Alumni College, August 30 - September 3, 2006

ENDLESS LEARNING
"Endless Learning" is a fitting description of Bread Loaf Alumni College, which assumes that the love of learning is bounded neither by time nor subject matter. How many of us regret that we missed courses in certain departments, or with certain professors, or wish we could come back to college for another course in our favorite subject, especially if there were no papers or exams? This year's Alumni College offers seminars with some of our top faculty members, as well as opportunities to get your hands doughy, while studying Italian culture through its cuisine, or to get your boots dirty while exploring Vermont's geological history, or even to refresh your Spanish in our first-ever course taught in a foreign language. It all happens at our Bread Loaf mountain campus at the glorious end of the Vermont summer, accompanied by fine food, evening entertainment, and the pleasures of new and old friendships.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

1.Pasta, Pesto and Passion: a Cultural Approach to Italian Cuisine.

Sandra Carletti, AssociateProfessor of Italian

The geographical, political and linguistic diversities characterizing Italy before its unification in 1861 have shaped its cultural and culinary traditions. La cucina italianais really a myriad of regional cuisines that have contributed to the establishment of a broader, national cuisine. To identify, and understand the distinctive features that make Italian cuisine so famous, we will undertake a culinary Giro d'Italia, traveling from North to South and from East to West in search of local ingredients, recipes, traditions, and eating habits. No approach to Italian cooking, however, would be complete without a hands on experience, so be ready to get busy in the kitchen!

2.The American Constitution and Civil Liberties in Wartime

MurrayDry, Dana Professor of Political Science

Using Geoffrey Stone's acclaimed Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, we will examine the Constitution and civil liberties in erasranging from a near war with France in 1798-1800, the Civil War,the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, to post-9/11.The course will resemble Professor Dry's constitutional lawcourses in its attention to Supreme Court decisions, but it also willexamine the political and constitutional context of governmentallegislation, executive actions, and Presidential speeches, includingrecent materials related to "the post 9/11 constitution."

3.Smart Girls:Women, Education and Intelligence

Antonia Losano, Assistant Professor of English

Even though female students now outnumber male students in most colleges and graduate schools, there remains a residual cultural bias against intelligent women, who are often thought to be too bold, too brassy, too…unfeminine. Historically, women have had to fight for their rights to higher education; in many countries this battle is ongoing. During our time together we will explore key moments in the history of women's battle to improve and express their brainpower, and we will look in particular at how fiction and film represent intelligent girls and women.

4.Magic and the Occult in European History

Paul Monod, Professor of History

Alchemy, astrology, necromancy, witchcraft: today, we label them all as "magic." In medieval and early modern Europe, however, they were not easy to separate from religion, medicine or science. Alchemy and astrology were respected as offshoots of ancient philosophies, and they became accessible to wide audiences through printing. Other forms of magic were feared and persecuted, most notoriously in the "witch craze" of 1500–1700 that resulted in 60,000 deaths. Why were magical and occult practices so significant? What finally made them unacceptable to educated Europeans? We will explore these questions, and (who knows?) we may also hit upon the secret of the philosopher's stone.

5.Spain's Golden Age of Art and Literature(In Spanish)

Patricia Saldarriaga, Assistant Professor of Spanish

Here is a chance to brush-up your Spanish while exploring the relationship between poetry and painting in Spain's Golden Age. Taking Horatio's ut pictura poesisas a point of reference, we will focus on how Spanish renaissance and baroque poets and artists represented love, death, religion, and mythology. As a corollary, we will consider the ways in which painters struggled to be considered artists. We will compare the art of El Greco,Velázquez, Palacios, and Murillo with literary texts of the time by Garcilaso, Aldana, San Juan de la Cruz, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Quevedo.

6.A Field-Based Study of the Geological Evolution of Vermont

David West, Associate Professor of Geology

The incredibly diverse geology of Vermont records over a billion years of Earth history. Deeply eroded metamorphic rocks in the Green Mountains, complexly folded and faulted carbonate rocks in the Champlain Valley, and Pleistocene glacial deposits all provide evidence of a very different Vermont in the geologic past. We will take field trips to a number of classic localities where we will decipher the geological evolution of the region. Participants should be in good enough physical condition to undertake moderately strenuous hiking.

Course

FACULTY

Sandra Carlettiis the Chair of Middlebury's Italian Department, where she has taught since 1991. Her experience in Italy extends from her graduate work, when she received a Laurea in Letterefrom the University of Bologna, as well as a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, to a term as Director of the Middlebury School in Florence. Her research interests include contemporary fiction, women writers, and, not least, the representation of food in modern literature. Sandra's Middlebury courses in language and literature include a course taught in English, entitled "Literary Feasts: Representations of Food in Modern Narrative."

Murray Dryhas taught at Middlebury College long enough to be on his "second generation" of Middlebury students. His courses on political philosophy and constitutional law have become Middlebury legends. His Alumni College courses, however, follow a more relaxed "no hassle pass" policy. His most recent Alumni

College course was a more general exploration of the First Amendment, which was drawn from work on his recently published book, Civil Peace and the Quest for Truth:The First Amendment Freedoms in Political Philosophy and American Constitutionalism.

Antonia Losanohas taught in Middlebury's English department for seven years. Two summers ago she taught a wonderful Alumni College course on writing. This year she is returning to teach a course on one of her other specialties, women's studies. Antonia has written articles on such diverse subjects as the Bronte sisters, exercise videos, nineteenth-century painting, and Victorian novels. Having just finished a book on the representation of women painters in the novels of Victorian women writers, she now is trying to decide if her next writing project should be another academic book or a murder mystery. She is leaning toward the latter.

Paul Monodhas taught British, Irish, and European history at Middlebury since the druids (i.e. 1984). Author of three books, he is currently working on a study of occult philosophy, as well as preparing a textbook on 18thcentury Britain. Paul collects magic lanterns, shells and (appropriately enough) fossils. In various transmutations, he has been a Leverhulme Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, a Fellow at the Getty

Research Institute, and President of the New England Historical Association (a society of necromancers) in 2003-4.The ability to make gold out of lead, however, continues to elude him.

Patricia Saldarriagahas taught in the Spanish Department for seven years. After studying in Munich, Germany, she finished her Ph.D. in Seattle. A published poet, as well as a literary scholar, Patricia's research interests include Spanish Renaissance and Baroque art and literature, contemporary poetry, and literary theory. Her most recent work is a book on the 17th century Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Patricia currently is engaged in a study of the relationship between Baroque and Postmodernism.

Dave West,who has been teaching and conducting field research in geology for over 13 years, joined the Middlebury Geology Department in 2001. Dave's field-based research has focused on unraveling the plate tectonic history of the northern Appalachian Mountains. Much of Dave's National Science Foundation supported research is undertaken in Maine, frequently with the assistance of Middlebury geology majors. Dave's teaching has led to field trips closer to home, including some local areas that will be explored during Alumni College.

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