Tutorials Sixth Form students with a demonstrated commitment to independent work have the option of taking a spring tutorial. Typically comprised of four students or fewer, tutorials are offered in all disciplines, and provide a culminating academic experience for seniors as they work closely with a faculty member on a topic of their particular interest. Tutorials meet slightly less frequently than regular classes, but are reading- and writing-intensive. Students are required to write weekly essays which they read aloud, critique, and debate with their teachers and classmates, in the spirit of the Oxford tutorial system. The tutorial framework allows students a degree of academic independence that more closely approximates the collegiate experience, and an opportunity to further hone their analytical, problem-solving, and written and oral argumentation skills. For more information, please visit standrews-de.org/tutorials.
2022 SENIOR TUTORIAL OFFERINGS AESTHETICS OF SUSTAINABILITY
Might the world’s end uncover another possible, better world? We will consider the political and ethical stakes of imagining and portraying the world’s end by engaging questions of race, gender, poverty and capital, imperialism, indigeneity, and climate disaster. Beyond Indra Sinha’s wrenching, hilarious 2007 novel Animal’s People (set in the aftermath of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India), possible texts include Shakespeare’s King Lear, Toni Morrison’s Sula, and Heinrich von Kleist’s Earthquake in Chile. I am expecting the members of this tutorial to play an active role in deciding the direction of the course. We may also engage photography (comparing the work of Ansel Adams and Subhankar Banerjee), film (Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God), music (Jenny Hval’s “Apocalypse, girl,” Moses Sumney’s “Doomed,” and many possible others). This course is suited for students interested in thinking in rigorous, interdisciplinary, and rollicking ways informed by literary criticism and theory, history, philosophy, and media studies. We will hold class movie screenings and record listening parties. Seniors, the end is nigh—let’s have fun.
INSTRUCTORS: MR. MEIER AND M. MILLER How does the natural environment influence art and design both today, and in the past? Likewise, how do works of art and innovations in design help us to understand and engage with the natural world? This course approaches the idea of sustainability by examining the techniques and practices of artists and designers over the last 50 to 60 years. Beginning with artworks that embody the American mythology of westward expansion and manifest destiny, and moving toward the land artists of the 1960s and 1970s, we will look at our societal relationship to our land and how it has changed and evolved through the years. From mankind’s desire to conquer and tame the wild, to living in harmony with the environment around us, we will explore how art and design has both reflected, and influenced, these shifts, and still do today.
THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF JOHN STEINBECK
INSTRUCTORS: MR. & MRS. DALY The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award, and propelled Steinbeck to the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Touching on important issues like immigration, climate change, and the plight of the poor, this novel follows the Joad family as they join the wave of Okies (people from Oklahoma) fleeing the Dust Bowl in search of a better life in California.
THE AWAKENED MIND
INSTRUCTORS: MR. KUNEN AND MR. MUFUKA What is the best way to live? How do we reach human flourishing? Our great philosophical and spiritual traditions have offered many answers to this question. One of Socrates’ most famous sayings is, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” If “the unexamined life is not worth living,” then what exactly is the examined life? What does it mean to be “awakened” and mindful? Through a survey of some of the most pivotal works in philosophy, we will seek to develop a global perspective on the human condition and what leads to human flourishing. As we engage in this comparative exploration and quest for a global lens, we will also learn how each work is the product of its author’s own examined life, and we will inquire how each author and tradition understood awakening in their respective historical and philosophical contexts.
APOCALYPSE NOW AND THEN
INSTRUCTOR: MS. HANSON “Apocalypse” comes from the Greek apokálypsis, meaning “uncovering.” What can the end of the world uncover or reveal? This interdisciplinary tutorial will explore apocalyptic imaginations across a range of periods, contexts, genres, and media.“The apocalypse” is sometimes portrayed as a calamitous, one-off event (as in 2021’s star-studded film Don’t Look Up, which we will watch together as our first assignment). But, we will investigate: is apocalypse necessarily “total,” or might it happen in parts? Might it happen over and over again? Might it be ongoing? Might it be not cataclysmic, but quotidian? What would it mean to think of anthropogenic climate change as a kind of chronic apocalypse—not one that is still to come, but one that has already begun? Is white supremacy an apocalypse? Is colonialism? Alternatively, might the apocalypse represent a chance for rupture from this world built on so much injustice?
CONSPIRACY THEORIES, HOAXES, AND FAKE NEWS
INSTRUCTOR: MR. HUTCHINSON Do we live in a “post truth” era? This tutorial seeks to explore conspiracy theories and the important role they play influencing political values. From the JFK assassination to the New World Order, from Holocaust denial to QAnon, from global warming skepticism to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s dismissal from her
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