Exploring Complex Questions Learning Communities

Games are interwoven into the fabric of every society and culture. Some of the oldest stories and historical evidence suggest that games are a core element of social connection. How are games connected to humanity and what can we learn from them? In this course we will seek to answer this question by playing games and examining games and our experiences of play through several academic lenses. Our theoretical framework will be partly informed by selected readings from C. Thi Nguyen’s book Games: Agency as Art, which provides new philosophical models for the rich complexity of game playing and through careful reading of a number of other books and articles about games.

Some of the questions we will consider include:

• What is a game?
• In what ways can a game be considered art?
• What can games teach us about our agency, morality, and values?
• Relatedly, how are games used as tools to explore or understand behavior in biological, psychological, and social contexts?
• How do gender, race, ethnicity, or economic situation shape how we play, observe, or think about games?

Above all, in this class, game play will be a regular, communal practice!

Participating faculty: Sharon Alker, Tim Doyle, Albert Schueller, Jordan Wirfs-Brock

Where did humans come from? What makes us the way we are? What does it even mean to be human? In this learning community, we explore both the long history of the human species and the diversity of humankind using nonfiction, fiction, scientific data, oral histories, and maps. To begin, we will focus on human origins, using origin stories from different cultures as well as the body of physical evidence that makes up the biological and geological record. Then we'll explore the boundaries of humankind, considering what humans have in common, as well as what makes us think of ourselves as different - both from each other and from the non-human world. Throughout the course, we will return to a set of overarching questions: What are humans? What seems to separate us from animals, gods, or machines? Are there any defining characteristics of humans? Who decides who or what is human? How is humanity situated in time, and in space? How, as biased observers, can we decide what is true about our species? Our learning community will share a common set of readings and themes and will come together periodically as a group to share in plenary lectures or activities with other sections.

Participating faculty: Bina Arch, Nick Bader, Nina Lerman

Although “translation” is often understood only to mean rendering words (written or spoken) in one language into another, it carries other shades of meaning, including expressing something in a different medium or form; converting or adapting something to another context, system, or even use; and moving a person or thing from one place or position elsewhere. This learning community will examine different conceptions of translation, exploring what unites these disparate understandings of translation–the movement across, beyond, or over–whether this movement is linguistic, scientific, or metaphorical. What happens in the process of translation? What is lost? Can something be gained? What societal forces shape what is translated and by whom? Alongside works about (and, perhaps, in) translation in various media, such as global literary fiction, international film, theatrical or musical productions, and podcasts, we will study relevant theories of knowledge that ask us to think about how ideas, words, and people change when moved from one context to another. The Introduction to Edward Said’s Orientalism will be common to all sections, though texts across sections might vary. While individual sections may differ in methodology and approach, each will remain grounded in the possibilities that translation opens in our thinking, our selves, and our relations with others.

Participating faculty: Sally Bormann, Chetna Chopra, Zahi Zalloua

What does it mean to tell a story? What roles can stories play in learning about ourselves, understanding others, and making sense of the world around us? How do stories shape and perpetuate cultural “knowledge” and who gets to tell those stories? How can technology help us tell more inclusive and creative stories? This course seeks to address these questions and more through a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Students will examine storytelling in verbal, visual, performative, and digital formats, with the goal of developing a nuanced understanding of stories and their tellings through academic study and creative storytelling projects. The materials for this course will be anchored by selections from local writer Beth Piatote’s The Beadworkers. Visits to the Whitman College archives and the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute will showcase our local landscape of voices and stories. As we work through our topics in class, students will be guided by additional readings and talks from faculty with expertise in classics, dance, environmental humanities, hispanic studies, media studies, theatre, and writing. Students will be encouraged to create their own stories as the entire learning community collaborates to explore ways of becoming nuanced and ethical storytellers attuned to the power and responsibility that stories hold. 

Participating faculty: Peter de Grasse, Kathryn Frank, Dan Schindler, Kate Shea, Jenna Terry, Carlos Vargas Salgado

What is time, and how do humans experience it? How do we perceive it, measure it, record it, and organize it, both individually and in society? What do we learn by examining the nature and experience of time? How does such study illuminate the significance of human life and mortality, the freedom of human will, and humans’ ethical obligations to the past and future? How do various scholarly disciplines explain memory, attention, and anticipation–cognitive processes by which humans engage with the past, the present, and the future? As we consider such questions, we’ll also develop and refine skills that will be essential throughout your time at Whitman: careful reading, open-minded listening, productive discussion, clear and insightful writing, information literacy, and research. Each section will explore the theme in different ways, but sections will occasionally meet with other sections for shared activities, and all sections will include texts from a range of liberal arts and sciences disciplines, including physics, geology, literature, philosophy, and psychology.

Participating Faculty: Mitch Clearfield, Moira Gresham, Julia Ireland, Rob Schlegel, Johanna Stoberock