2007 WCTCHA Conference

The 2007 WCTCHA conference, Lost and Found, was held
Friday, October 19 – Saturday, October 20, 2007
at the Red Lion Inn, Port Angeles, Washington

Click here to see the photo gallery from the conference

Conference Theme | Keynote Speakers | Conference Program

Lose yourself at this year’s WCTCHA Conference October 19 – 20 at Port Angeles, and find out how true Elizabeth Bishop’s lines really are: “The art of losing isn't hard to master; / so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”

To help us explore this year’s theme, we’ve invited three lively keynoters. From FOUND Magazine, Davy and Peter Rothbart will be joining us. The Los Angeles Times said, "Davy and Peter Rothbart are utterly engaging performers." The FOUND show is a rowdy reading-and-music performance, full of heartbreak and humor. Davy will share his favorite found notes from his magazine and bestselling FOUND books, and Peter will play songs based on finds. We think our other keynoter—Judy Hoffman—will provide a wonderful complement to the brothers Rothbart.

FEATURED SPEAKERS:
Our keynote speakers are Davy and Peter Rothbart and Judith Hoffman.

Kathleen Byrd and Joe Batt - South Puget Sound Community College
Lost in Abstraction, Found in a Sense of Place:
When learning about complex issues of our world today, how can a sense of place help students find what Linda Hogan describes as “a balance, so a person doesn’t fall into despair that renders them helpless, joyless, apathetic” ?
How can humanities instructors design assignments that engage students in immediate, concrete ways, without denying the complex realities of our global, highly technological society? The presenters will share writing and art assignments that encourage students to observe and interact locally, as a way to engage their topics of research and exploration.

Bruce Hattendorf - Peninsula College
Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Mamoulian : Losing your Self and finding your Inner Monster
Monster films and gothic fiction teem with lost souls, weird outcasts, and disastrous revelation, but few texts explore the conflicted nature of those who are perversely filled with the intent to simultaneously lose themselves and discover inner freedom as intricately as Rouben Mamoulian’s classic Hollywood adaptation of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde.

Charles Malody - Seattle Central Community College
Me and My Hawaiian Shirt: Which has Lost Which?
Ever tried to wear that Hawaiian shirt on the mainland? Ever tried to bring back a canteen of alpine creek water? If so, you know that what is in one place does not fly in another. Now consider that the time-space continuum at the local planet earth level has melted away under the mistral winds of globalization. So that means not only have we lost what was THERE when we return HERE, but there is no longer any THERE there or HERE here. Our loss is multiplied. What does this do to the psyche?

Jared Leising - Cascadia Community College
One Train May Hide Another: Writing Found Poetry
In this workshop, participants will experiment with a variety of found poetry exercises, then discuss which methods were most helpful and why. Finally each participant will design an exercise of his or her own.

Janet Lucas - Peninsula College
Culture Lost, Culture Found: Working Class Students and Academia
We often have students returning to school after many years in the working world and/or those to whom home cultures have little, if anything, to do with the academic world. Through activities and large and small group discussion, this presentation explores various aspects of working class and poverty cultures, culture clashes students may encounter, and our role in helping students create cultural bridges.

Don Foran - Centralia College
Then Lost, Now Found: the Redemption Theme in Literature
After focusing on characters from The Death of Ivan Ilych, Sonny’s Blues, The Tenants of Moonbloom, The Samurai’s Garden, A Memory, and Beloved, participants will be asked to create lists of favorite heroes and heroines who fit the redemptive pattern even when the literary work appears to be dark and/or brutal and the author “argues from absence” and only indirectly reveals epiphanic or redemptive moments and possibilities.

Yvette O’Neill - Lower Columbia College
"She Had Some Horses" : Poetry and Found Art
An art workshop including a video of a Joy Harjo poetry reading, a discussion of design principles, a collage making activity and a glimpse of a collection of ceramic horses lost and recently found in a dusty basement storage room. All art materials provided.

Jim Fisher - Peninsula College
Lost in Literature, Found in Art
In his visit to Peninsula College and the WCTCHA conference in 2006, Robert Wallace discussed the relationship between Herman Melville’ “Moby-Dick” and J.M.W. Turner’s whaling paintings .Wallace’s own research led him to offer students creative alternatives to the standard term papers in his literature courses on Melville. The presenter, impressed with the results Wallace presented, offered a similar option to his students in two sections of Introduction to American Literature. In a PowerPoint presentation, Fisher will show the results and discuss the benefits to students of this form of undergraduate research.

Geeta Sadashivan - Bellevue Community College
From A to Z: Coverage and Loss in the Essay on Fiction
This presentation will offer an argument for an imaginative and innovative assignment, an abecedary: a book of items selected according to theme and arranged in alphabetical order. The standard analytical essay assigned to students on a work o fiction is, by necessity, compelled to focus on a single aspect of that work. In contrast, the abecedary assignment lets the student approach the text in all its multi-faceted complexity. We will look at student abecedaries and discuss what is lost and gained in terms of coverage and depth and how it might be adapted in other courses.

Susanne Weil - Centralia College
I Once Was Lost, but Now Am Found: Addressing Faith in the Secular Classroom
Many of us might frame our work as teaching critical reading, thinking, and (for many) writing. In this workshop, we will discuss the challenges of doing that work with students who bring to our classrooms the belief that there is one truth, a faith-based truth,
that they already know. How may we work with such students more effectively? How do we handle contentious religious issues when they arise in class? How, in a public college system do we work with students who feel called to evangelize about their beliefs? How can we deflect students from taking tacks on assignments that will hurt them academically, yet avoid driving them away and confirming received ideas that they may bring to our classrooms about academia and its perceived lack of receptivity to belief?

Bob Morbacher - Pierce College
Finding Tarzan: Pop Culture in the Classroom
Lost at sea, shipwrecked on a jungle island, Lord Greystoke and his pregnant wife survive just long enough to give birth to a son. That son will grow up to become Tarzan of the Apes, hero of Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1914 novel, and an icon of American pop culture. While most of us are familiar with Tarzan, few of us these days have read the initial novel. The premise of the novel is both unbelievable and blatantly racist. It is also undeniably a page turner. By reading and analyzing this novel, students can clearly see how our suspension of disbelief can allow outrageous and offensive ideas to travel broadly through society; they can trace for themselves the growth of a cultural icon and contemplate how the example of Tarzan might relate to current pop culture personalities.

4:45 - 5:45 pm Poetry Reading
5:45 - 6:45 pm Social Hour
6:45 - 8:30 pm Banquet and Awards

Saturday, October 20th
8:30 - 9:00 am Coffee
9:15 - 10:30 am Keynote
10:30 - 10:45 am Coffee Break

Dianne Fruit and Jared Leising - Cascadia Community College
Found in Adaptation: What's Lost and What's Gained in Teaching a Learning Community
This session will explore the process of adaptation individual courses undergo as they're filtered through the lens of a learning community. As a specific example, we will look at a LC we taught that combined World Film & Lit and First-Year Spanish, reflecting on the risks, challenges and successes of a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning.

John Falskow - Tacoma Community College
Lost in Music Technology
"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."
This presentation will focus on how technology can be used to motivate, inspire, and teach students about music. I will share how I designed a class that places students in an environment where they can not only learn about musical concepts, but also apply these concepts to creating music. The presentation will include demonstrations of digital tools that help students get into the music they hear, work with the sounds they hear, and design compositions of their own.

Alice Di Certo - Tacoma Community College
John Coplans, The Anti-Mapplethorpe: Reclaiming the Lost Dignity of the Aging Body
John Coplans, renowned art critic, curator, art teacher, and artist, started in his sixties a career as a photographer, and the almost exclusive subject of his images was himself naked. The representation of his decaying body was meant to challenge the concept of beauty in an American society obsessed with physical perfection. Coplans reclaimed the lost dignity of a human body, imperfect, irregular, and in constant evolution and dissolution, by rejecting with wit and irony a classical notion of beauty, which was embraced, among others, by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.