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Title: American Memorials, American Memorials: Tutorial, Fall 2002
Description: In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States, many people have proposed memorials to mark the site of the tragedy, especially at the World Trade Center. Why does the American public feel the need to commemorate sacrifice, and why is there a debate over the proper form of public memory? This tutorial will explore these questions and will put the current debate in the context of a long tradition of public memorials in America.
Date Created: 2002
PID: grinnell:3426

Title: Campus Culture Wars -- Then and Now, Tutorial, Fall 1997
Description: In recent years there has been much debate about what constitutes an appropriate undergraduate education. Discussions of multiculturalism, race and gender equality, political correctness, and much else have helped fuel sometimes stormy debates about what college students ought to learn and how. But these debates are not new, especially in American education. In this tutorial we shall examine both recent controversies and their predecessors in an effort to establish our own criteria for the proper definition of liberal education in late twentieth-century America. These discussions will conclude with each student creating his or her own four-year course of study, together with an essay justifying it on the principles of liberal education.
Date Created: 1997
PID: grinnell:3431

Title: Color Culture and Class, Tutorial: Color, Culture and Class
Description: Race thinking dominates ways in which people in the United States differentiate groups of people from each other. This tutorial focuses on associations between color and culture in order to examine how racial meanings are constructed and made comprehensible as well as how they are routed through representations of class. Using a combination of texts -- academic articles, films, newspapers and advertisements -- we will explore representations of
Date Created: 2002
PID: grinnell:3432

Title: Darwin's Legacy in the 20th Century and Beyond, Tutorial, Fall 2000
Description: The goals of this course are: 1) to develop your skills in the areas of critical thinking, writing, and oral communication. 2) to integrate you fully into the college environment by providing you with advice regarding your course of study and other necessary assistance. Although the subject matter is expansive and interesting in its own right, we should remember that the readings are not an end to themselves, but are intended to be a springboard to facilitate the development of your skills. We will consider the impact of Darwin's thought in four areas: 1) the relationship between science and religion, 2) the question of design in nature, 3) current scientific understanding of the origin of life on earth (and related questions regarding extra-terrestrial life), and 4) application of Darwin's ideas to questions regarding human nature.
Date Created: 2000
PID: grinnell:3434

Title: Decline and Renewal in the Heartland, Fall 2003 Syllabus, Tutorial, Fall 2003, Decline and Renewal in the Heartland
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. The arrival of European Americans in the Upper Midwest in the middle of the nineteenth century led to dramatic changes in the region's ecology. In what was perhaps the most rapid and extensive degradation of a natural ecosystem in human history, in the space of 50 years settlers plowed under millions of acres of the native tallgrass prairie and replaced it with a diversified agricultural ecosystem on what proved to be some of the best farmland in the world. As agriculture expanded, the prairie diminished.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:316

Title: Detectives and Their Fictions, Tutorial : Detectives and Their Fictions
Description: This tutorial focuses on the literary and film representations of detectives and the generic conventions within which those characters operate. First, we will examine the conventions of detective fiction established by E.A. Poe and refined by the English tradition. Then we will examine the American hardboiled conventions in literature and film. Finally, we will concentrate on works that challenge, reshape, or parody such conventions.
Date Created: 2002
PID: grinnell:3436

Title: Dis/Connected, Tutorial, Fall 2003
Description: It has been said that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Some have likened human life to a continual struggle for the survival of the fittest individuals, mirroring certain evolutionary processes observed in non-human life. Still others cherish a view in which we are all brothers or sisters in one human family, a view that urges awareness of how human relationships bring inspiration and meaning to our lives. This tutorial will examine the ways in which we are isolated from each other and in which we are connected to each other as human beings.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:3438

Title: Doing History: the Pullman Strike, Pullman Strike
Description: The purpose of this tutorial is to sharpen your sense of the ways in which history is constructed, educate you about the standards governing that construction, and develop your own skills for engaging in such construction. We will use the story of the Pullman strike to develop reading, research, and writing strategies and to ponder the multiple choices every historian must make in writing a narrative that both recounts and analyzes a historical event. So this is a course in skill-building, story-telling, and scholarly ethics.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:3439

Title: Frankenstein's Monsters: the Creation of Horror & the Horror of Creation
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. Fairy tales and horror stories are used to learn about literary analysis.
Date Created: 2002
PID: grinnell:3441

Title: Freedom, First year tutorial : Freedom, Tutorial, Fall 2002
Description: Is freedom the "natural"condition of humankind, as some theorists maintain, or are our identities subject to forces over which we exercise little control? Indeed, do humans covet freedom at all, or do they, as Dostoevsky has the Grand Inquisitor say, prefer to abandon their freedom in favor of happiness? From numerous perspectives, both classical and modern, this tutorial will examine freedom and its limitations. We will consider how dystopian fiction, Nazi culture, neuroscience, and molecular biology, among others, contribute to our understandings of freedom and its boundaries, and what these understandings mean for a liberally educated person.
Date Created: 2002
PID: grinnell:3442