"The information age without the humanities
is like the industrial age without the steam engine."
— Cathy Davidson
What is the Humanities Super Seminar?
The Humanities Super Seminar ~ taught every spring at Union College ~ is a humanities-centered, multidisciplinary course designed for students interested in seriously cool, critically challenging, and deeply thought-provoking conversations. Best of all, the Seminar remains small in size — open to only 15 students — so as to put into practice the most effective learning environment for a quality Liberal Arts education!
Based on a different overarching topic every year, students from all disciplines across campus engage in the reading and analysis of visual and written material, in deeply challenging conversations, in the synthesizing of ideas, and in the creation of a host of different projects, such as podcast interviews, photographic journals, webpage designs, video projects, set designs, sculptures, visual installations, debates and presentations. Each Humanities Super Seminar includes three speakers or workshop open to the larger Union and Schenectady community. Course syllabi, student blog discussions, and class projects will be showcased every year on this class website.
The course theme for the first Humanities Super Seminar, to be held in the Spring of 2012, is "Global Activism: Hacking, Leaking, and Whistleblowing." Following are broad categories of tentative courses for the next six years. Each year faculty collaborate on refining a title and detailing the syllabus based on their teaching and research interests, and the most effective learning outcomes for the students.
The Humanities Super Seminar ~ taught every spring at Union College ~ is a humanities-centered, multidisciplinary course designed for students interested in seriously cool, critically challenging, and deeply thought-provoking conversations. Best of all, the Seminar remains small in size — open to only 15 students — so as to put into practice the most effective learning environment for a quality Liberal Arts education!
Based on a different overarching topic every year, students from all disciplines across campus engage in the reading and analysis of visual and written material, in deeply challenging conversations, in the synthesizing of ideas, and in the creation of a host of different projects, such as podcast interviews, photographic journals, webpage designs, video projects, set designs, sculptures, visual installations, debates and presentations. Each Humanities Super Seminar includes three speakers or workshop open to the larger Union and Schenectady community. Course syllabi, student blog discussions, and class projects will be showcased every year on this class website.
The course theme for the first Humanities Super Seminar, to be held in the Spring of 2012, is "Global Activism: Hacking, Leaking, and Whistleblowing." Following are broad categories of tentative courses for the next six years. Each year faculty collaborate on refining a title and detailing the syllabus based on their teaching and research interests, and the most effective learning outcomes for the students.
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Topics of Courses taught, in progress, and proposed:
Spring 2012: Global Activism: Hacking, Leaking and Spring Whistleblowing with professors Hugh Jenkins (English), Mark Wunderlich (Philosophy), and Anastasia Pease (English/Russian) Spring 2013: In Your Face: The Self in the Digital Age with professors Fernando Orellana (Digital Art), Erika M.Nelson (German), and Stacie Rauccie (Classics) Spring 2014: Medicine & Humanism to be determined 2015: The Law of the City 2016: Trauma and Memory 2017: The World Is my Theatre |
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Learning Outcomes of the Humanities Super Seminar
Students in this course will be exposed to a different team of faculty members from the humanities each year. The multi-disciplinary perspectives that these faculty members bring to the table will allow students to engage with the course’s topic through a variety of humanities-based approaches and to hone their critical and creative synthesizing skills. This process will be supported by a conversational and open pedagogical approach that gives students the skills to self-critically examine their position and power in the world at large, their beliefs, values, and possible effects and influence as civilians.
Whether the course topic is about political activism, medicine, or the law, students will engage with a variety of themes through humanities-based lenses concerning value, condition, culture, history, society, ethics and expression. They do so using methods that are critical, analytical, and speculative, and through a learning environment that emphasizes the building of skills in critical literacy, cultural understanding, historical and personal relevance, and effective expression and response. In sum, through multi-disciplinary perspectives, critical questioning, human expression, self-examination, and creative thinking, students of the Humanities Super Seminar will complete the course having developed strong analytic and reflective abilities, synthesizing skills, and creative resolution skills.
This course is directed by Christine Henseler
