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Dear ’19,
It’s Not Too Early to Think SPRING!

As you plan your courses this fall, keep the Wesleyan “Spring Intensive” in mind. This new opportunity will allow you to plunge into a new course every three weeks and to intensively focus on project or topic at a time rather than balancing several. The goal of the program is to give students an opportunity to build cohesiveness across their courses, collaborate with faculty, engage in project-based learning and sample from some never previously offered courses from prominent visitors. Each three week course will carry a full credit covering the same amount of material as 14 week courses. Check out the menu of courses herehttp://wesleyanspringintensive.blogs.wesleyan.edu/
Who can participate? Up to 50 students interested in building their spring schedule with intensive courses and other for-credit experiences.
Can I take other courses? Though most admitted students will take their courses exclusively in the intensive format, students may enroll in one or more semester-long credits for a senior thesis, independent or group tutorial, student forum, or internship. Students can also take quarter-credit courses outside the intensive format, schedule permitting.
When will intensive courses meet? Classes will meet Monday through Friday for 2 hours and 50 minutes for three weeks.
How will students be admitted? The Intensive program is POI. Interested students may apply for admission by meeting with Professor Lisa Dierker (ldierker@wes) or any of the faculty teaching through the intensive program, before or during spring semester planning period. Admitted students will then seek final course selection approval from their advisors.
A bonus! Students admitted to the Intensive semester will not need to participate in pre-registration for spring 2016.
I’ll post this on the ’19 blog as well.
Best,
Dean Wood

Psychology Department Course Updates

PSYC 203: Sec 02 Quantitative Methods will be cancelled due to low enrollment. If you were thinking of making a request for this course, please choose Section 01 instead. Below is a description of Sec 01 of the course (including a new proposed course time — please read carefully!).

PSYC 203: Sec 01 Quantitative Methods is a general introduction to research methods in Psychology taught by social psychologist, Professor Kathleen Schmidt (kschmidt@wes). It is similar to other 200-level research methods courses except that it covers the entire field, rather than focusing on a sub-area of psychology, thus the more general title. In this class, you will understand how to do research that involves collecting data about all aspects of human behavior that can be measured as numbers (e.g., survey ratings, accuracy, response times, etc.). (This is why it is called quantitative methods — you measure things using numbers!). There are now no prerequisites for this section of the course and it is open to students in all class years and majors. This course is a requirement for the Psychology major. In fact, for the incoming class, prospective majors must take this course in their first two years in order to be able to declare Psychology as a major. If you are at all interested in psychology as a major (or are in the major) and want to get a project-based start in understanding research methods, this is a great course for you!

Once you have taken this course, you will be in a better position to get involved in a research lab in the department or to do independent research, too. If you are still looking for a class, do take advantage of the seats in this class this term!

The above Sec 01 class was previously scheduled to meet on M and F 1:10-2:30. The department has changed the class to M W 1:10-2:30 so as to accommodate more students. If you are interested in this class, please let the professor know right away by making an enrollment request or emailing the professor at the above address. If you would love to take the course but cannot do the class time, please let the professor know that too. The professor will communicate with you directly to let you know where and when to meet.

Still looking for a fourth class? Consider taking HIST 319: Crisis, Creativity and Modernity in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933. W, 1:10-4:00 pm, ALLB 304. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Even though this is listed as an advanced History seminar, the pace and content does not differ much from frosh and sophomore seminars that have been taught by Professor Erik Grimmer-Solem in the History Department in the past, so first and second year students shouldn’t be intimidated. This seminar on the Weimar Republic is easily one of the most interesting courses that he teaches on campus. In past years, students in this class have produced fascinating research papers on such topics as Weimar-era photography, advertising, inflation, Dadaism, expressionist painting, social democracy, early Nazism, Bauhaus architecture and design, sports and athleticism in Weimar culture, cabaret and cultural critique, nudism, the women’s movement, Berlin in film, and German-Jewish identity. The readings cover a wide range of topics, so there’s something for everyone interested in an era that produced some of the most iconic examples of modernism. As the professor will be on sabbatical after December and will have other teaching commitments when he returns, it’s quite likely that this will be the last time this course will be offered in the next 3-4 years. Professor Grimmer-Solem was the recipient of the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2013 and the Carol A. Baker ’81 Memorial Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Research in 2005. More about him here: http://egrimmer.web.wesleyan.edu/

If you’re interested but not a junior or senior, please just put in an enrollment request and come to the first session of class on Wednesday, 1:10-4:00 pm in ALLB 304.

Full course description: https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=012852&term=1159

After Charleston: Next Steps for a Movement for Social Justice. The panel will include Bree Newsome, Bishop John Selders, Professor Clemmie Harris, and Tedra James

When: Thursday, September 17th at 8pm.
Where: The Chapel

The event is free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come basis.
More information is available here:
http://engageduniversity.blogs.wesleyan.edu/?post_type=event&p=6185

Mindfulness with Brownies : every Wednesday at 7pm: basement Memorial Chapel. Informal, lasts 30 min. No previous experience necessary. This is a supportive community led by our mindfulness intern. This is year two of this project.

Our 6 week MBSR based class now called: BPN: Being Present Now. Starts Monday 10/5 with a sample class on Monday at 9/28. To apply: http://mindful.blogs.wesleyan.edu/class/. This is limited to 25 students.

For more info on the benefits of mindfulness from a scientific perspective:
http://mindful.blogs.wesleyan.edu/science/

First year students may not know that we offer one-year of Portuguese coursework (PORT 155 in the fall and PORT 156 in the spring). These 2 consecutive courses are designed for students who are already familiar with a Romance Language. The one-year of intermediate coursework in Portuguese that we offer has been steadily popular with Wesleyan seniors preparing for going abroad to Brazil or Portugal after they graduate from Wesleyan, but we would like to encourage students to think of Portuguese earlier in their career. First year students are welcome in the course and should contact Elizabeth Jackson (ejackson@wesleyan.edu) should they have questions.

What is particularly exciting about this coursework is that although students would “only” be doing one year of Portuguese, they would actually reach an early advanced level in Portuguese after that one year.

Check this out, either for now or in the future!

French, Italian, Spanish in Translation (FIST) 126 Being Golden: The Life and Afterlife of the Spanish Masters
Tues/Thurs 2:40 to 4:00 pm Wyllys 110 Prof. Melissa R. Katz Fall 2015
The achievements of 17th-century Spanish painters justly made them protagonists of a Golden Age. Centuries later, their works took on new roles as inspirations for modern artists: Manet copied Velázquez, Picasso copied El Greco, and (famously in Project Runway) Christian Siriano copied Murillo. What allowed these complex works to resonate so strongly in another era? Is such influence automatically a sign of success? Students will develop a critical understanding of the religious, social, and cultural context of that gave rise to the great artists of Golden Age Spain, as well as insights into the role of art as cultural currency.

The Sexual Assault Survivors Support Group for female-identified survivors will be held on Tuesdays beginning September 22th-December 8th from 5:30-6:45PM. Meetings will follow an open support group format and participants determine group topics each week.
Contact Alysha B. Warren, LPC, Therapist/Sexual Violence Resource Coordinator (awarren[at]wesleyan[dot]edu) to sign up no later than Thursday, September 17th. Reference “Tuesday Support Group” in subject line of email.
Dates: Tuesdays, September 22nd-December 8th
Time: 5:30-6:45PM

Pipe Organ in Theory and Practice, from Sanctuary to Stage: A Performance-Based Examination of Music
MUSC 441
Fall 2015 Section: 01
This course may be repeated for credit.

Weekly group and individual meetings to prepare for public performances at least once per semester. Those employed at area institutions are encouraged to bring and discuss their music

Sacred Sounds: Music in Religious Context
MUSC 124
Fall 2015 Section: 01

Music forms an essential component of many religious practices throughout the world. From a tool for social solidarity to a trigger for intensely personal expression and even violence, the ability of music to shape religious life is tangible and often profound. This course employs the literature of ethnomusicology as a starting point for understanding the role of music in contemporary religious life and how associated artistic practices are implicated in dynamic processes of individual and social transformation. Music scholars employ a variety of interpretive lenses to articulate the meaning of such processes and a number of these will be central to our class discourse, including: hybridity, transnationalism, gender, and identity formation. Students will critically assess these and other theoretical models through an exploration of largely ethnographic research dealing with a variety of broad religious categories: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, animist etc. Points of interreligious interaction will be of particular interest as a means to understand the central position music often plays in drawing groups with competing or conflicting socio-political views into sustained contact with one another.

Popular Music in Contemporary China
MUSC 127
Fall 2015 Section: 01
Crosslisting: CEAS 259

As in the rest of the world, popular music dominates contemporary China’s music industry and consumption. Yet China’s popular music market also presents unique issues of state-sponsored popular culture intersecting with the bottom-up popular taste and desire, the repressive collective “we” intersecting with the resilient individual “I” in artistic expressions, and the imagined “ancient China” intersecting with the modern sound and technology. This course offers an opportunity for students to explore music, aesthetic, political, and cultural meanings contained in popular music through in-depth research projects on a number of important pop musicians and bands in Reform China from the 1980s to the present. Writing at the university level will be emphasized through the written assignments.