Washington Community College Humanities Association
31st Annual Conference
The 2011 WCCHA Conference was held on October 21-22
South Puget Sound Community College
Pictures from the conference are available in Flash slideshow or HTML formats.
Keynote Speakers | Conference Program
WCCHA 2011 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE, “Resistance Is Fertile,” South Puget Sound CC (Note this is not the final schedule)
8:00 – 9 a.m.: Registration, continental breakfast, coffee, conversation (Lobby, Minnaert Theater)
9:15 – 10:15 a.m.: Keynote #1: Charles Mudede (Main Stage, Minnaert Theater)
“My love for the back of the bus is eternal” – Charles Mudede
10:15 – 10:30 a.m.: Coffee Break (Lobby, Minnaert Theater)
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.: Session I: Independent Films from the Port Townsend Film Festival, introduced by Bruce Hattendorf
(Main Stage, Minnaert Theater)
Resisting Hollywood: “Dead in the Room” and Other Short Films from the Port Townsend Film Festival
Join Janette Force, Executive Director of the Port Townsend Film Institute, and Bruce Hattendorf, associate dean of instruction and film professor at Peninsula College, for a selection of short, independent films that resist the model of the Hollywood feature in order to explore unique creative visions. After the screenings, Force will discuss the educational mission of the Port Townsend Film Institute, producers of PT Film Festival, and Force and Hattendorf will discuss the educational partnership that has developed between PTFI and Peninsula College. Films will include:
- “Dead in the Room”
2010, USA, 9 minutes
Director: Adam Pertofsky
At a screenwriters' pitch event, a writer turns the tables on an arrogant studio executive. As the clock ticks down, the exec gets a lesson in truthfulness and storytelling. - “The Job”
2007, USA, 4 minutes
Directed by Jonathan Browning
Four minutes to tell a timeless tale of labor in America, with a fresh perspective. A cinematic haiku. - “Pioneer”
2010, USA, 15 minutes
Directed by David Lowery
A little boy awakens from a nightmare in his bedroom on a dark and stormy night. His cries awaken his father, who comes to his bedside and proceeds to regale him with a dark and epic bedtime story about an absent mother. The story seems both biographical and make-believe, and it transports both the boy and us to an imaginative place far removed from his bedroom. - “The Mouse that Soared” (Animated)
2009, USA, 6 minutes
Directed by Kyle Bell
A famous flying circus mouse reflects back on his humble beginnings. The animator was coached by his 10yr old son on the subtly of humor. You will see that moment when he ‘gets it.’ - “The Butterfly Circus”
2009, USA, 20 minutes
Directed by Joshua Weigel
At the height of the Great Depression, the showman (Eduardo Verastegui) of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the spirits of audiences along the way. During their travels they discover Will (Nick Vujicic), a man “that even God turned his back on!” We watch the barker in a side-show invite the audience to gawk. We do not want to join this moment, yet we are compelled to do so. Will makes the same journey of understanding and challenge that the audience must make, much to his amazement-- and our own.
Noon to 1:15 p.m.: Lunch
1:15 – 2:30 p.m.: Sessions II
Session II-A (Building 21-253)
John Kellermeier & Dian Ulner, Tacoma Community College & Clark College: “Resisting the Binary: Sex, Gender and Attraction”
What is sex? What is gender? What is attraction? In this workshop, participants will learn how our vocabulary is limited by the popular misconception of sexuality and gender as binary and learn a language to resist this binary. Participants will gain an appreciation for the complexity of human sexuality and gender and find their own place in that complexity.
Session II-B (Building 21-130)
Geeta Sadashivan, Cascadia Community College: "’Pecha Kucha’ Power”
Student resistance to public speaking often results in presentations that have too much content crammed into too few slides. The pecha kucha, a creative presentation style which can be described as "20X20"—20 slides automated to change in 20 seconds—forces presentations to be focused and efficient. Ways to use pecha kucha as a supplement to essays, and modifications to its format to make it suitable for various purposes, will be discussed, accompanied by samples of pecha kucha in action.
Susanne Weil, Centralia College: “‘Let Your Life Be a Counter-Friction to Stop the Machine’: Analyzing Civil Disobedience in English 101”
This presentation takes its title from Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 essay, “Resistance to Civil Government,” now better known as “Civil Disobedience.” Today, many students think that simply going to a demonstration is breaking the law. Yet these same students see historic disobedients like Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, or Julia Butterfly Hill as iconic crusaders. The tension between students’ desires to succeed in today’s repressive economic climate, yet to find ways to speak truth to power, forms fertile ground for learning. I will present materials from an English 101 course focused on civil disobedience. First, students learn to search library databases to find cases of civil disobedience. Next, students read and analyze how Plato, Thoreau, and King tackle the question of whether breaking the law as a matter of principle can be justified. Finally, students analyze their chosen case studies through the lenses supplied by these three philosophers in a 6 to 8 page final course essay. In-class analyses of, and debates about, hypothetical cases help students develop their final papers and round out a course which itself resists the notion that first-year community college students cannot grapple with material at this level of complexity.
Session II-C (Building 20-217)
Helen Lovejoy, Peninsula College: “Resistant Texts: Personal Reflections on Teaching Trauma Narratives in the Composition Classroom”
We live in a nation inundated by violence and its traumatic aftereffects—war, racism, poverty, homophobia—yet speaking about violence and trauma within the college classroom, a space where open discussion is meant to thrive, is difficult and contentious. Violence, as feminist scholar Leigh Gilmore asserts, “often seems too hard to hear and is resisted.” This resistance arises because such startling and disturbing narratives may re-traumatize students who identify with a narrator’s experience, or students may find such texts themselves too horrifying, as theorist Shoshana Felman discovered teaching a Holocaust literature course. Moreover, students may overlook an author’s formal presentation and rhetorical strategies when confronted with overwhelming descriptions of violence. In this presentation, I expand on Gilmore’s and Felman’s theories of trauma and pedagogy as I reflect on the trauma narrative’s role specifically within the composition classroom. I situate my discussion within personal experiences of teaching such texts at two different levels of composition: within a basic writing / pre-collegiate classroom and within a first-year composition course focused on rhetorical analysis and argumentation. The composition classroom may hold a special place in teaching trauma narratives: in such a space, students explore their own relationship to words and texts.
2:30 – 2:45 p.m.: Break
2:45 – 4:00 p.m.: Sessions III
Session III-A (Building 21-253)
Lela Hilton, Edmonds Community College, Jefferson Clemente Course; Jean Cheney, Westminster College and Utah Humanities Council; Jennifer Allen, Oregon Humanities: “From Poverty to Plato: the Humanities as Resistance”
A Clemente Course in the Humanities offers free, college-level humanities classes to low-income adults, taught according to Socratic method by college faculty in history, art, literature, philosophy and critical thinking and writing. Clemente’s goal is to bring the humanities’ clarity and beauty to people who have been deprived of these riches through a “surround of force”: hunger, isolation, illness, landlords, police, abuse, neighbors, drugs, criminals, and racism. By engaging with the intellectual foundations of their culture, marginalized people will find “a moral alternative to the street” and participate more in the civic lives of their communities. Clemente demonstrates resistance on at least four different levels: resistance of the model to traditional anti-poverty schemes; the resistance of students to limits their society has placed upon them because of social, economic and/or educational status; the resistance to the notion that the humanities are only accessible, or indeed, only of interest, for a certain class of people; the resistance to traditional concepts of teaching and learning as experienced through the Socratic method. The presenters will discuss teaching and learning with diverse populations—in prison, in urban Portland, in the rural northwest, and in culturally diverse communities in Utah—and share strategies for starting Clemente Courses in college and community settings.
Session III-B (Building 21-130)
Jessica Ketcham Weber, Robyn Ferret, David Bucci, Cascadia Community College: “Cultivating Resistance, Breeding Renewal”
Monocrops are institutionalized systems of consumption. In agriculture, for instance, monoculture expresses itself through monocrops and genetically modified foods. In composition, standardized placement tests and “Arguing an Issue” papers are our versions of monocultures and institutionalized practice. How might we cultivate our own pockets of resistance? How does that resistance breed renewal for students and for us? Speaker One will discuss her resistance to the composition textbook complex and the unexpected pleasures reaped through spontaneous readings. Speaker Two will explain his resistance to the most common method of assessment—written essays—by explaining a video project produced by students in his anarchy-themed classes. Speaker Three will share how her resistance to only asking students to write on the page—as opposed to windows, sidewalks, and walls—transformed them from recklessly to intentionally resistant, questioning the implications of the institutionalization of educational spaces. Finally, in small-group workshops, participants will share their own practices and work through a guided exercise about the creative power of resistance.
Session III-C (Building 20-217)
Mark Valentine, Peninsula College: “The Dangers of Wildcat Literature; or, How Mark Twain Spurned Ned Buntline's Sentimental Fiction”
Many are aware of how Mark Twain disparaged the sentimental arts and Romantic authors--Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper come to mind--but one more literary artist needs to be added to Twain's pantheon of scorn: the dime novelist, Ned Buntline. For Twain, resistance to Buntline's sentimental arts proved to be very fertile. Twain lampooned both the author and his publications frequently, not only by branding them as “wildcat literature,” but also by placing a Buntline potboiler, The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main (1847) as Tom Sawyer's favorite novel. Following a brief literary biography of Buntline in the context of Twain's works, this presentation will underscore the differences between the two authors and why we should care. Buntline published for sales, appealing to reader's superficial tastes, while Twain published popular novels that continue to sell well today, appealing to readers at different levels: his works can be studied for humor, irony, and the moral complexities of the age. Infatuation with sentimentality in art can create a Mississippi River fog over a reader's understanding. Twain sought to dispel the fog.
Janet Lucas, Peninsula College: “The Art of Empathetic Resistance: Teaching Social Critique through Narrative Empathy”
Teachers in the humanities often use art and literature to encourage thoughtful cultural and social critique. Empathy with literary characters is a particularly common method of doing so, hence the proliferation of “multicultural” textbooks. But what happens when we ask students to identify with different Others? What happens when writers deliberately solicit and/or thwart readers’ empathetic identification with characters? This presentation examines what empathy is and how writerly and readerly empathies work rhetorically to shape our views of social issues and those affected by them. Also discussed will be the need for direct discussion of empathy in the classroom and the dangers of unexamined empathetic identification.
4:00 Social Hour at Urban Onion
5:30 Poetry Reading
6:30 Banquet & Awards
Saturday, October 21:
8:30 – 9:00 a.m.: Coffee
9:00 – 10:15 a.m.: Session IV
Session IV-A (Building 21-253)
Yvette Raynham, Lower Columbia College (retired): “Rhythm of Resistance: Art, Music, and Apartheid”
Codes in beadwork, political messages hidden in song and dance, statements of solidarity and identity presented in abstract designs painted on houses. This video presentation considers the place of the arts in the resistance movement of black South Africans against apartheid in the 1980s.
Marc Brenman, The Evergreen State College, “Culturally Appropriate Alternative Dispute Resolution”
Educators often undertake the role of dispute resolver and must often struggle to keep the table level between the parties involved and to adjust to their different value structures. One way to deal with resistance between people is alternative dispute resolution (ADR)—working outside usual judicial and administrative venues. The dominant form of ADR originated in the US and incorporates Euro-American and Global North values. ADR can be fertile because it can keep the disputing parties in relationship and help meet their needs. Much conflict resolution in the rest of the world is done between and among groups with different cultural, racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds and value systems. ADR methods, based in traditional and indigenous practices, foster sensitivity to parties’ needs. The presenter has worked with Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest and peoples in the Middle East. The systems can be used to empower a party who normally has little power, and to bring greater understanding to the dominant culture party. Some of these traditional systems have meaningful enforcement and monitoring methods, as well as respect for the belief systems of the people involved. These systems can contain contradictions to Global North values, such as international human rights and anti-corruption standards. Encountering these contradictions can result in soul-searching by Global North educators and mediators in regard to means-end challenges. This session will include discussion, sharing of experiences, hand-outs, and role-play.
Session IV-B (Building 21-285)
Reina Barreto, Barbara Blackie, Bruce Hattendorf, Andrea Motyka, Matt Teorey, Peninsula College: “Enhancing Student Learning through the Language of the Arts”
Students often resist learning concepts expressed in an unfamiliar language, whether that language is Spanish, mathematics, the natural sciences, or Shakespearean English. Over the past year, Peninsula College professors from a variety of disciplines have developed courses in which the language of the arts and humanities is used to help students engage the languages of these difficult subjects. First, Andrea Motyka, who teaches math, and Reina Barreto, who teaches first and second year Spanish language classes, will discuss their use of poetry writing exercises in their classes. Next, Matt Teorey and Barbara Blackie will discuss designing and implementing a linked Biology 101 and English 102 course that used the writings of naturalist and poet Tim McNulty to help students understand complex biological concepts and terminology. Bruce Hattendorf and Matt Teorey will then discuss designing and implementing a linked film studies and Shakespeare-as-literature course that helped students relate the language of film to the language and issues of Elizabethan English. Finally, Hattendorf, Motyka, and Teorey will discuss a future potential link between Math 99 and English 101. Following these brief presentations, the panel will lead a group discussion on other ideas for using arts and humanities elements in individual classes and through links.
Session IV-C (Building 21-286)
Margot Boyer, English and Karen Stuhldreher, Gender and Women Studies, North Seattle Community College: “Hope in the Dark”
In Winter 2010 we taught a coordinated studies course integrating U.S. Women's History, Literature and Society, and English Composition, taking as a starting point that our world is on the brink of catastrophic changes, from ecological collapse to profound social and economic instability. We sought to help our students find inspiration in the resistance movements of American history and connect with the democratic traditions that enabled earlier generations to make radical and necessary changes. From studying landmark documents of American democracy and liberation movements of the last 250 years, many students were empowered to bring that radical and hopeful spirit to the crises of our own time. We will share short film clips, music, and poetry to illustrate strategies we found effective in helping students become more aware and engaged citizens. We will discuss and model our seminar process to show how this mode of learning catalyzes reflection on the dialogue between fear and hope, and present some group research work by students that resulted in civic engagement. Engaged reading, writing, and discussion of significant texts about resistance, courage and hope helped students connect with the past and develop skills to shape the future.
10:15 – 10:30 a.m.: Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.: Keynote II: Mary Larson (Main Stage, Minnaert Theater)
“Every single human being makes a ripple” -- Mary Larson
11:55 a.m.: Brief Closing and Farewells
12:30 p.m.: WCCHA Board Meeting and Luncheon