The 2005 WCTCHA conference was held on October 21-22, 2005
at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Washington

Pictures from the conference are included throughout this page.

Click here for links to our 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 conferences.

CONFERENCE THEME:

As humans, we often destroy what we do not understand. We tend to demonize people who are unlike us. In the Nazi era, Hitler and his lieutenants tried to reduce the Jews to vermin, to predators who had tried to bring down Germany. After Pearl Harbor, the United States produced newsreels caricaturing the Japanese as monstrous, treacherous villains. Anyone who looked like the enemy must BE the enemy this propaganda suggested. Black slaves, native Americans, farm laborers, gays, women, conservatives, liberals, the elderly . . . all have been victims of some dominant culture satire (in mild cases), bashing (in serious cases), and even genocide (in the Rwanda, the Sudan, the Holocaust, E. Timor, among the First Peoples, and so on). What do scholars in the Humanities teach, what do artists create, what do musicians compose to counter these ugly attempts to ridicule The Other, Them? Come to the Bellingham area to help us reflect on this important theme and commit ourselves to affirming the dignity of every individual. We cannot pay lip service alone. We must educate others and ourselves about those we are tempted to dismiss or destroy.

FEATURED SPEAKERS:
Our keynote speakers this year were Beth Loffreda and Bushra Azzouz.

	Beth Loffreda is an associate professor of English at the University of Wyoming, where she serves on the advisory board for the Rainbow Resource Center and as a member of the President's Advisory Council on Minority and Women's Affairs. Since the publication of Losing Matt Shepard, which was selected as a Stonewall Awards Non-Fiction “Honor Book” in 2001, Loffreda has spoken about hate-crime legislation and gay rights on campuses across the nation.  Loffreda was recognized as one of the University of Wyoming's top teachers in 2001 as well as receiving the “Jason Thompson Commitment to Diversity” Faculty Award in 2002 and 2004.  She is also an avid cyclist and has written about mountain biking for Outside Magazine.
	Bushra Azzouz, born in Mosul, Iraq and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, holds a BA in theatre from Reed College and an MA in film production from San Francisco State University. She has been teaching film and video since 1989 at the Portland Art Museum Northwest Film Center. Her experiences in the Middle East and elsewhere have increased her awareness of cultural and media biases in the representation of the "Other." Her short video, "No News," created after 9/11, is a personal reflection on the cycles of violence, war, and terrorism that plague the Middle East and the U.S. Her award-winning film "And Women Wove It in a Basket" is an evocative portrayal of basket weaver Nettie Jackson and her Klickitat river culture.

Friday, October 21st

9:00 - 10:00 am Keynote: Beth Loffreda

Friday, October 21st
10:30 - Noon

Room: Kulshan 109

Polly McMahon, KayDee Steele - SFCC
Stories of “The Other”: Seeking Unity Between College Divisions and those Perceived as “Different”
We will share our process of transforming derision and even dissension between the liberal arts and the professional-technical divisions through the humanities and the power of story.

Phil Ray Jack - Highline CC
The Silent Majority: Part-time Faculty in our colleges.
Presentation focuses on the contribution of part-timers and their need for recognition and involvement. Presentation/video/roundtable discussion.

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Room: Kulshan 226

Chad Helder - Whatcom CC
The Closet and the Werewolf: A Queer Reading of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and works of other Pop-Culture Werewolves
The closet, like premature burial, requires a precarious and dangerous escape. I’ll explore the portrayal of the werewolf in Jackson’s Thriller and other pop-cultural examples of bestial “otherness.”

Nicole DiGerlando - SPSCC
Sexually Marginalized Faculty: Nudging Students and Faculty Toward Discovery of and Understanding of Difference
An appeal to all faculty to uphold the ideals upon which the nation was built, and an education to their students in freedom.

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Room: Heiner Library Conference Room 301 B

Daniel Yezbick - Peninsula College
Sounds of Alienation, Anger, and Otherness: Listening to “Them” in Radio Plays of Arch Oboler
A serious exploration of how Arch Oboler’s network radio dramas of the 1930s and 40s established a new type of media-enhanced American identity that defined itself against mysterious or disturbed personalities and ethnicities.

Friday, October 21st
1:00 - 2:30 PM

Room: Heiner 208

Jane Alynn Bullis and Susan J. Erickson - Skagit Valley CC
Ekphrasis and The Other
Looking at art “requires leaps of perceiving and experiencing” (Hirsch) Writing about art also demands participation and intimacy rather than passive detachment, calling for a deeper response to otherness. We will review the concept of ekphrasis (writing about art) and discuss and view works of art, poetry, and prose.

Susanne Weil, - Centralia College
What’s Wrong With Them? Using Case Studies to Assess, Discuss, and Teach Academic Integrity
What would happen if we moved beyond “crime and punishment” approaches to plagiarism and sought to teach students to think about plagiarism as an ethical problem? I will discuss how discussing case studies of varying degrees of that plagiarism by students and faculty helps “them” avoid “it.” Learn to counter perceptions plagiarism is victimless.

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Room: Heiner 210

Paul Hoskin - Independent Scholar
The Multiple and the Monolingual
The language of the Other exists in constancy. And an individual’s relation to language? This project probes historical and philosophical perspectives to discover language’s function in regard to power and alienation. Colonial/ imperialist discourse will be examined, focusing on Marranos, Algeria, and N. American myths of “original language”.

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Room: Heiner Library Conference Room 301 B

Janet Lucas - Peninsula College
Outsiders in the Literary World of Mary Oliver: An Infrequently Acknowledged Central Theme in the Great Nature-Poet’s Work
Oliver’s work is so strong in the area of reconciling those who feel like outsiders to society, family, even self, that support groups and popular culture publications like Oprah’s “O” have embraced her ideas. I’ll read from Oliver’s poems on the plight and dignity of Others.

Allen Braden - Tacoma Community College
Marginalized Poets: A Discussion of Diverse Voices
A reading of and audience commentary on the works of marginalized contemporary poets. A focus on war (refugees, veterans, tyrants), religions, genders (homosexuality, transgender identity) and ethnicity (minority, majority) will help us honor Them.

Friday, October 21st
3:00 - 4:30 PM

Room: Heiner 102

Geeta Sadashivan - Cascadia Community College
Turning Students, “Them,” into “Us” Their Teachers
This presentation focuses on a Multicultural Communication class which encouraged students to design a syllabus for their “ideal” MC course. I’ll discuss activities used to guide design and outcomes, and the impact on my own ideas about how to teach this class. I’ll provide handouts of the materials used and samples of student-designed syllabi.

Dean Hagen - Western Washington University and Whatcom CC
How International Students Come to Know “Them,” their American College-Student Counterparts
Demonstration of data projection question and answer website, shared writing journals, and face to face meetings of “us” and “them.” Some analysis of how American students are learning through international students’ impressions of them.

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Room: Heiner 208

Don Foran - Centralia College
Getting Beyond “Them”: An Analysis of the impact of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Ken Burns’ Treatment of the Heart of Twain’s Novel
Beginning with Patricia Deegan’s “Recovery as a Journey of the Heart” and Huck’s “My heart warnt right!” I will explore the theme of Them in two contexts: the heart of Twain’s great American novel, and Ken Burns’ choice to have both black and white literary critics comment on the significance of the heart of that novel. We’ll discuss the video segment together.

Eric Ray and Jim O’Donnell - Edmonds CC
Making the Team: Baseball and Belonging in America
Report on a coordinated studies program combining History and English which focuses on the marginalization in America within the microcosm of baseball. How ethnicity, race, and gender issues have emerged and how, historically, they are addressed.

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Room: Heiner 210

Kate Reavey - Peninsula College
The Essential Other:  Salmon, the Elwha Klallam, and the Return of Wild Culture
You may think of salmon as symbol, metaphor, or meal, but the the Klallam people, the salmon go beyond metaphor and beyond personification.  What some have called "ethnocentric texts"  including reports completed by the missionary Rev. Myron Eells, are, to the Elwha Klallam, remnants of a past that was nearly lost, and even these sometimes skewed documents have worth.  As we anticipate the removal of dams that have kept wild salmon from spawning in the once legendary Elwha river, the word "remnant" takes on tremendous significance, as the plans to reintroduce native wild salmon take shape.  The Elwha and other native northwestern people honored salmon in oral literature and understood "THEM" not simply as other, but as neighbor, contributor and essential to the physical and cultural ecosystems that sustain us.  The literature of remnant and return gives us connection.

Susan Casey - Seattle Central CC
Border Voices
Who are the finest contemporary voices of the Southwest? How do Denise Chavez, Ofelia Zepeda, and Sherwin Bitui reflect on being an American? How do these authors depict Mexican American and Native American experience today? And how do we relate to their work as readers? This session will help us answer these questions and honor Them.

Friday, October 21st

4:00 - 5:30 pm Poetry Reading
5:30 - 6:30 pm Social Hour

6:30 - 8:00 pm Banquet and Awards

Saturday, October 22nd
8:45 - 9:00 am Announcements and Introductions
9:00 - 10:15 am Keynote: Bushra Azzouz

10:15 - 10:30 am Coffee Break

Saturday, October 22nd
10:30 - 11:45

Room: Heiner 105

Jerry Zimmerman, Michael Strayer - Lower Columbia CC
Them: Media Violence and Women (seventy-five minutes)
The presentation is a unit from our course Blue Smokes and Mirrors. In this unit students analyze how media violence and popular culture affect women and continue to perpetuate destructive images. Former students from Lower Columbia College and now attending Western Washington University will discuss how the course impacted their liberal arts experience.

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Room: Heiner 208

Kate Scrivener - Clark College
Cynocephaly: Dog-headed People in Signs, Symbols, and Literature
What do St. Christopher, the Canaanite Woman, Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff and Lon Chaney’s Wolfman have in common? They are possessed of more acute senses and larger canine teeth than the rest of us, the better to convey potent lessons to students of literature, mythology, and life. Revisit “dog-headedness” from Egyptian god Anubis through Twentieth Century archetypes in film and music.

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Room: Heiner 210

Matt Vadnais - Peninsula College
The Thing that Ate Him: Non-referential Otherness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
In the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel – known collectively in popular culture as “Buffyverse,” evil is manifest in the form of the vampire. These vampires are usually alien. I will focus on the world’s treatment of vampirism as a metaphor for non-referential otherness.

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Room: Heiner 209

Film: Faces of the Enemy (sixty minutes)
Psychologist Sam Keen narrates this brilliant exploration tragedy of demonizing “Them”.
(This film will be screened several times during the weekend)