Jolanda-Pieta van Arnhem, MFA

53rd Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES): The Politics of Comparison

Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Location: Bell 207

Time: 10:00am – 11:30am

Integrating new technologies and undertaking practice-driven, creative research that reflects an increasingly digital approach to scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, four (4) educators at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, are initializing a unique classroom called The Center for Expressive Culture (CEC). Its purposes are to train anthropology and sociology majors to interpret expressive culture beyond traditional definitions and to study art, film, media, poetry, dance, and performance in their many cross-cultural manifestations. This interactive session will be held in the CEC so that conference-goers can witness the site in action. In a panel-discussion format, the four faculty members will demonstrate its key features and explore the challenges and benefits of undertaking interdisciplinary collaboration. They will explain how digital media and technology are affecting learning, teaching and scholarship in this ever-changing environment, and they will share how “best practices” are transferring from one discipline to another. Featuring student projects informed by digital tools, methods, and state-of-the-art technologies, they will discuss how the CEC enables them to work beyond disciplinary and geographical boundaries and to access the “best practices” in education. Finally, they will explore how other cultures’ ideas about expressive culture may influence their future designs and directions.

The Center For Expressive Culture Website

Panelist: William Danaher, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Charleston, SC 29424 – Teaching the Sociology of Music

Sociology of music focuses on how the sociological perspective can be illuminated by using music as the unit of analysis. This session discusses how the use of visual elements and musical performance helps students to more clearly understand the role of music in society.

Jerry Spiller, M.S.I.S., Language Resource Center Director, College of Charleston, SC 29424 – Resource Selection and Evaluation in the Multimedia Classroom

Information professionals today must address both the hard and soft needs of users under no shortage of real world restraints. This session will explore the issues in resource selection and evaluation in a newly developed course in a new facility. Care must be taken to address a range of technical proficiencies among both students and faculty, with a realization the classroom time is finite and valuable. Further, familiarity with a technology may be a help or hindrance its adoption for new uses. Budgeting and institutional issues must always be taken into careful consideration. Heuristics for resource selection will be examined and taken from theory to practice in light of the development of the Center for Expressive Culture.