2018-19 Fellows
A Minute for an Image: Evelyn Burg
Intended Class: ENG102 (Writing Through Literature)
Assignment type and time required: Low stakes, one two-hour class period
Connection to seminar: My ENG102 class is focused on post-WWII literature and was developed entirely in the seminar. My colleague Chris Schmidt and I both are interested in photography and presented a session (using the readings above) on how photographic images of war have complex moral valences and thus present multi-layered issues of interpretation with clear analogies to interpreting literary texts. The students at LaGuardia may often be better readers of images than written text and this assignment allows them to use that experience as a form of access to ambiguous written text.
Historical Thinking Beyond the Classroom: Robin Kietlinski
Intended Class: SSH 106 (World History from 1500) and/or SSH 110 (East Asian Civilizations)
Assignment type and time required: High-stakes, one week
Connection to seminar: The assignment is a reflective, end-of-term writing assignment that is meant to both draw out and synthesize themes about refugees and war from The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and to get students to consider the transferrable skills they can take away from the course. The readings for this assignment came directly from the Spring 2019 NEH seminar syllabus. The assignment was developed for the seminar, and was workshopped and improved upon by my colleagues’ feedback.
Who or What is a Refugee?: Arianna Martinez
Intended Class: LIB200(Humanism, Science, and Technology)
Assignment type and time required: low stakes; 2 weeks
Connection to seminar: The assignment is connected to the “Meanings of War” seminar through the discussion of refugee policy. The seminar introduced me to the book, The Displaced, and I have added three essays from that book into my curriculum.
Click here for the abstract and assignment.
War, Photography, and Empathy: Chris Schmidt
Intended Class: LIB200 (Humanism, Science, and Technology)
Assignment type and time required: three-and-a-half weeks; high stakes (includes in-class low-stakes activities and peer-review).
Connection to seminar: This assignment is for a section of LIB200, the capstone course for Liberal Arts Majors. The assignment’s theme—media representations of war—addresses the course theme of “Humanism, Science, and Technology.” As a scaffolded writing assignment, it also aligns with the writing-intensive aspects of LIB200. The assignment draws on readings about war photography, empathy, and the torture at Abu Ghraib that we read and discussed in the “Meanings of War” seminar. Helpful feedback from colleagues in small-group peer review helped me clarify the staging of the assignment.
Reflection and Context in the Personal Essay: Laura Tanenbaum
Intended Class: ENG 274, (Creative Non-Fiction)
Assignment type and time required: low stakes; one 2-hour class period
Connection to seminar: The assignment came directly out of the “Meanings of War” seminar. I had proposed a reading of The Displaced, and edited collection in which Nayeri’s essay appeared. The seminar discussion of that volume heightened some of my sense of the possibilities and contradictions of Nayeri’s essay, such as her assessment of teaching narratives of exile to privilege students and how LaGuardia students might both react differently and respond to those reactions. I workshopped a version of the assignment, during which time other participants encouraged me to offer more specific context about the causes and politics of exile as a basis and model for the discussion and suggested a rubric to evaluate their completion of the various stages of the assignment.
Crossing Borders: Phyllis van Slyck
Intended Class: ENG101 (Composition I)
Assignment type and time required: high stakes; three weeks
Connection to seminar: In the Meanings of War Seminar, we examined numerous primary and secondary critical and literary texts, as well as photographs and documentaries, to gain a more nuanced understanding of the ways war continues to inhabit peoples’ lives. For the assignments I developed during the seminar, I was particularly interested in the ways stories and photographs of “displacement” might be used to tap into and enlarge students’ understanding of their own experiences and of events unfolding daily in the news since our administration introduced the “immigration crisis.” Each week we discussed new developments in the news and we came to characterize the events at the border, and decisions regarding immigration status of different groups as a kind of “war at home.” Students wrote about their own experiences of migration to avoid local violence and seek asylum, and about their status as Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals. We watched documentaries about families fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria. I revised these assignments on a weekly basis and each of the Meanings of War Seminars gave me new materials.
Economic Impact of War: Neetu Kaushik
Intended Class: SSE104 (Introduction to Macroeconomics)
Assignment type and time required: Low-stakes; 4-5 hours
Connection to seminar: The assignment discusses the impact of war on the economy, business and individuals. The Meaning of War seminar helped in providing insights about war impacts on the economic condition of the affected countries.
The Roots and Consequences of Armed Conflict: Alcira Forero-Pena
Intended Class: SSA101 (Cultural Anthropology)
Assignment type and time required: low stakes; one hour
Connection to seminar: State Formation, State and Nation, and Warfare in States are very important sections in the discussion of Political Anthropology. The reading material, discussions, and overall presentations by the members of the Seminar, “Meanings of War” provided insights as well as diverse perspectives to think –and rethink the subject of war.
Meanings of the “Banner” In and Through Times of War: Will Fulton
Intended Class: HUM (210 American Music)
Assignment type and time required: low stakes; 3-5 hours
Connection to seminar: This assignment was inspired by readings and discussion in the NEH-funded “Meanings of War” 2018-19 seminar, and developed for and workshopped in seminar meetings. Feedback from colleagues at Meanings of War meetings prompted revisions to the assignment, such as the inclusion of a recent performance of the “Star Spangled Banner” in which Colin Kaepernick chose to kneel, prompting a national debate.
Defining War: Dave Hill
Intended Class: SSP101 (Power and Politics)
Assignment type and time required: low stakes; 2 hours
Connection to seminar:Two elements of the seminar were especially important: First, this seminar was an extremely important in thinking through “non-state” views of war. Of course, states are closely connected to war, but within mainstream history and political science, organized and explicit state action is perceived to be a necessary condition for a state of war. However, just as non-state actors can also engage in actions very like war, states can engage in wars that are subtle or secret. This could take the form of paramilitary action but it could take the form of exclusion and withholding of needed rights, services and sustenance from targeted or marginalized groups. Second, this seminar has been a tremendous help in understanding how this just mentioned form of subtle state war fare is used commonly in neo-liberal or colonial pursuits. It is tempting to think that most wars are official and recognized—however, if we include the steady stream of colonial aggressions as a form of war—then we could be justified in concluding that most modern war are NOT official and go unrecorded as acts of war.
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