Spring 2010
Presenter:
Dr. Andrew Arnold (History)
Title: "To B or
Not: Teaching Without Grading" (or Getting Started with a
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning)
Time and Place: Friday Feb 12
2010; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract: I'm a
professor of history, not a professor of education. Yet to teach
the way I want to teach, and to develop, articulate, and defend my
approach, I've had to educate myself in the pedagogical
literature. This Shop Talk is a report on what it's like to
shift from a focus solely on the scholarship of history to a focus that
also
includes the scholarship of teaching. It is also a report on the
substance of my new approaches to teaching and learning at KU.
I hate to grade as much as students hate to get graded. I hate to teach
unprepared students as much as students hate to prepare for
class. Yet I teach up to 120 students at a time in a writing and
reading intensive field. My new approach helps persuade my
students to prepare for class without having to grade their
preparation.
It helps me to shift my focus from grading to teaching, and theirs
from grade-grubbing to learning. It helps me to assign real
research
and writing tasks many times over the course of the semester
without creating an overwhelming grading load.
(For professors of education for whom the following jargon is familiar:
My research into pedagogy focuses on using Bloom's Taxonomy of learning
to categorize learning goals, and Mastery Learning to help
them to learn it. Much of the shift has been from a normative to
a criteria-based mindset. Many thanks to Maria Sanelli and
Theresa
Stahler for offering me guidance as I flailed in their field.)
This little foray has transformed my life as a professor at KU for the
better. I have far more fun in the classroom and I believe
my students enjoy themselves more, too. I'm looking forward to
sharing my efforts with my colleagues here at KU.
Presenter:
Dr. Martin Rayala (Art Education)
Title: "Can Design Save
the World?"
Time and Place: Friday Mar 19
2010; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract: What is the process for imagining and creating
a future that works for 100% of the planet? Design is about imagining a
better future and figuring out how to achieve it. Creating the future
is not the process of selecting from alternative possibilities. What
exists now is already ad hoc. Future options do not exist. They need to
be imagined and created. The future is not an existing place we are
heading toward. It is whatever we create. This presentation traces the
growing role of design and design thinking in shaping our economic,
environmental, and cultural future.
Dr. Martin Rayala is the Executive Director of the Design Education
K-12 Alliance and a member of the Education Committee of the
Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He is an Associate
Professor in Art Education at Kutztown University.
Presenter:
Dr. Sudarshan Fernando (Physical Sciences)
Title: "A Quick Peak
into a World of Extra Dimensions and Super-particles"
Time and Place: Friday Apr 23
2010; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract: String Theory has been in the forefront of
fundamental physics research for awhile as a candidate for a unified
theory that describes the basic laws of the universe. However, the
theory is filled with quite strange ideas such as extra dimensions that
we can't experience and "super-particles" that we still have not
observed. In this short talk, I will try to give a brief introduction
to string theory and explain these ideas in non-technical terms. With
the Large Hadron Collider finally getting ready to conduct its first
experiments, there is a lot of excitement in the particle physics
community to find out how these ideas would match our new observations
and what novel secrets of nature we can unveil.
Fall 2009
Presenter:
Prof. David Lambkin
(Speech Communication and Theater)
Title: "The Rhetorical Reification
of Traditional Masculine Values"
Time and Place: Friday Sept
11
2009; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract:
This paper contends that masculinity is mostly a social
construct rather than an essential biological difference.
Furthermore, I argue that traditional male values are enforced, and
thus perpetuated, by rhetorical means. To illustrate my claim I
examine the rhetorical strategies of the world’s best selling Western
novelist, Louis L’Amour. He uses typical rhetorical tactics such
as: appealing to American values, presenting clear moral choices,
and revising historical fact to make his stories more compelling.
I conclude that L’Amour is only a case study, but that his tactics seem
representative of most popular culture consumed by males.
Presenter:
Prof. Kevin McCloskey (Communication Design)
Title: "Mexico's Radical
Printmaking Tradition Lives On!"
Time and Place: Friday Oct 16
2009; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract:
Kevin McCloskey travelled to Oaxaca, Mexico in 2007 for a
National Endowment for the Arts Seminar. There he met members of ASARO,
or “The Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca,” a
collective of radical young artists. At the time, ASARO sold their
woodblock prints on the streets. McCloskey collected a portfolio of
their best work and organized ASARO's first formal U.S exhibition at
Kutztown University's Rorhbach Library. The KU collection of ASARO
prints now forms the basis of a successful traveling exhibition, most
recently exhibited at Ohio University. McCloskey also co-curated
the ASARO exhibition at the Fowler Museum, UCLA, in 2008. In 2009, with
the aid of a PASSHE grant, he revisited Oaxaca on his sabbatical and
interviewed the artists and their teachers. This presentation
will focus on ASARO's prints and their place in Mexico's long tradition
of radical printmaking.
Kevin has also written several essays on the subject, which can be
viewed at the following web site:
http://commonsense2.com/2007/12/art-culture/the-art-of-revolution-social-resistance-in-oaxaca-mexico/
Presenter:
Dr. Anthony C. Bleach
(English)
Title: "Quentin Tarantino's
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and the Politics of Transnational Adaptation"
Time and Place: Friday Nov 20
2009; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract:
Drawing on the work of scholars such as Leon Hunt and Peter
Hitchcock, who have discussed East Asian cinemas and Quentin
Tarantino’s KILL BILL films (2003 and 2004), I will explore the ways in
which INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS--itself a loose adaptation of the Enzo G.
Castellari’s 1978 “macaroni combat” film QUEL MALEDETTO TRENO
BLINDATO--attempts to have its pasta and eat it, too. True, the film
appropriates aspects of international cinema, and, I would argue, makes
a claim for the political import of international cinema. I
ultimately argue, however--through an investigation into the film’s
production, distribution, and exhibition--that its own status as
postmodern transnational commodity undercuts this latter impulse.
Spring 2009
Presenter:
Dr. Anke Walz (Mathematics)
Title: "The Fourth Dimension and Things
that Wiggle"
Time and Place: Friday
February 13
2009; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract: For
most mathematicians, the transition from three to four dimensions is
merely an exercise in abstraction, as most mathematical tools developed
for our “visible world” generalize easily to the “invisible world”.
Geometers however are afflicted with the need to “see” the fourth
dimension (or even the fifth, sixth, etc.) In the first part of
this talk, I will present an easy and accessible way to visualize
four-dimensional structures, using an old tool known as Schlegel
diagrams. The second part will address “wiggly things”, the
kind of objects that Rigidity Theory deals with. I will give a
brief overview of the topic and present some examples, including a
surprisingly simple four-dimensional flexible structure.
Presenter:
Dr. Javier Cevallos (University President)
Title: "Education,
Literature
and Class in Colonial Latin America"
Time and Place: Friday March
13
2009; 4:00 pm; SUB 250
Abstract:
The Spanish conquest of the “New World” resulted
in the development of a complex, and many times contradictory, colonial
society. In this paper I will present a brief overview of the
demographic development
of Latin America during the first 200 years of Spanish rule, and the
emergence
of a society that evolve into a caste system based on race, class, and
place of
birth. In this society, education became a very clear social
marker, given way
to highly educated minority elite. The enormous literary
outpouring of the
high class was, again, a mark of social status. Visual art, on
the other hand,
was intended for the masses, creating a fascinating dichotomy in the
role art
and literature played in the Colony.