The links on this syllabus will take you on divergent paths. I don't expect any of you to read -- or to need -- all of it. However, if you're going to progress towards the course objectives, I do expect all of you to read -- and to need -- much of it. It's up to you to balance your learning style against these resources.

The due dates will not get set until I can schedule the hands-on sessions.

Schedule at a Glance

Introduction

January 17

introduction to the course - welcome page

the course web - course page, syllabus page, assignments page, reports page

Getting to know you

Where do your ancestors come from? How long has your family been in this country?

Three of my four grandparents were born in foreign countries, Scotland and Sweden. They came to the U.S. about a hundred years ago, just before World War I.

To what foreign countries have you traveled?

I have traveled through South America and Europe, and I have lived for extended periods in Italy, England, when I was your age, and the Netherlands, most recently. In total, I have spent two of the past four years living in the Netherlands.

What foreign languages can you speak or read? Does anyone in your family speak a foreign language?

I can read some French and I can read and speak Dutch pretty well. Both of my paternal grandparents spoke Swedish; in fact, my father learned English as a second language.

What about you?

Hands-on activities

We will devote several class sessions to a variety of hands-on arts activities. The schedule is not final, but here is what we have done in past semesters:

Renaissance painting techniques
African drumming
Latin dancing
Chinese calligraphy
Egyptian encaustics

If you have any suggestions for activities of this type, now is a great time to let me know about them. I'm especially partial noisy activities, that is, music and dancing or smelly, messy activities like painting.

the tikiwiki - wiki gateway page, the wiki

Rhianna Umbrella Indonesia - angklung (right)

Africa - Toto's 1982 hit | Tukuleur's version | tukuleur.com

assigning each of the countries

Did You Know? Shift Happens

The elephant in the room

The United States. How should we deal with the "home team" and feelings of disloyalty coming from inevitable comparisons to the U.S.? Many Americans like the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that the U.S. is not only different from all other countries but also better than all other countries.

While we are certainly welcome to our own feelings and opinions, as illogical and comforting as they may be, we are not entitled to our own facts. In fact, compared to the developing countries that we are studying this semester, the U.S. fares well. However, compared to other advanced economies, the U.S. is at or near the bottom on a variety of economic and social measures. In that sense, this course stacks the deck in favor of the U.S.

Togo's Afia Mala - Segne

Senegal's Diogal - Sore

Senegal's Habib Koité (left) - Wassiye | Wikipedia | web

South Africa's Jon Ackerman - Anoma

Afrobeat

Polyrhythm

intercultural sensitivity

research for this course - see Tools below

assignments

start researching your country

The Wikipedia entry for your country. For most of our countries, the Wikipedia has supplementary articles focusing on one aspect of the country.

At EveryCulture.com, the entry about yours will have some overlap with the Wikipedia entry, but it will cover many other aspects.

At Freedom House, you can learn more about the politics of your country, especially the recent events that may help with your current events timeline assignment.

The countries page and the cultures page of our course web have lots of numerical data about your country and how it compares to other countries.

Start to immerse yourself in the pop culture of your country, the music, movies, literature, and videos. Start researching names, places, titles, people. Collect and organize bookmarks. Listen to radio stations online. Read newspapers and magazines. Use Google Translate. Find YouTube and Facebook equivalents, if they exist.

learn your way around the wiki Wiki Gateway page

To learn how to use it, create the home page or welcome page for your country.

Use the Sandbox to practice.

Don't worry about messing up anything. We can always roll back to an earlier version.

How to do the assignments on the wiki, such as how to format text, edit pages, edit images, upload images, and put text and images into tables.

coming up: January ??: European Renaissance painting

That's Girl with a Pearl Earring on the right, painted in 1665 by Johannes Vermeer, who lived in Delft in the Dutch Republic. How did Vermeer arrange the things he painted and get those fleshtones to glow?

In class, you will go through the process that Vermeer went through to prepare his canvas, make his paints, and get these effects.

Tools for this course

to help you do the research for this course

Use your browser's bookmarks or favorites to harvest and organize your research. I highly recommend that you use Google's Chrome. Chrome has a translation extension, which means that you will be able to translate individual words or sentences just by highlighting them. Your next best bet is Mozilla's Firefox. If you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which is not standards compliant, you will not be able to post your assignments to the wiki properly.

After that, Google is your best friend: Google Earth (free download) | Images | Maps | Translate | News | Video, especially YouTube

iGoogle (personalized Google home page) has gadgets (AKA widgets) for worldwide media.

With Audacity (how to use | free download and available on most of the school's computers), you can record anything coming out of your computer's speakers, such as radio broadcasts from your county, which you can then edit with Audacity and upload to the wiki or play during one of your presentations.

Image editor - Pixlr's Editor - Crop and re-size images so that they will fit better on your wiki pages.

If you have or will download iTunes, it has a Radio feature in the Library, as you can see on the screeshot on the right. This feature has, on mine, had 400 streams of music from around the world when I took this screenshot last year. It is now almost double. Explore and discover!

Newpaper sites have TV schedules so you can see how much is local programming. How much influence does English-language media seem to have? Subtitled? Dubbed?

Pop music

From the current charts, you can search for the artists to find their sites or to find their music on file-sharing services. I especially recommend Bit Torrent software such as Vuze.

If you download media files (such as .m3u or .ogg) that don't play on Windows Media Player or some other media player that you downloaded, try a search using the file format and "player" as search terms.

The most versatile player I know is the VLC media player.

Print - Nightlife - Movies, Concerts, Events, and Clubs

You should try newspaper web sites to look for names of theaters and clubs and use that information to find the theater and club web sites. Those names also make useful search terms at YouTube and Google Images.

Social Media

Is there a local MySpace / Facebook site? In the Netherlands, it's Hyves.nl. By then clicking on the Music tab, I can get an earful of what's popular but maybe not on the official charts. I haven't found one web site that lists and links to all social media sites worldwide, so be on the lookout for something similar to Hyves in your country.

Bonus Video! Ken Robinsom's Schools kill creativity