How might we turn toward these crises without the safety of satire, the distance of cynicism, or the disembodiment of doomscrolling? What meaning might students make from this cultural moment? These are some of the questions that animated an experimental class at şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ this spring, which Dasgupta and English teacher Laurence Vanleynseele P’22 co-taught, thanks to faculty support from şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ’s endowed Department X initiative.

The course, titled Apocalypse, Whatever: Caring in the Age of Post-Truth, examined the language and cultural assumptions that have contributed to a present-day sense of unreality. Students engaged with the works of historians, cultural theorists, and a variety of artists, novelists, and filmmakers. The class read works by writers Jorge Luis Borges and Patricia Lockwood as well as philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Byung-Chul Han. Dasgupta and Vanleynseele set canonical texts such as Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Shakespeare’s The Tempest in conversation with contemporary works, such as James Bridle’s The New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the World and Tim Morton’s Ecology Without Nature. 

The teachers embraced an emerging, responsive syllabus, or as Vanleynseele calls it, “a genuinely ongoing process of adaptation and collective discovery.” She and Dasgupta would read articles in the news and follow footnotes down rabbit holes. In the evenings, they’d call each other to suggest adding an essay just published in The Atlantic and pairing it with a course text. They also encouraged students to navigate other media: TED Talks, documentaries, even a Bo Burnham comedy special. 

“Usually, when I teach a course, there is always an element of the unknown and the fun of it is to follow the students’ lead, to react as a community to the material,” Vanleynseele says, “but things are rarely as fluid, as spontaneous, as they were in this course.”

Dasgupta and Vanleynsee credit the genesis of Apocalypse, Whatever to their long-standing relationship and a natural, and familial, convergence of interests. Over many years of teaching, living, and parenting together at şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ, Vanleynseele says she and Dasgupta talked often about the ideas that had felt transformative in their own educations and how the promises of Western liberalism and theories that heralded “resistance against oppression” had “lost their currency or been twisted or hollowed out on both sides of the political spectrum.” 

But it was a departmental study Vanleynseele’s daughter, ZoĂ© Green ’22, arranged with Dasgupta to better understand what brings about social change that set the wheels in motion. Green, who had previously taken Dasgupta’s history of philosophy class, focused on the climate crisis and the ways that scientific language hadn’t catalyzed sufficient collective action. 

“Though the reality of the climate catastrophe was something that I had thought about a great deal, to be honest, at some point I felt so overwhelmed by the enormity of it that I consciously avoided all news about it,” Vanleynseele says. “But once she put it like that, it felt obvious that we needed to offer a course explicitly about these issues.” The teachers began doing research while pulling together a Department X proposal. 

They did not set out to alarm students who might already have felt discouraged and depressed. “Some distance is warranted in that respect; it can actually help us think better and care about life and each other despite the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in,” Vanleynseele says. They attempted, instead, to diagnose the present moment, looking back at history while avoiding offering solutions. 

 â€śIf we are faced with a problem of consciousness, a problem with thinking, I told students, then what I can offer is to think together and reflect on what consciousness is, on how language operates, for instance, on how various systems connect with each other,” Vanleynseele says. “You cannot tackle a problem that you do not understand, so my goal was less to light a fire under us and more to examine why we are at a crisis point and why many of us feel paralyzed or disengaged in the face of the crisis’ enormity.”

She admits to wondering, during the preliminary research stages, if they had made the right choice to offer the course. But her research and discussions with students renewed her appreciation for artists and intellectuals who help us see from different vantage points. Navigating these crises with students who are just beginning their adult lives, she says, gave her “a real sense of purpose” and reinforced “the need for teaching about interconnected systems, undoing disciplinary silos, and the false dichotomy between thinking and activism.”

Dasgupta says her goal was for students to “end the course with good questions and not feel numb and turned off,” for them to “be engaged in the world and consider what a good future might look like.”

This orientation left room for optimism, and the class ended with a novel—Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth—that, Vanleynseele says, “affirms community and imagination and shows what resilience in the face of very real disasters may look like.” 

“I went in expecting a much more depressing class than it turned out to be,” Cozette Weng ’23 says. “I was worried that it would be an echo chamber about how tough our world is, but I appreciated that Laurence pulled us back to the more intellectual side of things. It’s not that the world is ending, and not that it’s fine, but let’s think about how we’re thinking about it.” Her final project in Vanleynseele’s section was a hand-sewn historical recreation of a traditional Chinese robe, from a modernized pattern and fabric. Making and reflecting on it allowed her to question her notions of tradition.

For another final project in that section, Harry Carranza ’24 chose to create and record a fictional podcast, relating the sciences and the humanities. “At times the reading has been bleak,” he says, “but, personally, I feel more content knowing I have some vocabulary to deal with these issues, and some ability to think critically about them.” 

For Emerson Koch ’24, taking the course with Dasgupta felt “like a real building of interconnected ideas”—something he would expect from a college class. “It’s what people are drawn to in Topi,” he adds. “She creates an environment where we consider these big ideas while she remains connected to each student, so it feels manageable.” For his part, exploring the topic of environmental crisis helped him more consciously engage with his individual environmental impact. He stopped driving to school and started exclusively taking the train.

Graylin Rhee ’24 found the course material introducing transhumanism, a movement advocating enhancing human capacities with emerging technologies, hard to get behind but interesting to learn about. “Personally, I haven’t really come to terms with where we are in the world right now, but I don’t really think that’s possible or even a good thing to do,” she says. “I do have a much better understanding of where we are.”

She and her classmates in Dasgupta’s section collectively assembled a , updating Hieronymus Bosch’s otherworldly and calamitous oil triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights” with contemporary imagery informed by the semester’s discussions.

The teachers were surprised by what they learned alongside their students, particularly about artificial intelligence. “We knew, starting this course, that we did not fully understand our students’ interactions with technology—the generational gap is real,” Vanleynseele says. Learning about the communities some students inhabit online that give them a sense of common purpose was eye-opening, she adds: “I realize that I cannot continue to think of humanism without reflecting on these technological issues poised to change the way we interact with the world and each other.”

Dasgupta says she is grateful for the chance to bring this varied material together and to teach with Vanleynseele. “As an educator, I found this an incredible opportunity, because there’s such hunger in our students,” she says. “They feel this pressure—with war, the climate crisis, even just going off to college—and they hate being told that they’re the generation that has to fix it all.” Together, they faced that expectation, she says, by following “philosophical meanderings and considering what close reading means and why it’s important to understand historical methodology.”

Both teachers are collaborating on a paper about this course, which they hope to feature next year in the History Design Studio at Harvard. They also expect that much of what they explored will filter into other courses at şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ. Vanleynseele was fascinated by a subfield she learned about while researching the course material: blue humanities, which reflects a collective scholarly shift of focus from land to the oceans that constitute so much of the globe. “Everyone who knows me knows how much I love teaching the Odyssey, so I welcome any opportunity to think of beloved texts anew,” she says.

She is excited to see how the threads are already being picked up across departments at şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ, and to watch how they may weave together. “The issues of the course are not going away,” she says.

Department X is an initiative supported by the Faculty Leadership Endowed Fund, part of the . Created to provide şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ teachers and staff with resources to develop new curricula, exchange ideas across disciplines, and create and seize opportunities for experiential learning, Department X funding allows recipients release time from their regular teaching schedules to pursue research projects and interdisciplinary endeavors. 

The post Apocalypse Whatever: Students Confront Crisis in Department X Course appeared first on şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ.

On November 3, students were honored to visit the Boston Ballet studios, engaging in a dialogue with , a distinguished company member and emerging choreographer. 

A graduate of the Juilliard School and a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Stromile shared his dance journey, having joined Boston Ballet II in 2018 and became a Boston Ballet artist in 2019.

Stromile emphasized the significance of versatility in dance, encouraging young dancers to explore a range of styles. With experience in genres from hip-hop to modern, he asserted that cross-training contributes to the development of stronger dancers.

Offering advice to aspiring şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ dancers, Stromile highlighted the importance of persistence: “There is something to be said about sticking with something long enough and enduring through challenging times; it teaches you who you are.” He urged dancers to invest time and energy into their pursuits, emphasizing the valuable life lessons that emerge from such commitment.

Recently premiering his first mainstage piece, Form and Gesture, with Boston Ballet, Stromile discussed his philosophy as a choreographer. “As a creator, I try to find a balance between my voice and style, and my influences,” he said. “That’s what’s both challenging and fun about it.”

Following the insightful conversation, the group observed a rehearsal of Cinderella, witnessing the intricate collaboration between dancers, stage managers, and choreographers. Stromile, set to perform in both Cinderella and next month’s The Nutcracker, provided valuable insights into the behind-the-scenes dynamics.

Continuing their exploration of dance disciplines, on November 7, Dance Project members participated in an on-campus dance improvisation workshop led by , dancer, choreographer, and founder and co-director of Boston Dance Theater.

Stinnett guided students through a warm-up, teaching them how to follow circular motions to create movement pathways and traverse space.

The students then experimented with different textures—imagining their bodies as elements from the flowing elegant lines of water to the heavy, syncopated movements of stone. They varied their movement by playing with different speeds and dancing at different heights within the space.

Students selected one texture and practiced in pairs to explore it in unison. At the end of the session, students formed groups of six and delivered performances that showcased their imagination.

Throughout the workshop, students gained confidence in dancing without choreography. In a reflection after the session, some shared their favorite parts, including “how to observe other people and synchronize with them,” and “the importance of emotions” in dance.

şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ dance faculty Rika Okamoto and Alex Brady praised the students’ commitment. “We feel like we got to see a new side of you all,” they said.

These immersive experiences allowed students to delve into the rigor of ballet and the spontaneity of improvisational dance, fostering a well-rounded understanding of the art form.

The post Dance Project Collaborations Spark Creativity appeared first on şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ.

The post şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ Cross Country Excels at EIL Championships appeared first on şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ.

This research experience is one of many in the three-year development of an American Revolution pedagogy program spearheaded by şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ history teachers Kim Frederick and Topi Dasgupta P’22 ’25 in partnership with the Concord Museum and the history and education subcommittee of  civic engagement committee.

This summer, they worked closely with curriculum coordinators, a school librarian, and 3rd, 5th, and 8th-grade teachers from the districts of Boston, Lowell, Lawrence, Westford, Lexington, and Concord. Together the group studied primary source materials about the revolution that will be implemented in open-source curricula. Their goal is to use recent scholarship to engage students in more authentic hands-on learning experiences. 

The project has been made possible by support from the Town of Concord and the Concord Museum as part of the şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ Summer Institute, created by a gift from the şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ class of 1968 on the occasion of their 50th reunion. The class donors’ spirit of generosity and mission to make şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ’s imaginative approach to learning available to the masses made the initiative possible.

Frederick says, “It’s a huge opportunity to work locally and build curricula on platforms that will be accessed nationally, to improve the quality and accuracy of American history and civics teaching.”

Collaboration is a critical ingredient of the community partnership. “Our combined teams bring the best of classroom and museum education pedagogy together in order to be innovative in how we teach history through primary sources and first-hand experiences in the classroom,” Concord Museum Director of Education Susan Foster Jones shared. 

This summer, the Teacher Resource group studied at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, and the Lexington Historical Society. The team also spoke with historian and  Robert A. Gross, and analyzed artifacts on view at Concord Museum.

The Museum’s , exhibit features one of the two lanterns set in Old North Church to signify the Regulars were coming by sea. “It’s incredible to think that this humble object helped start the Revolutionary War,” Foster Jones said.

Another powerful artifact in the exhibit includes a clock from Buckman Tavern on Lexington Green, where the Lexington militia waited for the king’s troops on the day of the Battles of Concord and Lexington. Educators listened closely to the clock ticking and pictured the countdown to the combat. 

“I can’t have you travel in time, but I can give you the sounds of the past,” Foster Jones said. “It honestly gives me chills when I think about it because can you imagine the emotions that you might have in that situation?” 

Primary sources are incomplete fragments of history, each representing different viewpoints. When considered together, objects such as those at the Concord Museum, eyewitness accounts, and documentation can come together to form a story. 

“Every historical event can be seen from multiple perspectives with many stakeholders, and we are trying to open up the standard narrative to more accurately center history’s inherent multiplicity,” Dasgupta said. She thinks of the classroom as a studio where she encourages students to use their authorial voice to re-frame history so that it’s alive in our present-day contexts.

Frederick says her favorite part of the project so far has been working through challenges with the Teacher Resource group, including considerations of time and space limitations in the classroom. “It was fascinating and made me even more so appreciate the complexity and difficulty of the work that these teachers do,” she said. 

Dasgupta added that expanding the historical canon has been a highlight of the process: “We were struck by both the expanse and diversity of stories of the American Revolution that have surfaced in the historical scholarship of the last decade and the scope and variety of needs and aspirations that teachers have to offer those stories to students.”

In summer 2024, Dasgupta and Frederick will continue their partnership with the Concord Museum to work directly with teachers from throughout the Commonwealth to help them build lesson plans. The finalized resources will be published in 2025 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. This exciting new curriculum will allow students of all backgrounds to view the War of Independence through the lens of the people and places who shaped it.

The post Eyewitness History appeared first on şŁ˝ÇĘÓƵ.