Autumn 2003 |
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Gospel
Course at the UW
The
Gospel According to Phyllis
Byrdwell began teaching the course during Spring Quarter 2003 and is teaching it again this quarter. “It’s crazy coming to the UW to teach after a full day at Lakeside,” she says, “but once I get to the class, I feed off the students’ energy.” Music has always been a part of Byrdwell’s life. Her mother was a piano teacher and a church musician. “I picked up a lot, obviously, from her,” says Byrdwell. Although piano has been Byrdwell’s main musical focus, she always sang for fun. “I am from a family of eight,” she says. “Five of us sisters, at any given time, would form this group called The McDonald Sisters and perform for our family and friends.” At Lakeside School, Byrdwell introduces her students to numerous musical genres. But at Mount Zion Baptist Church—and at the UW—she is able to focus on gospel music. She leads four of her church’s seven gospel choirs. “The gospel genre is sacred,” says Byrdwell. “It is based on sacred texts—the Bible primarily. It literally means ‘good news.’ The genre evolved as freed slaves moved to urban areas and tried to make sense of their new life through music.” Byrdwell wondered how UW students would respond to the religious content of gospel music when more than 50 students, representing a variety of ethnicities and religions, enrolled in her class. “I told the students up front that we will do the music as authentically as we can,” she says. “I warned them that if they had problems with the words ‘Jesus’ or ‘Savior’, they might have a problem with the class. To really experience this music, you can’t take those words out. You just can’t.” And it’s not just the words that count. Gospel music requires something more. “Gospel musicians lose themselves in the song they are singing,” says Byrdwell. “For the three or four minutes the song goes on, the audience has to believe everything you are saying whether you believe it or not.” Can one actually teach that? Byrdwell wasn’t so sure when she began the class. “If you grow up with gospel, you don’t need to learn it. You inhale it,” she says. But for the UW course, Byrdwell had to start from the beginning. “I would demonstrate singing a song in ballad form and then in gospel so the students could hear the difference,” she says. “Also, the body does not stand still while the music is going on. Your hands are moving, your feet are moving, your body is moving. It’s worse than walking and chewing gum at the same time.” Spring quarter, the course wrapped up with a concert. It was then that Byrdwell realized how much she and her students had accomplished. “On stage, watching
them, I couldn’t help but grin,” she says. “They
just
Alexie’s Lesson: Question Everything When Stephen Sumida, chair of the UW Department of American Ethnic Studies, teaches Comparative American Ethnic Literature next quarter, he will share teaching duties with an award-winning author, an accomplished poet, and an acclaimed screenwriter and director. And they’re all the same person: Sherman Alexie. Alexie, renowned for books and films that reflect his Native American heritage—including the independent film Smoke Signals—is joining the Department of American Ethnic Studies as senior artist-in-residence. It’s not his first time on campus—he served as commencement speaker in 2003 and has been a guest lecturer in Sumida’s class—but it will be his first experience teaching on an ongoing basis.
“In terms of teaching, I’m still the apprentice,” says Alexie, who is excited to co-teach with Sumida. “I’ll bring the random fires and he’ll be the constant light. It feels safe to me because Steve is such a great teacher.” Alexie should know. In the late 1980s, when he was a student at Washington State University, Sumida was one of his professors there. “It was a class about American literature seen from a multicultural point of view—much like the class we’ll be teaching together now,” says Sumida. “Sherman came to every class. He did very well.” In the years that followed, Alexie and Sumida heard about each other through mutual acquaintances but had no direct contact. “I began to hear about his successes in the mid-1990s,” recalls Sumida. “I heard him described by others as an ‘up and coming writer.’ It made me so happy to hear that.” The two finally met up again in 1998. Two years later Sumida, by then a UW faculty member, invited Alexie to speak to his class. “When students learned he’d be visiting, there was such excitement,” recalls Sumida. “Their parents wanted to come that day.” In 2001, Sumida and several colleagues approached Alexie with the idea of joining the UW faculty. He was interested but not yet ready to commit, with so many projects already on his plate. This year, he finally agreed. “I felt sort of disconnected from the community and felt that teaching would help me become more connected,” explains Alexie. “Also, I’m hoping my being at the UW might draw other Native American students and academics to the University.” Alexie’s artist-in-residence position is an annual appointment. This year he will teach two courses. It’s a chance to see if he “can handle a day job,” he says. Asked what he’d most like students to learn in his class, he answers without hesitation. “Question everything,” he says. “Most of us live our lives in exclamation points. I want to replace some of those with question marks.”
Ask doctoral students in the humanities about their future plans, and they will likely describe a career in academia, working with students and other scholars. But Kathleen Woodward, director of the Simpson Center for the Humanities, wants them to envision working with another group as well: the public. In September, the Simpson Center hosted an Institute on the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students, which encouraged UW students to imagine ways to con-nect with the community and communicate their research to the public. Guest speakers at the week-long institute—including the Woodrow Wilson Foundation’s director— discussed models of campus-community partnerships in the humanities, and there were visits to the Seattle Art Museum and other sites where public scholarship occurs. The Institute’s 25 participants also worked on group projects. Teams of five students were presented broad topics—”nature” and “oral history” are examples—and were asked to envision a project that could be brought to the community. What was important, says Woodward, was “not so much the project but that they were thinking about how their scholarship could be transformed into something more than academic. It’s about reaching a larger world. Our citizens need to know what we’re doing in the humanities, why it’s important, and how it enriches their lives.” The institute was funded by the UW Graduate School, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities.
Middle East Dialogue— by Weekly Teleconference In the UW’s Health Sciences teleconferencing studios, students gather around a big screen video monitor for 90 minutes each week to discuss the Middle East with each other and “classmates” in Cairo. The weekly teleconference is part of a new course that partners the UW’s Middle East Center and the American University in Cairo. The format enables students from both institutions to discuss a common topic and gain insights and perspectives from each other. “The teleconference allows for the academic conversation to take a much more real aspect,” says Professor Fakhereddine Berrada, who taught an experimental version of the course last spring and did much of the planning for the current course. The course, “Crossing Cultural Borders: Self-Perceptions and Representations of Otherness in the U.S. and the Middle East,” focuses on historical events — starting with the Crusades—that have characterized the pattern of cultural encounters between the West and the East and that have emerged as a marker of their present relationship. Taught by Professor Alwyn Rouyer, the class meets five hours each week, with 90 minutes dedicated to the live teleconference. “The conference is mandatory,” says Berrada. “It is the backbone of the course. We’ve limited the class to ten students on each side to allow for more direct interaction.” A listserv has been created to encourage online discussion between the two groups as well. By the end of the course, says Berrada, “we’re hoping to bridge the gaps between the two communities, which will come to better understand their commonalities and differences.”
If you strolled across Red Square on September 3, you might have suspected that astronomers had taken over campus. In a way, they had.
The UW
Department of Astronomy, along with the Seattle
Astronomical Society and the Pacific
Science Center, hosted a “Mars Party” for the community,
complete with nine telescopes placed on Red Square and near Drumheller
Fountain. Close to 1,200 people attended the event Bruce Balick, chair of the Department of Astronomy, explains that Earth and Mars orbit the Sun in the same direction, but Earth has a faster orbital speed and overtakes Mars from behind every two years. Since both planets are in elliptical orbits in slightly different orbital planes, some close approaches are closer than others. This recent approach, in addition to being the closest in the last 600 centuries, also will be the closest until 2287. “This has been a fantastic opportunity to capture the public’s imagination and enthusiasm,” says Ana Larson, UW astronomy lecturer and lead organizer of the event. “It is amazing how few people actually look up and study what is going on in the solar system and the Galaxy.” The Mars Party began with a talk in Kane Hall by Toby Smith, UW astronomy lecturer, who presented recent spacecraft images of Mars, discussed results from various Mars missions, and talked about plans to search for water and life when two Mars rovers land in January. Visitors then headed outside to the telescopes. “The crowd was an amazing cross section of enthusiasts,” says Larson. “The youngest were babes in arms, the oldest were probably in their 80s. For most, this was their first time viewing through a telescope.” The lucky ones were able to see the surface of Mars, including the Martian polar ice cap. “They were also intrigued by the fact that Mars kept moving across the sky as the night progressed,” says Larson. “Some people were in a great position to observe this as they spent more than two hours waiting to look through the 16-inch telescope provided by the Pacific Science Center. They had not realized that a telescope must electronically track to keep up with a planet or have an operator that does so manually. We cannot halt the Earth’s rotation.” Several weeks prior to the Mars Party, the Department of Astronomy held a similar viewing event at its Observatory, attracting capacity crowds there as well. The Observatory offers frequent viewing opportunities organized by undergraduates. (See http://www.astro.washington.edu/observatory.) “I think these viewing opportunities are going to become more frequent as more people learn about the Observatory and its accessibility for close examination of planets and other celestial objects,” says Larson. “For every person who gets interested in our universe, we get another person who more fully understands how the Earth fits into the grander scheme of things.”
You’re starting
your career and looking for guidance and contacts. Or maybe you’re
moving to a new city and curious about neighborhoods. Or you were
mentored early in your career and now want to do the same for others.
Career Connections makes it easy for alumni to network through a searchable nationwide database. Students and UWAA members can access the database in search of Career Connections contacts, and anyone can volunteer to become a contact and share professional expertise with others. In the past year, more than 500 A&S alumni volunteered to be added to the database as contacts in response to a mailing from their department. “I see the Career Connections program as an opportunity to encourage students who are a little lost and confused by all the options that life seems to be presenting,” says Kenneth Ristine (‘75). “I was fortunate to receive a little such coaching in my time at the UW. And while I didn’t understand the full importance of that advice, I know in hindsight that it helped.” Leigh Watson (‘98) can attest to that. She found a job at Microsoft two months after meeting a Career Connections contact who “went out of her way to help me with valuable job search information, including résumé tips and interview techniques. I truly appreciated her expert advice and urge others to share their experience.” It’s easy for alumni and friends to become a Career Connections contact. Just log on to UWalum.com or contact Karen Demorest at (206) 685-9278.
Nominations Sought for the College’s Top Honor Each year the College of Arts and Sciences honors exceptional alumni from its four divisions—arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—with the Distinguished Alumnus Award. This award pays tribute to alumni who have demonstrated a commitment to lifetime learning and active citizenship. Past honorees have included Attorney General Christine Gregoire, artist Dale Chihuly, former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, and Seattle Children’s Theatre artistic director Linda Hartzell—to name just a few. The College is currently seeking nominations for honorees. Nominees should be well known for extraordinary accomplishment in professional life and/or community affairs. They should be likely role models for others and demonstrate interest in university service. If you would like to
nominate an A&S alum, please submit your nomination online or
to any College of Arts and Sciences divisional dean by December
1, 2003. For more information, call (206) 616-4469 or visit our
website at http://www.artsci.washington.edu/cod2004/. [Autumn 2003 - Table of Contents]
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