Seminar Descriptions - 2010

Alternative Energy Systems: What Is New Under the Sun?

A seminar led by Jorge Santiago-Aviles, Associate Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering

This seminar examines the most important features of alternate energy, possible uses of existing energy sources and renewable energy possibilities. A broad gamma of energy transformations concepts based on elementary thermodynamics will be introduced, to guide the student in the selection of the best possible answer to power generation, given a multiplicity of constraints.

Problem based learning techniques focused on science and technology concepts will be used throughout the semester. Small teachers’ teams will deal with realistic problems in the context of scaling, from isolated users, through villages and cities to countries, and will learn how to apply these concepts to find near optimal solutions to efficient energy utilization, and ways to discuss these concepts with their students.

Teachers of science from all grade levels can draw materials and ideas from this topic.

American Literature and American Painting: 1840 to 1940

A seminar led by Peter Conn, Vartan Gregorian Professor of English

The seminar will offer a selective but intensive introduction to American literature and American painting in the century between the antebellum years and World War II. The authors to be studied will include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Edith Wharton, T.S. Eliot, Henry James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ernest Hemingway, the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and William Faulkner, among others.

The painters will include Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, the "Ash Can School" of the early 20th century, Georgia O'Keeffe, the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, the Regionalists of the 1930s, and Edward Hopper. We will try to arrange at least one visit to either the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, both of which house some of the finest collections of American painting in the country.

Seminar Fellows will be able to create curriculum units that focus either on literature or painting or comparisons between them.

History of the Modern Middle East

A seminar led by Eve Troutt Powell, Associate Professor of History

This timely seminar is a survey of the history of the Middle East, beginning with the late Ottoman Empire and continuing into the present. While the content of this seminar is punctuated by military struggles, we will also explore the cultural history of the region. We will look hard at the circumstances of daily life in the Middle East and how they are affected by politics and war. We will also examine the historical circumstances that changed the political boundaries of the Middle East in the early twentieth century, and how those changes have continued to shape and provoke the current crises of the region that often dominate our news. This seminar will also pay close attention to the ways in which the Middle East and its peoples are represented in Western society.

Topics to be examined may include:

• Nationalism, World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire
• Europe and the Middle East, Zionism and Palestine
• Oil, The Gulf States and the Iranian Revolution
• Islamic Movements in the Middle East
• Afghanistan
• September 11, 2001 and the Invasion of Iraq

Teachers of history, social studies, and other subjects will find the materials to be an insight into topics that have shaped our lives in the past and present, and promise to do so into the future.

The Art and Craft of Problem Solving

A seminar led by Dennis DeTurck, Professor of Mathematics, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Problems are the life-blood of mathematics. From the most elementary level to the frontiers research,nothing teaches us more, or gives us more satisfaction, than finding the solution to a mathematical problem. And the only way to hone our problem-solving skills is practice, practice, practice.

Problems are different from exercises. The latter are important for developing skill, but a problem often seems mysterious and requires exploration, false starts, and occasional inspiration before it yields its solution.

In this seminar, we'll look at problems from many parts of mathematics: arithmetic, geometry, algebra and beyond, and discuss and employ strategies for their solution. The goals are to gain facility and confidence with a variety of mathematical problems that can be brought into the classroom, and to have some fun while doing it.

Multi-Cultural Fairy Tales: Portals to the Humanities

A seminar led by Mary Hufford, Adjunct Associate Professor of Folklore

One of the earliest purposes for print fairy tales was to instill the social values of an emerging European middle-class in children. Over the centuries a classic canon of fairy tales has been institutionalized as children’s literature. Including such standards as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, this canon represents a tiny sampling of the world’s offerings. Few people know, for example, that the earliest known version of Cinderella appeared in print in China in the ninth century, and that versions of all of the classic European folk and fairy tales have been collected all over the world.

This seminar will explore fairy tales and their international variants as portals to the humanities in multicultural classrooms. Working with six of the most widely known “classic” fairy tales, the seminar will familiarize teachers with critical concepts, research tools, and educational resources needed to teach any of the classic fairy tales using versions gathered from countries and cultures represented among West Philadelphia students. While fairy tales open onto universally shared aspects of human experience, variations from different traditions offer a framework for recognizing and appreciating cultural difference in the classroom. Fairy tales provide ample material for lessons in geography, history; language arts, speech genres and narrative performance; family and community life; and age-, class-, and gender- related social roles.

Teachers applying for this seminar should provide a list of the countries of origin and ethnicities represented among the students of their school, and, if known, the languages and dialects spoken by students.