. ƒ¶ Holocaust Memorials in History: The Art of Memory by James Young ƒ¶ At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture by James Young ƒ¶ On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross ƒ¶ In Fitting Memory: The Art and Politics of Holocaust Memorials by Sybil Milton ƒ¶ Books or articles about the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and various proposals for the World Trade Center in New York. ƒ¶ The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt. ƒ¶ The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang ƒ¶ The Gettysburg Address If you come across interesting, well-written articles about memory, memorials, etc., please bring them in for class discussion. Let me know at the beginning of the class that you have something to discuss. No textbook, but there will be many, many handouts from me. RECOMMENDED READING (as well as recommended additions to your library): ƒ¶ Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Allyn & Bacon, 2000. ƒ¶ On Writing Well by William Zinsser. HarperCollins, 1998. WRITING ASSIGNMENTS Writing assignments will be given in the number of desired words. The length of an assignment is not arbitrary, although it is somewhat flexible. For a 1,500-word assignment, for example, you don't have to hit that magic number right on the button. On the other hand, don't skimp and write 1,000 words. And don't write a bloated 2,000 words. A general rule of thumb is that going over or under an assigned length by 100 or so words is dandy. Anything excessively above or below that number will be a problem. Don't be seduced by the numbers! The compression necessary when writing a 500-word essay may be as difficult as the discipline and/or research and/or thinking demanded when taking a 2,500-word essay to full length. Maybe more difficult. Assignments should be double-spaced in 12-point characters. Always use one-inch margins and indent paragraphs. Do not have an extra space between paragraphs. Those extra spaces disrupt the reading process, turn each paragraph into an isolated island of its own and interrupt the flow of meaning and effect. REVISIONS Every writing assignment can be revised twice. The grade for the latest revision will replace previous grades received for that assignment. No revision will be accepted unless all previous versions of that assignment are stapled to it. As you revise, keep in mind this passage from Philip Gerard's Creative Nonfiction: Revision is... re-envisioning your work. Stepping back from it in light of what you know now, what you have written, and determining if you have done what you set out to do. Just because the piece occurred to you in a certain way and you wrote it that way doesn't mean that was the only way, or the best way, to do it. PROJECTS AND PRESENTATIONS Each student must: ƒ¶ Analyze in a half-hour presentation to the class a memorial that you have visited and which the rest of the class has not visited on a field trip. (Graduate students' presentations will be 45-50 minutes.) OR: ƒ¶ Present to the class a musical, dramatic or literary memorial of an historical event or a personal or collective loss. (Example: 9/11; the death of a parent, spouse, sibling, pet; the loss of innocence; the War in Iraq and its aftermath; etc.). In this half-hour presentation, explain/discuss why you chose to commemorate a particular event or stage of life; the medium and form of the memorial you designed; and the problems or advantages of working within that form. (Graduate students' presentations will be 45-50 minutes.) OR: ƒ¶ Present to the class a redesign for an existing memorial (Lincoln or Vietnam memorials, Washington Monument, etc.) Explain in half an hour why you are dissatisfied with what has already been executed and why your design would be an improvement over it. (Graduate students' presentations will be 45-50 minutes.) GRADING Grades will be given on every assignment: F -- for work that does not satisfy in any way the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course. C-, C, C+ -- for work that barely satisfies the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course. B-, B, B+ -- good, solid, commendable work. A-, A -- work exceedingly accomplished, polished and skilled. There is no final exam. Grades received for your writing assignments will account for 60 percent of your final grade; your project/presentation will account for 30 percent; class participation and attendance will account for 10 percent. Also influencing the final grade will be your progress and improvement as a writer and a thinker over the course of the semester. Grading will also consider creativity, imagination, honesty, discipline and ability to integrate, develop and appreciate ideas from various disciplines, such as history, psychology, art, music and literature. Class participation is not class attendance. "Attendance" means being bodily and (hopefully) mentally present from the beginning to the end of each class. "Participation" means you are contributing to the class with comments, insights, readings you have discovered on your own, yelps of revelation, groans of dismay, holy/transcendent/beatific visions. (But please: NO speaking in tongues.) Any assignment not turned in during the class when it is due will lose half a letter grade. Assignments more than one week late will lose a full letter grade. No assignment can be e-mailed to me. Excessive and repeated tardiness will adversely affect your grade, as will more than two absences. PLAGIARISM: It is illegal and unethical to use someone else's work without properly crediting the source. If you are not sure whether to credit a source or to quote or paraphrase or use original language, please ask me in advance Ü or err on the side of citing the source you are using. If I discover you've plagiarized material for this course, I will follow the university's policy of academic integrity. (See the UB Student handbook for this policy.) Under that policy, the consequences of plagiarism can include failing the course and being expelled from the university. OFFICE HOURS My office #, phone # and e-mail address are in the top left corner of the first page of this syllabus. This semester, I'll be in my office on Wednesdays and Thursdays from about 4-5:15 p.m. I'll accommodate any student who wants to meet with me, but an appointment is advisable. Please call or e-mail to schedule a meeting. If a before- or after-class meeting is inconvenient for you, I'll try to adjust my schedule -- within reason -- so we can meet at another time. THE WEEKS AHEAD... Note: This is a rough overview of the semester. Readings, writing assignments, and class discussions may change as the semester proceeds. Week 1: Jan. 29 The lay of the land: overview of the course Week 2: Feb. 5 Due: 750 words on the appropriateness of a memorial and how the shape, form, intent,and the event being commemorated Ü reflect the cultural/political/historic climate in which it is designed. Readings: on the Lincoln memorial and the proposed (in 1923) National Mammy Memorial. Week 3: Feb. 12 Guest lecturer on the role and uses of history: Ronald P. Legon, U/B professor, Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies; director, Denit Honors Program Readings: on the uses/abuses/psychology of memory and material from Ron Legon on history. Week 4: Feb. 19 Due: 750 words on how your own memory of a specific event has changed over the years; how the changes may have reflected what was occurring contemporaneously in your life. Reading: excerpts from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' On Death and Dying. Week 5: Feb. 26 Guest lecturer on grief and mourning: Helene Goldberg, lecturer at Dept. of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University Readings: on memorials in Washington, DC and from Helene Goldberg on grief and mourning Week 6: March 4 Due: 750 words on your own grieving (for anything Ü a parent, child, pet, a national event, etc.) Consider if your mourning/grieving was different than other people you know who were also in mourning. Consider the form of your mourning, and how effective it was. Also consider if the form relied entirely on traditional practices from your own faith, or if it was something you devised and was idiosyncratic to you, or if it was a blend of tradition and innovation. Consider why you relied on tradition or innovation at a moment like this. CLASS PRESENTATION: five-minute student presentations on memorials in Washington, D.C.: Lincoln, Vietnam, Korea, FDR, Jefferson, Washington. (We'll do four of these, with two students presenting on each.) Discuss: How each memorial evolved; designs that were originally proposed; how each of these designs may have had a different intent or reflected a different aspect of the person or the event being commemorated; how successful these memorials have been, etc∞. *IMPORTANT:* This class and the following week's will run from 5:30 to about 6:30 p.m. After that, I'll meet individually with students for 10-15 minute sessions in my office (Room 504) to review progress to date, discuss any problems, review proposal for the end-of-the-semester project/presentation. Week 7: March 11 NO CLASS Week 8: March 18 Field trip to Washington, D.C. memorials Ü Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, FDR, Korea, etc. MARCH 25 Ü NO CLASS/SPRING BREAK Week 9: April 1 Guest lecturer: John Durel, museum consultant Special event: A Passover Seder and a discussion of Good Friday and Easter and how religious narratives are vehicles of remembrance. (FYI: Passover starts Monday, April 5; Good Friday is April 9; Easter is April 11.) READING: Materials on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and on Holocaust remembrance, in general. Excerpts from Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking. Week 10: April 9 *IMPORTANT: THIS IS A FRIDAY!!* Field trip to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. We'll meet at the 15^th Street Entrance to the museum at noon, then tour the museum and have a debriefing at 2:30 p.m. in Classroom B. Week 11: April 15 Guest lecturer: Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking. Talk begins at 8:00 p.m. in auditorium in Business Center. Week 12: April 22 Student Presentations Readings: on the rhetoric of remembrance Ü The Gettysburg Address, 9/11 speeches, etc. Week 13: April 29 Student Presentations Readings: on proposals for the World Trade Center memorial Week 14: May 6 Student Presentations Week 15: May 13 There is NO final exam, but you are expected to attend this class for general discussion about the course. home \| bs, corporate communication \| ba, english \| ma, publications design \| mfa, integrated design \| mfa, creative writing & publishing arts \| people \| portfolio \| facilities \| classes \| undergraduate applications \| graduate applications \| contact \| site index \| university of baltimore