Open Gates Lecture Series Continues

20 Jan, 2010

The Automobile and American Society, Mr. Osborn and Mr. Plickert

The Future of Technology, Mr. Bill

Open Gates, 2nd Lecture, Nov 17, 2009

Open Gates Program Update

• The 9th grade field trip to the Worcester Art Museum went well and the project is underway  (see last year’s results click here).
• The Lecture Series continues on Nov 17th–on Jazz and African-American History and the Harlem Renaissance. If you are curious about the video clip below, we will be explaining the underlying structure and its connection to Africa-American History. (Click here for full lecture schedule please.)

Take 2:

For a video of the first lecture on “Art, Music and National identity”  click here.

City Upon A Hill Project Underway

The graph above demonstrates the number of references president’s made to the “City Upon a Hill” idea, particularly as described by historian Alan Brinkley in an article for the Atlantic called the The Messiah Complex.  After reviewing presidential speeches (including audio and video in many cases) found at the on-line Presidential Speech Archive at the Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia, American Studies students compiled results on a spreadsheet and genearted graphs. Students discussed the “ups and downs,” comparing them to a timeline of  U.S. History, and then commented to blog posts in their respective classes. They were asked to explain WHY, in their view, these “ups and downs” appeared over the course of American History. All of the American Studies in History classes are working on this project. See Mr. Upton’s site (click here), Mr. Dykeman’s (click here), Dr. Murnane’s (click here). For last year’s results in Dr. Murnane’s class, click here.

Real-World Application of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Thinking?

1. Mircea Geoana, president of the Senate in Romania’s Parliament and head of the country’s Social Democratic Party, makes a compelling case for interdisciplinary thinking as a prerequisite for solving real-world problems. See article in the New York Times (click here).

2. Montgomery McFate uses the social sciences to easy relations between American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the local people, see Atlantic Monthly story “27 Brave Thinker Who are Shaping the Future,” (click here).

The Atlantic Monthly and the Shift to an Information Age

The Atlantic Monthly has been doing a series of stories looking at the implications of the shift to an “information age,” or the shift to a “flat world,” to use Thomas Friedman’s phrase. The post below has links to two of these stories–one on Google and another on the future of technology. This month’s Atlantic featured another one on the fate of news reporting and the role of private bloggers and the news media (some scary information of the Orwellian variety). Take a look. Click here.

Reading and Writing Over the Summer

Here is an interesting article from the Atlantic (July 2008), “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (click here). The most recent Atlantic answers it, in a sense, arguing the opposite (click here).

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Also, AP World students, don’t forget the summer reading assignment (click here). More generally, I am sponsoring two books as part of the all-school (Upper School) summer reading program: (1) Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene and (2) Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West.

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My article, based on the Open Gates lecture I gave this year re: Arab music, was published by All About Jazz. It is called the Arab Roots of Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain. I’m working on a second article with a jazz theme: “Paris Blues: Jazz and the City of Lights” (click here).

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Interesting video clip on “cool” jazz: