Teaching Creativity Through Quilts and Jazz
This semester, two CFT senior staff members are teaching courses in the College of Arts & Science.
Director Allison Pingree is teaching a new course, American Studies 100W — Quilting and Jazz: American Modes of Creativity. The course is focusing on quilting and jazz, both for what they reveal as quintessentially American forms of artistic expression, and for what they reveal more broadly about the creative process. Through study of literary texts, historical contexts, and through experiential learning projects, students are exploring how constructions of voice and identity shape and are shaped by these art forms. Ultimately, quilting and jazz-through their hybrid modes of composition, improvisation, design, and structure-are offering both a counterpoint and an analogue to students’ own writing processes.
Assistant Director Kat Baker is teaching Religious Studies 123: Religion and Human Development, which explores psychological theories of human development with a focus on religious and spiritual aspects of personality, with particular focus on religion and human well-being, and on the writings of Sigmund Freud, William James, and Carl Jung.
Image: “All That Jazz ” by Flickr user William.Allen / Creative Commons licensed
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