Recipients of the 1995-96 Kemper Faculty Grants to Improve Learning are enabling Washington University students to learn how art and design affect their views of themselves and society; how religion affects one's view of the world; and how, throughout history, the American courts have addressed issues society has failed to resolve elsewhere.
In 1991, the William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank Trustee awarded the University a five-year $150,000 grant to encourage innovative work on new courses or programs that will produce significant learning experiences for undergraduates. The grants also are designed to enhance existing courses and support those that are taken largely by students whose primary interests lie outside the departments in which the courses are taught. During this academic year, the grants are supporting three new courses that are being taught this semester. The University's Teaching Center administers the grants.
The 1995-96 faculty recipients are Eleni Bastéa, Ph.D., assistant professor of architecture; Beata Grant, Ph.D., associate professor of Chinese language and literature in Arts and Sciences; David T. Konig, Ph.D., professor of history in Arts and Sciences; and Libby Reuter, assistant dean in the School of Art and director of the Fine Arts Institute and Bixby Gallery. A luncheon honoring the recipients will be held April 23.
Bastéa and Reuter are teaching a course titled "Visualizing Experience: Body and Space." The course, which is open to all undergraduates, examines the process of visual thinking. It also focuses on several themes: how art and design affect individuals' views of themselves and society and how architecture, urban design, popular visual culture, science and technology influence our attitudes about space and about body and space. Reuter said the course will be taught at least annually in the future, including during the spring 1997 semester.
By exploring the process of visual thinking, Bastéa said, the professors are "trying to engage the students to take notes visually through drawings. For example, in class, when we asked a student what was on his mind, we made a map of his options after graduation, such as going to medical school or traveling to Europe."
By making small sketches, such as a stethoscope to symbolize medical school or an airplane ticket to denote traveling, the student was thinking visually and has a way of recapturing his ideas at a later time, noted Bastéa. The class also is examining how to portray complicated issues, such as socialism, in visual form.
"Another aspect of the class is to show students, through slides and other material, how visual experiences influence the way we look at the world," said Bastéa. By viewing slides of paintings from the Renaissance period to the present, for example, the students have discussed how the human body is represented in paintings. Bastéa also has lectured on the different expressions of space in cities, like Rome, and led students to ponder how space and visual image are represented in their hometowns.
In addition, the interdisciplinary course features University professors delivering presentations on topics such as how art influences scientists' views of the human body. Garland Allen, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences, was to speak on that topic on Wednesday, Feb. 28.
While Bastéa's emphasis is on visual communication as it relates to the thinking process and society, Reuter's concern focuses on producing visual information. "It's my hope that students will get a better understanding of the visual information that they receive and that they will gain confidence and skills in producing visual information," she said.
To develop skills in creating this information, Reuter believes students must study what devices visual communicators use to get their points across. "For example, there are techniques for representing a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional piece of paper," she noted.
Whereas Bastéa's focus on the critical review of visual information might lead to a class discussion on whether certain advertisements demean women, Reuter would concentrate on how the communicators produced the advertisement. "I might take that same ad and address what devices the artist used to influence the way we see this woman. Is she looking eye-to-eye with the viewer? If you're trying to say something empowering about women, you don't choose a picture of a woman looking down at the ground because that would not be consistent with your concept.
"If students want to design a cover for a paper, the image they choose should reflect the point of view of the paper. Students who are aware of this will be conscious of how they choose to present information. Their visual imagery should be consistent with their ideas."
Grant's course is titled "Buddhism and Everyday Life in East Asia." She plans to teach the course on a regular basis. The primary purpose is to provide a unique introduction to Asian cultures by following the development of Buddhism from its birthplace in India and subsequent arrival in China, Tibet, Korea, Japan and finally the West. "In each of these cultures," said Grant, "the external 'shape' of Buddhism has changed in response to different social, historical, cultural and even geographical needs and perspectives, even as the basic religious core has remained the same."
Grant said Buddhism's trajectory across Asia also affords students an opportunity to see how different from each other the cultures of Asia are and how they have found creative ways to resolve potential religious conflicts -- despite very dissimilar world views.
"By exploring these changes and developments, students not only can begin to understand that there are inextricable connections between religion, society and culture, but that underlying these considerable cultural variations lie certain fundamental concerns, from the concern for material and physical well-being to the mysteries of life and death," said Grant. She hopes her students will apply what they've learned in class to situations closer to home.
When Grant taught a previous course on the religions of Asia, she discovered a tremendous interest in Asian religions among University students. A hundred students wanted to take her previous course, although she had room for only about 60. She decided to create "Buddhism and Everyday Life in East Asia," in part, to help satisfy the students' quest for knowledge.
"When students see people practicing another religion, they see the outside: people praying, acting or dressing in a certain way," said Grant. "Their first impression is often an external one. However, by starting with the externals and then asking what are the reasons behind these behaviors, we come to understand that what we need to look at is not so much the religion per se but at the world itself through the lenses of that religion."
She said one way to guide students toward this understanding is to supplement the scholarly accounts of Buddhist history with autobiographies and accounts by actual practitioners. This semester, for example, students will have an opportunity to speak with a Tibetan, a Chinese and a Malaysian Buddhist monk.
Grant hopes the class motivates students to stretch their definitions of religion and become more tolerant of others. "The whole point is to try to look at the world through different lenses, if only momentarily. I want students to pay attention to and understand a little bit more about the world that surrounds them and empathize, not see it as so foreign."
Konig's course, which will be taught each spring, is titled "Law in American Life From 1776 to the Present." It chronicles the role of law and legal institutions in the creation of a democratic national culture. Class topics include mob violence and frontier "justice"; slavery; sexual behavior, privacy, abortion, domestic law and divorce; medical issues of ethics and malpractice; the "litigation explosion"; criminal law and its reform; libel and reputation; civil liberties; technology and the consumer culture; and mass disasters and liability.
Konig said he created the course because "law plays such an important role in American life that it seemed too important to ignore. This is not a vocational course to practice law. This is a course on the reasons law has been central throughout all aspects of history and how the law has been the residual problem-solver for problems that can't be solved elsewhere."
He cited race as an example. In class, he focuses on what he termed "the so-called 'law of slavery' where a race-based society enforced its rules through the law. But, even with the abolition of slavery, race is still a terrible problem. Race relations problems in the United States that don't seem to be solved by legislatures or by social institutions wind up in the courts," he said.
Konig added, however, that individuals have mixed views on how the courts have handled race issues. But because the law reflects the attitudes and biases of society, such explosive topics present challenges to the legal system to be fair, he said. "The legal system is as imperfect as our own society," he noted.
Controversial medical topics such as abortion and the characteristics defining criminal insanity also are examined in the course. "We find courts trying to solve medical issues based on common law principles," Konig said. "Right-to-die issues wind up in courts rather than in legislatures. Abortion, a medical procedure, is defined as a criminal act."
By exploring these issues, Konig hopes his students will realize that Americans are rights- and property-driven people. And, "for those who go to law school, I hope it will give them a sense of the challenges and ambivalences of what justice means -- a deeper appreciation for the ambiguities of life and justice. For those who don't become lawyers, I hope they'll understand the depths of the dilemmas lawyers and judges face," Konig said.
The deadline for the 1996-97 Kemper grants is April 1. Faculty who plan to apply for the grants should call the Teaching Center at 935-5299.
-- Carolyn Sanford
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