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Conference News
Penn State Summer Seminar in Theory and Culture June 22-26, 1993
This five-day seminar program will enable faculty from a variety of institutions to study the backgrounds and theory of multicultural issues and to identify key ways of implementing a multiculturalist curriculum in their courses and overall institutional programs. Designed to offer an opportunity for faculty development both in theory and in pedagogy, the seminars will cover four days, after the initial days's reception and evening lecture, with special area study taking place on three days and with a general multiculturalist workshop for all participants on the last day. Each seminar participant will choose a course of study with a seminar leader in one of four areas-African American, Asian American, Latino American, and Native American-and will investigate the history and theory of that particular area for two days of intensive study. On the following day, participants in that area seminar will focus upon ways in which the materials (African American, e.g.) can be separately taught and also integrated into a broader classroom or institutional curriculum. On the last day, the group as a whole (i.e., all participants from the different field-area seminars) will meet to discuss problems/questions/issues in the implementation of multiculturalist materials. The agenda for the last seminar day will be devised by Paul Lauter, general editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature and author or co-author of nine books, the most recent of which is Canons and Contexts. The first day of the overall seminar program will offer an opening reception, welcoming statements, and the keynote address by Houston A. Baker, Jr., internationally renowned African Americanist, this year's President of the Modern Language Association, and the Director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Baker will lead the seminar in African American studies. The seminar in Asian American studies will be directed by Amy Ling, Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, editor or co-editor of six multiculturalist anthologies, and author of Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry and Chinamerican Reflections. The seminar leader in Native American studies will be Arnold Krupat of Sarah Lawrence College, author or co-editor of six books, including, most recently, Recovering the Word, a volume of essays on the translation of Native American materials, edited with Brian Swann, and Ethnocriticism, a book on the theory and practice of ethnic studies. Teresa McKenna of the University of Southern California will lead the seminar in Chicano/Latino studies. In addition to her many essays in the field of Chicano and Latino Studies, Professor McKenna has, with Flora Ida Ortiz, co-edited the collection, The Broken Web: The Education Experience of Hispanic American Women. For information about registration and housing for the seminar program, contact:
Professor Carla Mulford |
