L UAPPLETON, WISCONSIN

Register Today!Credits 6 graduate unitsTuition NoneRoom and board Free

Who Appleton and Shawano public school educators K–12, in all subjects and areas

Applications and Deadlines Can be downloaded from these websites by following the appropriate links:

www.lawrence.edu/community/mielke.shtml www.lawrence.edu/community/mielke_applications.shtml

Appleton teachers, return completed applications by March 4, 2013, to:

Stewart Purkey Lawrence University 711 E Boldt Way SPC 22 Appleton, WI 54911-5699

Shawano teachers, return completed applications by March 4, 2013, to:

Todd Carlson District Administrator 218 County Road B Shawano, WI 54166

Acceptance Fellows will be notified during the week of March 25, 2013.

Contact these teacher coordinators for more information:

Appleton Public Schools Brian Bartel • West High School 920-832-4300 bartelbrian@aasd.k12.wi.us

Bob Ross • Edison Elementary School 920-832-6235 rossrobert@aasd.k12.wi.us

Shawano Public Schools Jill Hansen • Shawano Community High School 715-526-2175 ext. 4176 hansenj@ssd.k12.wi.us

LaRai Martin • Shawano Community High School 715-526-2175 ext. 1127 martinl@ssd.k12.wi.us

AC13-100

Saturday Night at the Movies!

Please note: There will not be a fall seminar in October. Registration information is found on the back panel.

There are some things we know for sure that never change: the mathematics of gravity and the speed of light; the Cubs’ failure to win a World Series; the cool beauty of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue; and the travesty of Christmas music before Thanksgiving. These constants, among others, are the psychic anchors that provide order to our universe and hold chaos at bay. Their eternality allows us to sleep peacefully at night secure in the knowledge that entropy does not reign supreme.

The power of and the need for these constants, therefore, is why you may have detected a disturbance in the force last August when the British Film Institute released the results of its Greatest Films poll, its decennial reappraisal of the greatest movies of all time, and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) was removed from the position it has held for 50 years as the greatest film! In its place, the 846 film critics who were polled put Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), as the new greatest film of all time, dropping Orson Welles’ movie to second place.

But, we might ask, what makes Vertigo a greater film than Citizen Kane? Indeed, what makes one film great, let alone greater, and another film, for example The Fast and the Furious (2001), not great?

To complicate the question, Sight & Sound magazine, which carries out the Greatest Films poll, also queried 358 film directors. The directors voted Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) into first place, relegating Citizen Kane to second and dropping Vertigo all the way to seventh! And, as Alice cried (referencing the book, not the movie), it gets “curiouser and curiouser!” For example, the critics placed John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) in their top 10 while the directors did not! In turn, the directors found Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948) worthy of a top 10listing while the critics did not. The most modern film the critics deemed worthy of a top 10 ranking was produced in 1968 (Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), whereas the film directors found the ’70s filled with great films, including Martine Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). Meanwhile, Kelly and Donen’s Singing in the Rain (1952), No. 10 on the critics’ list in 2002, fell off entirely in 2012.

Perhaps this unsettling variability simply demonstrates the changing (dare we say fickle?) nature of critical taste. Perhaps it reflects the cultural turmoil of our age. More darkly, perhaps it is yet another sign of the apocalypse!

Regardless, at the very least it makes us wonder what criteria film critics and film directors use when they watch a movie and judge its cinematic quality and, if they use the same criteria, why don’t they, critics and filmmakers alike, agree? (It’s worth noting that in response to its poll, Sight & Sound received 846 top-10 lists, which included a total of 2,045 different films.)

Therefore, in an effort to undo the existential anguish caused by Citizen Kane’s fall, the 2013 Mielke Summer Institute will be an immersion in and introduction to film studies. We’ll examine the criteria film critics and filmmakers use in assessing “greatness” and why, therefore, their taste might vary from the taste of everyday people when determining a list of top-10 movies. (We’ll also consider the ramifications and limitations of thinking about films in terms of “greatness!”) We’ll learn to analyze the cinematic elements of style (mise-en-scéne, cinematography, editing and sound) and explore various ways of “reading” a film. And we will definitely talk about why movies matter to us, individually and as a culture, whether officially “great” or not.

Whether you are a Die Hard cinephile, a casual movie buff or are just curious as to why Redbox’s No. 1 most-rented movie, Just Go With It (2011), is unlikely to ever make it onto BFI’s list of greatest films, please join us at Björklunden!

The 2013 Mielke Summer Institute will be held at Björklunden, Lawrence’s seminar center on Lake Michigan near Baileys Harbor in Door County.

From Sunday evening, June 16, through noon on Friday, June 21, all sessions will be held at the lodge during the day and, on occasion, in the evening. There will be ample free time so participants can explore Björklunden’s 425-acre estate and the rest of Door County. Room (double-occupancy with private baths) and board (breakfast, lunch and dinner) will be provided courtesy of Lawrence University. Participants will be expected to stay at the lodge for the duration of the institute.

Goals for Mielke FellowsThe Mielke Summer Institute in the Liberal Arts seeks to give educators from Appleton, Shawano and Lawrence the oppor tunity to explore new ideas and examine issues of societal importance from a multidisciplinary perspective in a collegial environment characterized by open-mindedness and mutual respect. The intent is to combine serious study and playful inquiry. It is expected that participants will find areas of common interest with other educators across the disciplines and grade levels, and that the resulting links will encourage both communication and collaboration in the future. The knowledge and skills that Fellows acquire during the Summer Institute will, in time and in various ways, affect their work as educators. However, the goal is to provide intellectual stimulation and renewal for the participants themselves, on the assumption that, ultimately, the best teachers are those who are continuously learning, exploring and creating.

Mielke Summer Institute Faculty

Alison Guenther-Pal is an assistant professor of German and film studies and has been part of the film program at Lawrence since its inception in 2007. She grew up in the Los Angeles area, earned a B.A. from the UC Santa Cruz, and worked in the biotechnology industry in the Silicon Valley before heading to the Midwest to pursue a doctorate in Germanic studies (minor in feminist studies) from the University of Minnesota. Alison co-edited the historical sourcebook German Essays on Film and has published articles on masculinity, 1950s film in West Germany, queer cinema, and feminist detective fiction. She is currently finishing a volume on genre fiction and an essay on West German trouser role films, and is embarking on a project focusing on disability and The Torso, a German crime novel. She is the granddaughter of science fiction film director George Pal, who, despite his many cinematic accomplishments, impressed the teenage Alison most by being mentioned in the opening song of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In 2008, Alison was one of the Lawrence faculty members who led that summer’s Mielke Institute, the theme of which was also film and film study.

Julie McQuinn, associate professor of music, earned a B.Mus. in voice and a B.A. in mathematics from Oberlin, a M.Mus. in voice from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in musicology from Northwestern University. At Lawrence, she has taught courses on opera, music and gender, general music history, and film music. She has participated in the Mielke Summer Institute on several occasions, most recently in 2008, when the theme was The Stuff that Dreams are Made of: Modern Film and Film Study. Julie has published articles and chapters on a variety of topics in music history but, of late, her scholarly efforts have focused on music in film, especially the use of borrowed music, pre-existing pieces that add complexity, at times even ambiguity, to our understanding of a film’s meaning and the identities and relationships of its characters. Even more recently, as a devoted fan of the TV series, Once Upon a Time, Julie has found herself caught up in cinematic fairy tales and fantasies, and the blurred boundary between fantasy and reality.

Stewart Purkey, associate professor and Bee Connell Mielke Professor of Education is the director of teacher education at Lawrence. He received his A.B. in history from Stanford, an M.A.T. from Reed College and a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research interests include K–12 professional development, school effectiveness (especially the impact of ethnicity and class on students’ educational performance) and education policy. Recently, he has begun exploring the depiction of teachers, teens and schools in popular films and the messages Hollywood’s high school-based movies send about contemporary American society.

Saturday Night at the Movies!