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Cultures of the American Southwest Bread Loaf Santa Fe - Summer 2001 Institute for American Indian Arts Professor John Warnock |
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Clifford Geertz sees “culture” as “webs of significance” in which we find ourselves “suspended”--an apt metaphor for this nonfiction writing course. Participants in this writing course will explore cultures of American Southwest through various modes of encounter (among them reading, travel, research, language learning, music, labor, conversation with local teachers). Along the way, we will write and share writing that develops this exploration in several ways. At the end of the term, we will share our written accounts of cultural encounter.
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop Douglas Preston, Cities of Gold Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian Gary Nabhan, Gathering the Desert Supplementary Readings: Many works on reserve. Access to library and archives of Pecos National Historical Park. Access to library of University of New Mexico, including the Center for Southwest Research. The Interactive Santa Fe Trail (SFT) Homepage The Bureau of Atomic Tourism (many links to sites in the Southwest, including Trinity, White Sands, Los Alamos, Nevada Test Site) The Santa Fe New Mexican (newspaper) Desert Life in the American Southwest (many links to sites about the flora, fauna, and other aspects of the bioregion) Multicultural American West (a site for teachers by the American Studies program at Washington State U "intended as a space for the interactive exchange of ideas, information, and educational tools related to American West in multicultural and intercultural perspective.") The West (website developed to accompany the Ken Burns documentary; includes literary and photographic documents consulted) Documentary Relations in the (Greater) Southwest (a huge searchable database of historical and archeological documents from northern New Spain, beginning in the 1530's, created by the Arizona State Museum at UA) University of Arizona Web Exhibits on Southwest Defining the Southwest, University of Arizona (access to a large array of research materials from UA for use in undergraduate education) Home Page for Tom Lynch's Undergraduate Course in Southwestern Literature (oodles of links on many subjects, from a professor at New Mexico State U) 1. Cultural Inventory, 3 pp. Due Thursday July 5. In ethnography, this is known as "the story of arrival." This writing is meant to serve several purposes:
I
will grade these but since these may represent your first effort to
write creative nonfiction, you may re-write them after you get them
back. Also, the grade will be superceded by your final grade if it
is higher. We use discussion of these pieces to begin to develop criteria
for evaluating creative nonfiction of the sort you will read and be
asked to write for your final piece. This notebook is a place to explore possibilities for writing and to develop resources for the creative nonfiction you will turn in at the end of the class. It should have at least five entries per week, dated. No length is specified for these. Two or more entries each week should respond to the reading we are doing for the class. To start discussion, I’ll ask different students to read entries from these to the class as we go. Whenever you turn the Notebook in during the course or at the end, add a page or so that reflects on how you have done with the writing in the notebook, what you've learned from it, and what if anything you hope to do with it. Among the possible entries:
Notebooks
containing entries for 5 different days for each week, two of which
each week address our common reading in a substantial way, will get
at least a Satisfactory. Notebooks reflecting special effort and range
will get a plus. Plus grades can help bump up a final grade.
The Portfolio will include your Writer’s Notebook and your Final Piece. The Final Piece should have the following features:
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