2008-2009 Courses

Fall 2008: For the Good of the Nation? Media Politics in America

Winter 2009: Art and Action in Ancient Rome

Spring 2009: American Sabor: Latinos Shaping U.S. Popular Music

Subscribe to the series on the Seattle Arts & Lectures Website.
Individual course registration begins on August 4, 2008.

Dates: September 10, September 24, October 8, October 22, November 5, 2008

Scholars and pundits chart a decades-long decline in Americans’ common values and shared civic purpose. Others contend that the very norms of citizenship and political engagement areundergoing profound transformation..At the center of these developments is the recent emergenceof a political system in which leaders and organizations are stunningly adept at using mass media for strategic purposes. Todaypolitical campaigns skillfully spin news coverage, embrace popular culture and advertising, and build and leverageinternet networks. In the new media politics, the style and speed of messages trump substantive and sober political debate, withconsiderable implications. On the negative side, these developments can explain polarization and disenchantment withinthe U.S. electorate. On the positive side, many Americans—in particular younger citizens—are developing new forms of political involvement that deploy media in innovative ways. This Wednesday University course will examine the rise of media politics in the United States and assess what it portends for the American experiment in democracy.

David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. His research and teaching focus on the relationships among U.S. politics, journalism, and public opinion. He is the author of God Willing?: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press (2004) and The God Strategy: How Religion Became A Political Weapon in America (2008, with Kevin Coe). He received the 2002 University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award and was named the 2006 Washington State Professor of the Year.

Winter 2009: Food for Thought: The Ethics, Culture, and Politics of Eating

Dates: January 14, January 28, February 11, February 25, March 11, 2009

Food is the stuff of life. It is part of our very being as biological organisms dependent on our environment for sustenance. And since humans are inherently social beings, food is also the stuff of our relationships with others. Moreover, growing, distributing, and consuming food shapes the places and environments we inhabit.Thus food defines not only who we are but also where we are. Using key concepts and approaches drawn from ethics, political ecology, and cultural studies, this course will explore how food production and consumption creates meanings, identities, relationships, and values that extend far beyond nutrition alone.We will investigate how ethics and values inform who eats what, where, and how; issues of hunger and vulnerability; debates about farming and genetically modified food; movements to eat local and eat slow; food as a form of self-care; and the globalization of food economies. Whenever possible, lectures will make connections to Seattle’s local food cultures.

Ann Anagnost is a Professor of Anthropology and Chinese Studies. Her interest in food issues has led her to an involvement with the UW organic student farm and she is avidly learning to be an urban farmer. She teaches a course on the Anthropology of Food and Cuisine.

Lucy Jarosz is an Associate Professor of Geography who studies agriculture, food, and rural development and teaches three courses on these themes. She is a member of the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network and a regular shopper at the Columbia City Farmers’ Market during the growing season.

Spring 2009: Art and its Publics, from the Renaissance to the Present

Dates: April 1, April 15, April 29, May 13, May 27, 2009

What lineages connect the Renaissance palazzi and churches toMOMA, Sotheby’s, and the buzz about the "creative economy" in our own day? Beginning with the thriving court and aristocratic patronage systems in Florence, Rome, Flanders, and Versailles, this course will trace the varied paths that lead to today’s art markets,philanthropy, and funding. We’ll visit The Netherlands and Paris of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to see how an expanding middle class and market economy affected the Old Masters. We’ll examine the nineteenth-century rise of art academies and the codification of the arts, as well as the increasing influence of museums, galleries, and art critics. Moving into the modern era, we’ll seehow corporate and government arts funding and themarket economics of the art sales room structure the contemporary creation, collection, and cultural consumption of art. Throughout we’llreturn to the themes of prestige and social identity, luxury, connoisseurship, expanding publics, taste, and value that wind their way through this history.

JoLynn Edwards is Professor of Art History and former Director of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she teaches courses on the cultural history of Paris and Rome, the comparative arts, and—drawing on her professional ballet background—European and American dance. Her research interests include the public and private histories of European art patrons, collectors, markets, and academies. She is a recipient of the 1996 UW Distinguished Teaching Award.