Bates Learning Associates -- Academic Year 2009-2010

1.09    Janis Brenner came to Bates for the first time to not only showcase her talents before a Bates audience, but also give aspiring dancers a new perspective on their own style.  Ms. Brenner is an experienced dancer, singer, and actress who puts no limits on her performances which span 31 years of world-wide travel.  She was brought to Bates by Carol Dilley to give her students a different outlook and experience as part of the academic rigor in her dance classes.

 

2.09 The Religious Studies department used a tried and true protocol for Learning Associates.  Three distinguished scholars were invited at separate times to visit classrooms, present open lectures, and meet with seniors working on theses.  The progression of scholars provides the students with a variety of viewpoints and expertise to broaden the understanding of complex topics.  Lectures were followed by small discussion groups, which were often followed by the casual exchange of ideas around a dinner table.  Themes such as skepticism, use of paradox, women religious experiences in the Greco-Roman world, and Post-Enlightenment theories were all the year-long agenda.

 

3.09   Josna Rege, editor of the Journal of Teaching and Learning at Worcester State College, was hosted by Professor Lavina Shankar in March 2009.  Ms. Rege gave a presentation in the junior-senior seminar course, English/Women and Gender Studies 395L.  Her focused topic was feminisms and feminist literary criticism across national and cultural boundaries.  She also met with seniors who were working on their theses and advised them on techniques to conduct empirical interdisciplinary research that bridges both Women and Gender Studies and English.

 

5.09 Andre Eugène is an artist from Haiti who sculpts in wood using the fetish effigy from Vodou combined with a pop futuristic vision of humans post-apocalyptic.  His influence on Haitian art has been great and he is considered the progenitor of the Grand Rue movement.  Leah Gordon, a freelance photographer for film, theater and magazines,  discussed her recent documentary Grand Rue about Andre Eugène in classes in the departments of Art and Visual Culture and African American Studies.  The artist and the freelance photographer/commentator worked with students and explored the cross-currents of art, politics and religion.  In addition, Andre Eugène conducted a master-class with student sculptors.

 

6.09  Sheila Ann Dean from Cornell University is a science historian and long-time editor of the Darwin Correspondence Project.  As a pivotal participant in the Bates College Darwin at 200 project her public presentation “Charles Darwin: After The Origin and Before The Descent,” on March 11focused on Darwin’s lesser known work after publication of The Origin in 1859. The year 2009 is not only the 200^th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, but also the 150^th anniversary of the publication of his extraordinary book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, the primary source of Darwin’s detailed argument for the transmutation of species or better known as biological evolution.

 

7.09  Dr. Eva Szillery is the founder and director of the Maine Mathematics Science and Engineering Talent Search Program.  Her research and work as an outreach coordinator concerns the remarkable link between children with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism and the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  As Learning Associate of the Bates Education Department she discussed her work with students in Education classes and then worked with students to create a very successful workshop on February 6 for Maine educators titled “What Schools Need to Know About Asperger Syndrome/High Functioning Autism.”

 

8.09 John and Jean Comaroff

 

9.09 Frau Fiber (a.k.a. Carole Francis Lung) identifies herself as a textile worker, activist and artist; and the group she founded, the “Synchronized Sewing Manufacturing Squad” performs choreographed garment productions, which are actually political protest performances against the exportation of labor.  Her interdisciplinary artistry attends to themes in Bates courses in politics, sociology, anthropology, and women and gender studies.

Her public lecture titled, “Modes of Production: Art, Activism, and the Itinerant Textile Worker” preceded the “sewing rebellion” held on campus.

 

10.09  Ying Tang is a distinguished and prolific Chinese woman writer, avant-garde playwright, independent film maker, and organizer of international performing art festivals.  She is best known for her writings on women’s relationship with the ever-changing Chinese urban landscape. As a Learning Associate of the Asian Studies Program she interacted with students in three different Chinese courses and after a public presentation of her independent movie Go for Broke she led a discussion of its import and meaning.  Finally, she met with students majoring in Chinese language and Asian Studies to address topics of student’s choosing.

 

11.09  Sheryl Bailey

 

12.09  Poly Sci conference Hooglund

 

13.09  Award-winning and internationally recognized writer and creative writing educator Sarah Manguso visited Bates March 17-19.  As a proponent of the memoir style of writing, Ms. Manguso will discuss and help students understand her latest book The Two Kinds of Decay an autobiographical work of disabling illness, depression, addiction,  remission, and recovery.  Two Bates seniors are using her memoir in their thesis projects to discuss subjectivity in the narrative representations of illness, and met with Ms. Manguso during the summitive stages of their thesis conclusions.

 

14.09  Chi-Ho Lee was a Learning Associate in the theater department.  Filmmaking is a necessary skill for all practitioners in the theater arts, especially knowledge of the premier film editing software Final Cut Pro.  Mr. Lee is a certified instructor in this medium as well as an accomplished filmmaker himself; his list of curriculum vitae credits is extensive.  He and twelve students spent an entire weekend in the media laboratory teaching and learning the complex parts of this software and its ability to present original creative thought in the film modality.

 

15.09  Print Making is a popular studio art component of the curriculum in the department of Art and Visual Culture.  Elizabeth A. Jabar was a visiting instructor of Print Making from the Maine College of Art.  Her talents as an artist and her abilities as a teacher were a great asset to the faculty and the students.

 

16.09  Leon Johnson

17.09  Corbett, Kapsalis

 

18.09  Winfred Kiunga was a Resident Learning Associate in the Department of Education.  She was a teacher of English in a refugee camp of Somalis in northeastern Kenya where she met  Bates professor Patti Buck who brought her over to teach Bates students how to teach and interact with the Lewiston Somali community.  While here she built a network of local educators interested in collaborative lesson planning and reflection.  In addition, she became a mentor for Bates students in the departments of Education, Anthropology and Political Science whose focus is on the Somali population.

 

19.09  German Gutierrez, a Learning Associate of the Spanish department, has worked as a film director, cameraman, and director of photography for Radio-Canada, The National Film Board of Canada, private companies, and foreign television.  A world traveler and filmmaker, his work has been screened at numerous national and international film festivals, and has been aired on U.S. public television.  His Bates visit involved workshops for students to learn the basic approach to documentary filmmaking, skills needed by the students who will be making a short film in Spanish as part of their Spanish language coursework.

 

20.09  The Dance/Wellness Learning Project, a collaboration of the Bates education department, Bates College students and the Lewiston Public School System, was a project designed to teach dancers in the education department how to teach dance techniques successfully to a group of elementary school students.  Learning Associate Nancy Salmon taught lesson planning, dance workshop techniques and classroom management skills.  Would-be teachers must adapt to the time and space constraints of a normal public school reality, and successfully engage and mentor their students to achieve an active, wellness-creating and enjoyable, regimen.

 

21.09  Madeleine Shapiro

8/2009