VPA 311: World Cultures: SYLLABUS IN PROGRESS:
Fall 2011

Wednesday, 5:30-8:15 p.m.
ARTS 111 and ARTS 240
CHECK THE ROOM NUMBER EACH WEEK. WE WILL SOMETIMES MEET IN ARTS 24O, AND ALMOST ALWAYS IN ARTS 111
Office hours: Tuesday 2-5 or by appointment
Office: Arts Building 331; 760-750-4151
Email: dsmall@csusm.edu

GRADER for the class: Jennifer Conway
conwa010@cougars.csusm.edu

deborah small blogsite

arts and lectures

Review the website carefully
http://www2.csusm.edu/dsmall/syllabi/world/index.html

Please understand that this syllabus is provisional. We have many wonderful guests coming to our class, but there may be changes. Please check the website every week for your homework assignment and to note any updates to incorporate relevant materials.

Flexibility is of utmost importance in the class.

course description
In World Cultures, we will explore contemporary world cultural practices ranging from indigenous expressions to new electronic forms in a global and multi-disciplinary context. The class consists of readings, discussions, lectures, videos, visiting artists, writing, quizzes, and attending arts events. World Cultures will focus on cultural dissemination, dispersion, Diaspora, migration, and exchange. We will look at art that is colonialist as well as anti-colonialist in its assumptions about the world. We will question how cultural practices act as oppositional and critical forces. The works we will study often incorporate a variety of diverse cultural influences, a reflection of artists' cultural identities and societies as multiple rather than singular, shifting rather than stable, products of colonization as well as anti-colonial struggles. We will examine who has the power to creates frameworks for understanding, interpreting, and evaluating cultural practices.

student learning outcomes:
By analyzing films, reading selected texts, engaging with guest artists, attending lectures, and attending outside art events, you will:
1. Explore the meaning of artistic expressions to explore the relevant social, political, and cultural issues of our time.
2. Understand how world cultures have been destroyed and diminished, and explore global efforts at revitalization of those culture
3. Explore the role of folk arts and grassroots movements in the arts and syncretism in cultural practices.
4. Explore cultural practices that offer transformative paradigms for social engagement and creativity: art that celebrates what it means to be human in an increasingly globalized culture.
5.Examine the extent to which art practices are oppositional and critical and/or reproduce conventional assumptions about the world and reinforce cultural hegemony. We will explore new forms/constructions of electronic cyberspatial identity.

art events: The course includes the Visual and Performing Arts Program Arts Events Attendance Requirement. You are required to attend a minimum of three art or cultural events during the semester. One, the INFINITE BALANCE exhibition at MOPA in Balboa Park, is REQUIRED for you to attend. The other two events include but are not limited to any concert, opera, visual art exhibitions, film, poetry readings, or theater presented on or off campus. There are many activities scheduled for the FALL semester, so it should be quite easy to fulfill this requirement.

writing:You will write the equivalent of a one-page narrative response to each of the 3 art events you that attend over the course of the semester. These will take the form as blog posts on your blog that you will create for yourself in wordpress.com.

You will also post a one paragraph response to the movies that are required as homework for the class.

assignments and grading
80%: 5 quizzes throughout the semester on videos, readings, and lectures;
I will count your top 4 quizzes, but quizzes will be cumulative to make sure you borrow notes from someone if you miss a class and that you do all the reading and film assignments. NO MAKE-UP QUIZZES

20%: 3 events/performance/films = write a 1st person narrative responding to each art/music/theater/dance event you attend outside class: what was significant for you, what will you remember about the event a year from now, how did it inspire you (or not): I am interested in your reaction to the event, your analysis of why it was moving, compelling, boring, redundant, exciting, and why. REMEMBER, the INFINITE BALANCE exhibition at MOPA in Balboa Park is REQUIRED for you to attend. It opens October 11, and we will be discussing it in class on October 26, giving you two weeks to attend the exhibition.

You will write a 1 blog entry for each of the 3 art event: equivalent to a word double-space, 1 inch margins, times font page. It would be great to include photos of the evenst as well. Cellphone camera photos are fine.

Your blog entries will be graded by the class grade, Jennifer Conway, and me.


syllabus
week 1 august 31 ARTS 240
Attendance
Introduction to class
• Play 3 minute aria, then 8 minute films excerpt

Wade Davis: cultural anthropologist:
Ted Talks video: "We all share the same adaptive imperatives. We're all born. We all bring our children into the world. We go through initiation rites. We have to deal with the inexorable separation of death . . . we all sing. We all dance. We all have art. What's interesting is the unique cadence of the song, the rhythm of the dance in every culture. . ." This are our commonality. This is our humanity.

Why study other cultures: to learn that they're are "other ways of being, other ways of thinking, other ways of orienting yourself to the earth."

"A language is not just a body of vocabulary, or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit . . . Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an entire ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

We will look at many kinds of languages, not only spoken language, but the language of the body, the language of improvisation, the language of plants, of trees . . .

Review syllabus
Discuss Netflix membership for assigned movies; renting from Amazon, iMovie

Screen: Once

Homework: watch
Once: Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova accepting the Oscar® for Best Original Song for "Falling Slowly" from the film "Once" - the 80th Annual Academy Awards®.

The Visitor starring Maggie Moore, Hiam Abbass, Amir Arison Richard Jenkins, 2008
you can rent from Amazon: in search on the Amazon.com site, enter the words:
rent The Visitor

week 2 september 7: ARTS 111

Discuss creating a BLOG for your writing (I like wordpress.com)
Blogging: Wordpress.com
Your blog address should be something like: deborahsmall.wordpress.com
send your blog address to Jennifer Conway:

conwa010@cougars.csusm.edu

From Frida DVD: Screen:
DVD interview with Lila Downs
DVD interview with Julie Taymor and Bill Moyers: READ only if you want to, not required, but it's here for those who missed it in class: transcript
Julie Taymor and Bill Moyers: art as a transformative practice

Discuss The Visitor and the djembe.
Screen: Playing the Djembe

Screen Songcatcher excerpts to prepare for next week's performance/lecture

"After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life - a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted - not only by the rugged purity of the music, but also by the raw courage and endurance of the local people as they carve out meaningful lives against the harshest conditions. It is not, however, until she meets Tom - a handsome, hardened war veteran and talented musician - that she's forced to examine her motivations. Is the "Songcatcher," as Tom insists, no better than the men who exploit the people and extort their land?" —Written by Sujit R. Varma

Emmy Rossum singing in Phantom of the Opera

Homework: watch
Frida (can rent from Amazon for 1.99)

week 3 september 14 QUIZ ARTS 111: 5:30 SHARP

Quiz will cover everything we've covered so far, including Frida movie

MandoBasso: Gunnar Biggs and Bill Bradbury: 6 PM

Homework: watch
Rabbit-Proof Fence: enter the words: rent rabbit-proof fence at amazon.com $1.99

How do you destroy a culture? How do you resist?

Notes re Rabbit-Proof Fence
Rabbit Proof PowerPoint

week 4 September 21 Native American movie premiere  6pm,  ARTS 240
California Indian Days - Ishi:  A Story of Dignity, Hope and Courage
100 year Anniversary
ISHI seeks to enrich and expand the story of Ishi and build upon the public’s awareness and appreciation of California Indian history. For many years, Ishi’s legacy has been a non native construct framed by public and scientific fascination with stereotypical views of the past. 100 years ago (29 Aug 1911) Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, was discovered in Oroville, California.   

The accompanying lecture will examine the creation of the California Indian Museum's new Ishi exhibition.  The exhibit's approach is to reframe Ishi’s legacy through the inclusion of California Indian voices and perspectives on issues, and to build upon current scholarship that helps to change the ways in which Ishi’s legacy is characterized and taught in public schools. Ishi’s character and courage provide lessons for all humanity. CIMCC will gift our campus a copy of the film for our library.

Nicole Lim is Pomo. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a Juris Doctorate from the University of San Francisco School of Law. She has worked for the National Indian Justice Center and the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center over the past decade. She has taught numerous undergraduate courses on Native American Studies at San Francisco, Sonoma and Sacramento State Universities.

Ms. Lim serves as a trainer for NIJC’s regional and on-site training programs in the subject matter of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and its Impact on Justice Systems, Juvenile Delinquency and Gang Violence and Federal Indian Law. She is the executive director of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, which seeks to educate the public about California Indian history and cultures from a native perspective.


homework:watch
Waste Land: you can rent this from amazon.com
Director: Lucy Walker
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz combines visual beauty with social awareness.Brazilian artist Vik Muniz combines visual beauty with social awareness. Waste Land--a documentary about Muniz collaborating with the trash pickers in a staggeringly huge landfill--achieves the same fusion. Waste Land--a documentary about Muniz collaborating with the trash pickers in a staggeringly huge landfill--achieves the same fusion . . .

week 5 september 28 QUIZ ARTS 111 5:30 SHARP
Quiz #2 covers:
Mando Basso performance: who plays what instruments, what is the ballad Bill sang for us that was so important in the film, Songcatcher.

Rabbit-Proof Fence and notes:  Who is the tracker; What is his role; Where is he from. What bird plays a role. Who wrote the book on which the screen-play is based. Who is the director. Where is he from.
Please read the notes carefully
http://public.csusm.edu/dsmall/syllabi/world/rabbit_proof_fence_powerpoint.htm

Ishi lecture

Waste Land: know the artist, director, name of dump, country, etc . . .

Please read carefully everything on the class website that applies to this quiz; for example, there is information on our guest for the Ishi lecture . . .

CLASS:
Check Out Student Blogs

Art and the Environment: Infinite Balance exhibition/artists coming up at MOPA

Mono Lake Project: Art/Environment: The Story of the Brick, by San Bower and Huey Johnso;, "Artist Deborah Small's painted porcelain brick art statement to preserve Mono Lake in California led to a landmark public trust law case . . ."

Experimental Documentary Films and Music: Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass
Glass: "music with repetitive structures"
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance
Scene 7: Pruit Igoe; Scene 11: Microchip
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation
Scene 1: Serra Pelada gold mine, Brazil
Impact of Progress: begin 8:55
Trailer: Naqoyqatso

Manufactured Landscapes:Edward Burtynsky
Director: Jennifer Baichwal
Scenes 3-12, 15

Story of Stuff: Annie Leonard
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.

The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Mierle Ukeles: NX620 .W67 1997 v.10 VHS

homework: watch
Billy Elliot

week 6 october 5 ARTS 111

GUEST: Karen Schaffman: Men and Dancing

homework: watch
The Buena Vista Social Club
Also check out this PBS site on the movie.

week 7 october 12 ARTS 111
Guests: Ritmo Loco Jazz Quartet

PLEASE INVITE YOUR PARTNERS, FRIENDS, OLDER CHILDREN: THIS WILL BE A FABULOUS CONCERT!!!

Bass player Gunnar Biggs has figured prominently as a musician and music educator in Southern California for thirty years. Gunnar has played with numerous internationally known jazz artists including Buddy Rich, Mose Allison, Charles McPherson, Thad Jones and Tommy Flanagan. He is a frequent adjudicator at jazz and solo and ensemble festivals. Biggs is also active as a performer in classical and world music circles.

Piano player Allan Phillips is a multi-instrumentalist, Venezuelan born, of African descent. A prodigiously gifted composer, he has the ability to incorporate traditional music from all around the world into the classical as well as the contemporary realm. Allan has won recognition for acclaimed album productions, recording sessions and performances with Donna Summer, Kenny Loggins, and Al Jarreau (U.S.A.), Sergio Mendes (Brasil), Zap Mama (Europe/Africa), Eva Ayllon (Peru), Thomas Mapfumo (Zimbabwe), Habib Koité (Mali), Vusi Mahlasela (So. Africa) and Regino Gimenez (Cuba).

Drums, timbales, and bel player Mike Holguin on is a prominent Southern California musician. Similar to Gunnar Biggs, Holguin has played with numerous internationally known jazz and Latin artists listed above, and he has recorded on several CDs, including Jack Costanza’s Scorching the Skins, a compilation of Latin music and jazz tracks. Holguin is also a percussion instructor for the the award winning Rancho Bernardo Royal Regiment, Rancho Bernardo High School’s Marching Band. drum solo at Dizzy's on youtube

Trombonist Dan Reagan currently tours with the Grammy Award winning Spanish Harlem Orchestra, the absolute elite of the salsa genre. Dan coaches Jazz Band at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts.

Homework:watch
American Me for next week, October 19 and Kristine Diekman's lecture
rent at amazon.com: enter the words: rent American Me
Edward James Olmos sets the screen ablaze in this powerful epic about a youth from the streets of East LA who becomes the leader of the Mexican Mafia from behind the gates of Folsom Prison.
$2.99
Manufactured Landscapes
rent at amazon.com if you did not see this in class: enter the words: rent Manufactured Landscapes
Edward Burtynsky, the artist profiled in Manufactured Landscapes, is one of the artists whose work is in the Infinite Balance Exhibition
$2.99

REMINDER: Infinite Balance: Artists and the Environment Exhibition opened at MOPA, Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, so make sure you've seen it by October 26, when we will be discussing it and having group activities around it in class.

QUIZ next week on October 19 on everything we've covered so far since the last quiz:
Mono Lake Project
Koyaanisqutsi excerpts in class and discussion
Powaqqatsi excerpts in class and discussion
Manufactured Landscapes excerpts and discussion
Billy Elliot
Karen Schaffman lecture and discussion
Buena Vista Social Club
Ritmo Loco performance and discussion

American Me will not be on the quiz, but make sure you've seen it for the Wed lecture

week 8 october 19 ARTS 111 QUIZ
GUEST: Kristine Diekman: Kristine Diekman, Video in the Community. Kristine Diekman will discuss her professional and artistic entry into video production, and will focus on the work she does with film and social transformation. She will specifically discuss the gang prevention videos she completed in 2008 and 2009.

Homework
Write your minimum one page blog entry for the Infinite Balance Exhibition: an overview of the exhibit, followed by an analysis of one particular artist whose work you are compelled by: I will be showing some of these blog entries from the faculty computer next week, so everyone needs to complete your entry by class time. Also, if you can add some images of the artist's work that you are focusing on, that would be great.

Watch online: JR Ted Talks
JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases.

week 9 october 26 ARTS 111

Discuss MOPA Exhibition: Infinite Balance
We will look at a few of your blog entries on the exhibition, and I'll ask you to talk about them.

screen: Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

Homework:
watch Annie Leibovitz:Life Through a Lens—can rent from Amazon.com $2.99
Make sure you get the Life Through a Lens version. There is an earlier bio of her that is really weak.

week 10 november 2

CLASS WILL NOT MEET THIS WEEK: PROFESSOR ON MEDICAL LEAVE

Homework:
watch Strictly Ballroom, an Australian film: rent from Amazon.com for $1.99

Read the LA Times article about Teodora and Mike Wilken for next week on my blog
Make sure to click on the LA Times link to read the entire article, and there is a short video at the end

Read about Teodora Cuero here

week 11 november 9: ARTS 111
Special Guests: Mike Wilken, Leonor Farlow, and Teodora Cuero—Cultural Revitalization in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

Teodora Cuero is a revered Kumiai Indian elder and the traditional authority of her community of La Huerta, a small village east of Ensenada in Baja, Mexico. Cuero has inherited a unique legacy of traditional knowledge developed by her ancestors over thousands of years of living on the peninsula about the natural world she inhabits. She was featured in the Spring and Summer issues of News from Native California, and appeared on the cover of the Spring 2008 issue.

Mike Wilken is the founder and former director of the Native Cultures Institute of Baja California, (CUNA) a non-profit association working for the preservation and revitalization of the cultural practices of the Kumiai, Paipai, Kiliwa and Cucapa people of the peninsula. An applied cultural anthropologist, Michael is author of numerous articles and curator of museum exhibits focusing on native peoples of Baja California. He has worked with local tribes for over 20 years.
    
At the request of the Paipai and Kumiai tribes, Michael is currently working with them to develop indigenous ecovillages to encourage sustainable tourism in a culturally appropriate context. Baja California's Paipai and Kumiai Indians find that traditional knowledge passed on from their ancestors can help them meet the challenges of survival in a rapidly changing world. Growing interest and emerging markets for their art are fueling a remarkable revival of their native arts and crafts, providing them jobs while conserving culture and the environment.

In their lecture, Michael, Leonor, and Teodora will focus on this complex process of establishing ecotourism, and how this has enabled basketweavers and potters to continue producing their ancient crafts. Baja’s Paipai and Kumiai communities are among the poorest populations of the US-Mexico border region. They will present photographs and video of the remarkable revival in the production of handcrafts that is helping native artisans preserve, practice and reinterpret the knowledge passed on from their ancestors.

Homework: Rent Pow Wow Highway
rent from amazon.com $3.99
The spare American deserts become the site of an unforgettable story for two very different men on one incredible journey. Among the Lame Deer tribe in Montana, mystically driven Philbert Bono (CSI's Gary Farmer) and big, plain-spoken activist Buddy Red Bow (The Score's A Martinez) are sent on road trip in a dilapidated 1964 Buick named "Protector" when Buddy's sister winds up in hot water with the law in Santa Fe. Along the way they encounter life-changing experiences that range from hilarious to heartbreaking before they reach their final destiny and a deeper understanding of each other. Also starring Wes Studi (Avatar), Graham Greene (Twilight: New Moon), and Amanda Wyss (Silverado), this electrifying, critically-acclaimed independent hit portrays modern Native Americans with basic human differences and common threads working to build a future together in the heart of a country filled with surprises.(from amazon.com)

november 23
No class meeting

Film research day: In preparation for next week's guest, filmmaker Minda Martin, rent
Restrepo: RESTREPO is a feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, "Restrepo," named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the valley; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.

Rent Restrepo from amazon.com: $3.99

november 30 ARTS 111
Guest: Minda Martin will screen her new film "The Long Distance Operator"
(19minutes) and an earlier film, "Free Land" (63min)

homework: watch
The Year of Living Dangerously
rent on Amazon.com $2.99

december 7 QUIZ
Gamelan concert in ARTS 111 at 5:30
Lecture with Bill Bradbury and QUIZ after concert in ARTS 240

Guests: Randy Griswald and Bill Bradbury: Indonesian Gamelan Music
Discussion of The Year of Living Dangerously with Bill Bradbury, followed by Gamelan music and Gamelan concert with Randy Griswald and the CSUSM Gamelan Ensemble