Rebecca Meacham and Bryan Vescio, UW-Green Bay
Laura Zlogar and Ruth Wood, UW-River Falls
Rebecca Meacham and Bryan Vescio, Department of Humanistic Studies
(English), UW-Green Bay - "English 344: African American Literature."
This course will be a standing, three-credit, variable content course, repeatable up to six credit hours. It will fulfill UW-Green Bay's Ethnic Studies requirement,
and will be a key component in a proposed African American Studies minor currently in development. In different semesters, the course content might focus
on major authors, historical periods, themes, or genres. One of its primary goals will be to foster an appreciation of the diversity of African-American writing,
but each version of the course will consider both the aesthetic dimensions and the cultural contexts of the texts it examines. In doing so, the course will also
explore the relationships between art and social change. Institute funds will assist in the building of a library of materials for this course, fund a student trip to
the Black Holocaust Museum, generate seed money for a diversity initiative award, and travel to the 2004 Black Writers Conference at the Medgar Evers
College of CUNY in Brooklyn.
Laura Zlogar and Ruth Wood, Department of English, UW-River Falls -
Multicultural Education in the English/Language Arts Classroom."
This course is designed to prepare English secondary education majors to teach English/Language Arts with a knowledge, understanding, and sensitivity toward
differences of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation. The course will focus on multicultural literature and film in relation to other disciplines, such as
philosophy, psychology, sociology, and history. It will address issues regarding the development of individual attitudes, as well as the effects of discrimination
within the classroom. Students will be assigned the following: (i) read, compare, and interpret literature and film by women and various racial, cultural, linguistic,
and economic groups in the U.S., with particular emphasis upon their relevance to the language arts classroom; (ii) determine the various bases of attitude
development and change - philosophical, social, cultural, linguistic, symbolic, economic - through theoretical discussions and analyzing and interpreting popular
media, literature, and film; (iii) identify and analyze the psychological and social implications of discrimination, especially racism and sexism, in American society
through the interpretation of theoretical, literary, and cinematic genres; (iv) examine and evaluate the effects of discrimination - including racism, sexism, and
homophobia - on teachers, students, and themselves, particularly in the language arts classroom; (v) analyze and evaluate the history, development, and relevance
of a multicultural curriculum into both curricula and instructional principles and practices' and (vi) synthesize the issues raised by the class regarding multicultural
and education by reading, viewing, analyzing and interpreting the works and culture of Wisconsin Native American tribes and bands.
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