the meikleohn eperiment

Mystery of the Meiklejohn History

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. In-telligence plus character - that is the goal of true education” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.

THE MEIKLEJOHNEXPERIMENT

College of Letters & ScienceUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

4CONTENTS 8 ILS Student’s Adventures

Interview with Professor Laura McClure

10

FALL 2017

The Meiklejohn Experiment is the Student, Faculty & Alumni newsletter of the Integrated Liberal Studies (ILS) Certificate Program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Meiklejohn House228 N. Charter StreetMadison, WI 53715(608) 262-2190

ILS ChairRichard [email protected]

Academic Dept. ManagerKatrina [email protected]

www.ils.wisc.edu

www.facebook.com/UWILS2015

Letter From the Chair

2 FALL 2017

Richard AvramenkoILS Department Chair

Dear ILS students, alumni, and friends:

I write this letter during finals week on campus. Stress levels are high. Students scramble around campus seeking out buildings they’ve never heard of to write an exam they are dreading. ILS’ers, however, al-ways know where the Meikle-john House is. “The Mystery of

the Meiklejohn House,” as Mitch Deitz has so artfully crafted in this newsletter, dates back to the turn of the century. First, a home to a family, then a women’s cooperative, an archive, the art department, and finally ILS, the MJ House certainly has its history. Even today, one finds closets, nooks, and crannies brimming with the history of the house. The building is reportedly haunted, though I have never met a ghost.

Today, we try our best to make the Meiklejohn House a home. Over the past semester, we have hosted numerous catered student events, including film viewings, book readings, semesterly Study Days and so on. On a typical day, students settle into the Gretchen Schoff Reading room, drink coffee, read and discuss books, and get to know one another. There’s always coffee in the kitchen and we are a well-known place to purloin homemade snacks.

For the Chair, the mystery and charm of the house has its challeng-es. A few years ago, the Madison fire marshal decreed that, without sprinklers, we can no longer use the third floor for anything but storage. Hence, we immediately lost four of our seven offices. Giv-en the university’s budget priorities, we are unlikely to use these offices in any official way soon. A few years prior, the basement was deemed too cave-like for effective learning. Given that I teach Pla-to’s Republic every fall, I think nothing could be too cave-like! On the main floor, the breakers trip if we run the copier and the coffee pot. The piano is out of tune. There’s limited air-conditioning in summer. This said, we love our house. We love our ghosts. We love all the quirks that come with a hundred year old building. As we look for a “budget-neutral” solution to the third floor sprinkler edict, we will continue to enjoy all the nooks and crannies of the Meiklejohn House, just a little more shoulder to shoulder than in decades past.

THE MEIKLEJOHN EXPERIMENT 3

ILS 372.1 isn’t your average humanities class. You’d be hard pressed to find an instructor pref-ace themselves by stating that the students will read some of Plato and Aristotle’s least known works, or a syllabus that covers both Homer and Jackie Robinson. That being said, ILS courses have never been average. “Politics and Sport” is an in-depth course on physical excellence and the discourse around it with a heavy focus on modern day parallels to the classical world concerning the nature of athletic competition. Michael Promisel and Michael An-

nerino, the current Instructor and TA for the class respectively, both have extensive backgrounds in sport, law, and philosophy, and constantly dig up little known stories and hidden gems from ancient Greek philosophy and literature to keep students on their toes and thinking. The class is fresh, different, and edgy — words not usually summoned when describing the writings of Plato and Plutarch. This made it all the more surprising when the ILS staff happened upon the archives of ILS 200 and found essays and units centered on the same topics from the early 80s. Professor Gretchen Schoff, the well-known namesake for the Meiklejohn House reading room, helped guide students in their examinations of athletic achievement in the modern day. Many students from the 1983 school year were found to have written essays about football and play-er-coach relationships that mirror some current event discussions about NFL owners and college team dynamics. The themes of the course material, as it turns out, have roots in the department older than the instructors themselves. The current course, made up of two lectures and one smaller discussion section per week, has many parallels to the material from the 80s, but goes much more in depth — after all, we have a full semester to explore the topic. Michael Promisel, who primarily researches Aristotle, leads bi-weekly 74 person lectures that give students the foundation and tools to analyze and evaluate. Michael Annerino, a law student, takes on the contemporary hot-button issues in smaller discussion sections, where students apply themselves to get at the greater truth of the news surrounding teams and players. The course has two forms, one that focuses on classical sports and their relation to modern politics, and one that just covers modern politics. This semester, the former is being taught, but the latter was taught for a time by Thomas Bunting, who recently moved to Shawnee State University. Promisel, having examined some of the essays, recognized a common link between his course material and the three-decade-old essays. These writings exam-ined a vision of masculinity and Americanness that is embodied and aspired to in football, just as classics like the Iliad by Homer set standards for masculinity and Greek citizenship in the form of warfare and funeral games. Violence and competi-tion are used as mediums for excellence in both courses, and are a central topic in the older material too. In a broader sense, the classes both achieve one of the fundamental goals of ILS: the deconstruction of any preconceived notions surrounding a topic. Both instructors care deeply about the material. When Promisel lectures, his every word is chosen with care, and he delivers what sound like planned out speeches purely from memory. Annerino is a dictionary of modern sports and current events trivia, supplementing students with ideas and critiques to strengthen their arguments during dis-cussion. The love that both have for the class makes the class fun, engaging, and — most importantly— challenging.

Michael Kelley

The Academics of Athletics

Michael Promisel, the lecturer for ILS 372.1, is a Ph.D candidate in Political Science at the University

of Wisconsin - Madison.

The ILS 200 syllabus, partially written by Professor Gretchen Schoff

Those who have seen the Pixar animated movie Up will recognize the image: a small wooden home planted in the middle of a bustling downtown cityscape. In Madison, the lov-able misfit is our beloved Meiklejohn House, a humble brown three-story abode standing proud among the towering Chem-istry and Psychology buildings that surround it. Pedestrians will often pass by and glance quizzically at it, wondering what it is and how it got here. Intrigued by this question myself, I took to the ar-chives to learn more about this quaint old house before it was inherited by the ILS department.

Humble Beginnings: The Old Oakey Abode In 1914, Samuel and Ida Oakey built a three story duplex on the corner of Johnson and N Charter St. The couple and their family lived in one half of the building while renting out the other half. The neighborhood was well shaded, cozy, and a prime living location—it was only a few blocks from the UW-Madison campus. The Oakey family lived at 228 N. Charter St. while their children attended the Uni-versity. It wasn’t until 1928--eight years after Samuel Oakey’s death—that the duplex was sold and the Oakey family’s time at 228 came to an end. The buyers were Miss Mary D. Andersen and Miss Nardin. Mary D. Andersen had been searching for a spot to house a new women’s cooperative for a while. Andersen, who was on the YWCA Advisory Board, wrote that “there was a real need for another student house,” and after stumbling upon a stockpile of unused furniture, Andersen teamed up with Miss Nardin (also of the YWCA Advisory Board) to find a home for the surplus furnishings and students. After going through a series of potential houses, a woman from the Tab-ard Inn Co-op clued them in on a place she had been eyeing for a while: “There is a house on Johnson and Charter that I have always had in mind as a cooperative house. It wasn’t for sale, but I have always dreamed about that house.” Miss Nardin, who knew the house belonged to Ida Oakey, went with Miss Andersen to find out “if she wants to sell.” Ida agreed to sell the house in 1928—the year her children finished school—but the final decision over if the Co-op would move in

was to be made by the women taking part. As Ander-sen put it: “The girls came over at eight o’clock in the morning. They liked it – and took it.” Thus began a new era for the small brown house.

Continuing the Legacy: The Meiklejohn House and ILS Tradition

After the Andersen House closed down in 1964, the University, which originally owned the contracts via the YWCA Women’s Advisory Board, con-verted the building to academic use. The building housed the Art Department briefly before serving as a home base for historical archives, and finally becoming the home of the Integrated Liberal Stud-ies Department in 1971. It was then that it took on the name of Alexander Meikle-john.

This rediscovered story of the Andersen House adds a new dimension of historical

significance to our place of study. Not only was this a place to live before it came to ILS; it was a haven for poetry, theater, rule-breaking and long hours of ded-icated schoolwork. Such is a tradition that we seek to continue here at ILS. By combining the arts and ac-ademics, hosting meals with vibrant discussion, and opening our space for all who wish to come, we, like the women of Andersen House before us, are continu-ing an important mission — creating a small communi-ty on a large campus, where those who seek it are able to find solace in our humble brown abode beside the tracks.

Mystery of the Meiklejohn History

4 FALL 2017

Mitch Deitz

Whoever Stolty is, they had a habit of leaving the lights on a bit too long...

The Andersen House Co-op holding an “Under The Sea” themed formal.

“A New Home”: Stories from the Andersen Women’s Cooperative

In the summer of 1928, the girls of Andersen House put the building through a full-fledged make-over. They made curtains and pillows, and even re-painted the furni-ture to fit the pastel green color scheme of the sign out front.

When they were finished, the results were satisfying. As a member with the initials “K.M.” lov-ingly described: “It is a charming place now, with an atmo-sphere of good taste, and of hominess, that you feel the minute you enter. There is a reception room, and a tiny music room, and a cozy living room,

where an open hearth will make for cheery winter evenings. All the rooms are large and usually well lighted.” They also note a structural addition that we here at ILS use to our advantage today: the central spiral staircase that leads from upstairs to the kitchen, something that was “found convenient when girls feel the urge for food late at night, and do not care to go through the front of the house.” And so the stage was set for cooperative liv-ing, a system that lasted at the Andersen House until its transition into University use in 1964. These de-cades—which we had previously known little about in the department—sprang to life before my eyes as I surveyed the University Historical archives. I read poems, passive aggressive notes about leaving the lights on, Christmas letters, and screenplays. I saw pictures of senior dinners, toboggan runs, “Under the Sea” themed dances, and a plethora of previously unknown hijinks between the Andersen girls and the boys that would often come visiting. Soon it became clear that this wasn’t the stereotypical “girls home” with strict rules, limited entertainment and a tightly wound housemother, as my years of consuming media from this era led me to believe. Instead, I discovered a vibrant community of intellectuals; colorful poets, skilled illustrators, tactful organizers and playful companions, all housed togeth-er in this historical building.

Of course there were some rules, enforced by the housemother for over twenty years, Mrs. Grace Lord. It is clear from the archives that Mrs. Lord was beloved by the Andy girls, as their caretaker and protector of the house. That said, the girls stated a fear of her “evil eye” that would fall upon them if they broke curfew. A former Andy House member named Lynn Gadzinski wrote a piece in their 2008 reunion newsletter about the curfew hours that Mrs. Lord en-forced: “I got late minutes just because I dawdled (and, truth be told, I resented what I thought were cruel and unusual curfew hours). Gerri Reich got late minutes because she went to a Homecoming party with me. Ruth Bird reported that there were a lot of her dates that she was very happy to have end at curfew time! Saved by Mrs. Lord’s flashing porch light!” Gadzinski goes on to write about the creative ways the girls broke curfew and other rules: “The prize for most late minutes in one fell swoop goes to Shirley Severson: a 30-minute lollapalooza that nearly kept her from going to the Military Ball. Beverly Saxe take the prize for the most unusu-al late minutes excuse: She worked at the Med School library and couldn’t resist the invitation to attend an autopsy!” In

addition to breaking curfew, the girls risked other be-havior that would have drawn the ire of Mrs. Lord: “Oth-er transgres-sions (ad-mitted, that is) included one house boy who confessed to fraterniz-

ing with the girls; some

of those girls also admitted to occasionally keeping six packs of ginger beer in the toilet tank.” From there, she goes on to talk about pranks — replacing lights with red bulbs, stealing trophies from other houses, and bringing in forbidden elec-tronics such as “coffee pots, popcorn poppers and hot pots that some of us used to cook Sunday night supper in.”


ILS Spring Graduation Banquet

Mystery of the Meiklejohn History(continued)

Several decades later, Meiklejohn House has different residents, but builds the same strong bonds.

Regardless of the house’s name, close bonds were made between students

throughout its history.

Despite all the hijinks, the girls were dedicated students who took their responsibilities very seriously. Lynn writes that in addition to being students, most of the girls had part time jobs, ranging from working at the Med School Library to clerking at a State Street music store. The girls also worked daily to clean and maintain the house itself, as they were assigned certain tasks each semester. The Andy House residents weren’t the average college students; they did it all, from sneaking beers out of the toilet tank to grinding out long hours at a part time job to help pay the rent. And it all happened under the roof of the modest brown house that they loved to call home.

6 FALL 2017

Mystery of the Meiklejohn History (Continued)

Ingredients:

1 large can tomatoes, drained1 can lima beans2 cans kernel corn1 pound spaghetti2 pounds bacon, cooked (use both bacon and rendered fat)

Mix well and put in two casseroles.

Add buttered crumbs to top.

Bake one hour

Dressing for Lettuce

Ingredients:

Use equal parts: Chili SauceCider Vinegarsalad oil sugar

Place in a large jar with a tight lid.

Cover and shake until thoroughly mixed.

Add some onion or garlic if desired

Hunters Stew

House Mother Grace Lord’s Recipes

The women of the Andersen House, with lauded House Mother Grace Lord in the

center (grey suit)


Andersen House Song

We’re a bunch of screwy females living down beside the tracks,Our ego makes up for the style that our location lacks.Though we’re not so much to look at, and we’re not so hot on lines,Still it’s obvious we have lovely minds.

Now if we’d study in the daytime, we could go to bed at night,But we prefer to burn the candle at both endsSo, if you see us dashing madly past the coal heap late at nightIt’s not coal, but cokes we’re after to refuel our fading friends.

Cooperation is the motto that we’re striving to uphold; That’s the thing that haunts each little black sheep in the fold.When theres ashes on the carpet, kitties rolling on the floor,“More cooperation,” Prexy roars.

But when it comes to sharing boyfriends as our motto would imply,even Prexy wouldn’t plague us with that line;But there’s a bit of compensation in that Harley can supplyFellowship and inspiration for our lovely minds.

--Mary Lee Layde, 1938

A photo taken outside Andersen House. After so many years, the area around the building

looks entirely different.

An Artist’s drawing of what is now known as the Meiklejohn House.

8 FALL 2017

“It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is one of the more inane sayings that you constantly see splattered all over Pinterest boards or quoted whenever a friend goes through a particularly tough breakup. Still, a cliché is a cliché for a reason; behind its saccharine façade there is a golden nugget of truth. My two month internship abroad in Dublin, Ireland was life changing in ways I can’t accurately verbalize, and if I’m not careful feelings of nostalgia and melancholy threaten to wash over me. The human propensity to not only adapt but thrive almost instantly will never cease to amaze me, as it only took a week before stopping off at traditional Irish pubs after work for a pint of Guinness and some soda bread became routine. Questions of “where are you going this weekend?” were expected to be answered with foreign locales such as Prague, Iceland, Berlin, or (if you wanted to stay local) Edinburgh. What is so refreshing about Irish people is not only do they love their country with a fierce passion and intense loyalty, but they want foreigners to love it as well. A far cry from Parisians or Londoners who turn up their nose and lament the influx of tourists, the Irish welcome us with open arms, a fresh pint, and a rousing rendition of “7 Drunken Nights.” This was the first time I not only felt like an autonomous adult, but was treated as one as well. The intoxicating sense of freedom brought with it a sizable dose of responsibility, but if I never interned abroad, I never would have learned I was up for the task. I will always miss Ireland, and it is terrify-ing to realize I will never be able to visit in the same way again because, as Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not same river and he is not the same man.” The lessons I learned, the good times I shared, and the memories I created will always be carried with me, and worth any subsequent heartache a thousand times over.

Rachel PiltserDublin, Ireland

Oh the Places ILS Students Go! For the past five summers, I have worked at one of the highest ranked Scout camps in the nation. May to August my labor and free time blur together, and I fall in love with the small community my fellow staff members and I form. Staff days are busy, and in between teaching classes and running through a thousand acres of forest, we take our group meals for granted. The humdrum and commonplace expe-riences at camp become eerily absent in what we call “real life.” At camp, my days are busy and occupied, but in real life, swaths of time pass by without activity. At camp, uniforms are worn every day. In real life, I scramble for appropriate outfits. At camp, I smile at every person I pass so they feel welcome. In real life, I am quiet, reserved, and get funny looks for saying hello to people on State Street. At camp, I eat three hot meals a day with close friends. In real life, my fare and accompanied socialization is varied and unregulated. It is the same with most staff members, most scouts, and most people I know. In the real world, we don’t eat as many meals, we don’t eat as much during meals, and we often eat alone. In literature, a group of people eating a meal together is considered a form of communion- not in a strictly Christian sense, but in a broad spiritual way that forces

people to open up and be vulnerable. The same applies to people in real life. When someone is at the dinner table, they are vulnerable, and therefore more available emo-

tionally, mentally, and spiritually- more likely to open up and give up a part of themselves that in settings outside of a meal might be deemed inappropriate to share. Eating with the scouts builds trust and breaks down the walls between authority figure and pupil. Sharing a meal with someone builds a connection, and sharing a meal with many people builds a bond. Spartan society engaged in similar behavior, gathering for meals in large masses rather than with small familial units. This widened the social circle and invested individuals in the group as a whole; people who don’t always have the opportunity to eat with others, mess based meals provide an alternate option to solitude. To have three meals a day with the same group of people creates close-knit friendships. To have three meals a day with a group of 500 scouts creates a community. To have three meals a day with the staff for an entire summer creates a family.

Michael KelleyRhinelander, Wisconsin


Oh the Places ILS Students Go! Last spring, I was extremely lucky to have been chosen to attend South by Southwest, a film, art, tech, and music festival and conference held annually in Austin, Texas. WUD Music, an organization that books bands on campus, sent me and another member to bring back ways to improve the diversity, uniqueness, and professionalism of our programming. We sought to take advantage of SXSW’s multi-disciplinary approach to consider our live music programming from perspectives of audience member, talent buyer, promoter, and artist, to answer the question: what makes a great concert experi-ence? Austin is awash with large and small venues, but during SXSW, the complete takeover of the city requires unique spaces to be utilized for shows. I saw the remaining members of a ‘70’s band Big Star and the haunting Danish singer Agnes Obel, perform in a church – sitting in packed pews of sweaty music fans, awaiting their own kind of religious experience. The week felt like a dream, with days spent interacting with interesting people and art and eating great tacos. It isn’t without its flaws, however. This year’s festival drew criticism for wording in the contract that effectively threatened deportation of international bands if they played any unofficial SXSW gigs. Many of the acts openly share their dislike of the festival: the grueling schedules (many bands preform multiple times a day all week), lack of real compensation, and growing corpo-rate control undermining the goal of showcasing up and coming talent. Corporations have visibly tightened their grasp, with brands like YouTube hosting huge acts, drawing huger lines. Though this threat looms, it is still easy enough to avoid. Smaller venues and bars remain the home of the most special performances, reminding you about the amount of talent out there waiting (or, rather, working really hard) to be discovered. SXSW offers so much more than shows, though. One of the most rewarding experience for me was seeing the benefits of the close proximity, and thus interaction, between different styles of art, technology, panels, and speakers. For example, at a music industry panel I chatted with an engineer about using virtual reality glasses to accompany albums. At another panel, musicians, venue owners, and com-munity members were able to come together to talk about ways to insure safe and inviting shows for everyone. It is an interdisciplinary approach any ILS student would appreciate. It is also an approach that served us well in our original quest for the recipe of a great concert. We saw first-hand the importance of safety and inclusivity for artists and audiences, as well as programming that caters to the wants of the community, as well as takes risks to expose people to unique and interesting performances. When I went home, I brought back not only plenty of free goodies and a stack of business cards, but also a new appreciation of art as not only valuable as entertainment but as a way to learn.

Phoebe MarquardtSXSW Festival

Mitch DeitzChicago, IL to Seattle, WA

From the moment I read about Harry Potter and his first trip on the Hogwarts Express, I’ve always seen trains as having a magical quality about them. I recently rediscovered this quality as I boarded the impressive Empire Builder passenger train, en route from Chicago to Seattle. In today’s busy world we cherish the con-venience of air travel, but as I found out this last August, there is much to be said about the experience that convenient travel eliminates. During that forty-six hour ride across Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho and Seattle, there’s some-thing enlightening about witnessing the countryside gradually change before your eyes. From the Driftless Area in Wisconsin and Minnesota to the sharp-peaked mountains in Glacier National Park, the unrushed nature of the trip was rare and refreshing. Over the course of the ride I made two new friends over a long game of UNO, took a plethora of pictures and videos of the ride, and explored the entirety of the train front to back many times; experiences that almost never happen on the quick and cramped plane rides I more often take. Even more miraculous was that, for the first time in a while I was able to sit down, relax and never be in a hur-ry. What else can you ask for out of a summertime vacation?

10 FALL 2017

Laura McClure is a Professor of Classics at the University of Wis-consin – Madison. She is affiliated with the departments of Gender and Womens Studies, Religious Stud-ies and Integrated Liberal Stud-ies, where she served as chair from 2002-2006. A distinguished faculty member and scholar, McClure has written many articles, papers, re-views, and books on Gender and antiquity, including Courtesans at Table: Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaeus. Most recent-ly, McClure’s Women in Classical Antiquity: From Birth to Death will be out this spring. The culmination of years of research, McClure utiliz-es a life cycle organization and the right amount of historical context, to provide readers with a fascinat-ing, yet easy to grasp look at women in ancient Greece and Rome. Laura McClure sat down with ILS Student Ambassador Phoebe Mar-quardt to talk about her most recent book, today’s students, and the im-portance of ILS.

P: You have a new book to be out in 2018 called Women in Classical Antiquity: From Birth to Death, can you tell us a little about what we can expect? L: It’s a book that’s meant for a gen-eral audience, and also for students. I teach a course called Women and Gender in the Classical World every spring, and I wrote the book to use in this class. There hasn’t actually been a textbook about women and the ancient world since 1991, so it fills a gap. There’s a lot of really in-teresting research that’s been done since then. In the field of Gender and Women’s Studies, there’s been a lot more people working in this area, asking new questions of old materi-als and using new forms of evidence to construct a new picture of the

ancient world, and especially of the role of women within it. One of the goals of the book is to give a more comprehensive, current picture of what we know and think about women and gender in the ancient world, the representa-tion of women in art and literature, and also their social and political realities. It starts with Greece, [fol-lowed by a section on] Rome. Each section has an introduction to that culture. It starts with a chapter on birth, and the last chapter is death and religion. The last chapter, I talk about ways women had authority publicly. By organizing it around the life cycle, it provides a narrative that is easy for students to grasp. Within each chapter, I also try to bring to bear contemporary debates and re-search that has been done.

P: What was your process?L: I designed this course on Wom-en and Gender in the Ancient world in the late 90s. I taught it for many years, and then I had a break be-cause I was chair of ILS and then my department here. I went back to [teach the course] and there was no book out there that I wanted to use. It turned into this massive thing that took me 6 years to complete. I had to do huge amounts of research, especially on the Roman materials. The Greek stuff I know really well, but I still had to reread everything current. Then you have to condense everything you’ve learned, and put it into language that a general audi-ence can understand. I always try to find the one interesting thing that I think the students will like. Or a kind of funny thing… I try to make it more interesting thing to them.

P: While doing research, was anything particularly surpris-ing?

L: I got into this material about women’s political protest. There were actually two political actions that woman took in Roman history. They showed up en masse to pro-test some legislation that affected them personally, which had to do with a taxation situation of very elite Roman women. They managed to change the ruling. So, that was inter-esting that there could be these mass political actions, collective actions on the part of women that could change Roman legislation. I found a lot of the sources really in-teresting. There’s different challeng-es in working with different type of material. You can’t rely on artistic representations to accurately reflect political and social reality. When we talk about literary texts from the ancient world they only feature very elite characters, they are based on a long-standing tradition, and they are all by me. So, the way that wom-en are being represented have to do with men’s ideas about women, and assumptions about women, and concerns and preoccupations about women. So you can’t take them as reflecting reality. You have to work with them carefully. More and more people are in this field and asking more nuanced questions and look-ing at these from new perspectives. This has changed, in a huge way, how we see classical antiquity.


“I like to try to show my students that our view of the ancient world is al-

ways changing. I’ve been working on this topic

off and on for my whole career and I still find it

exciting.”

Phoebe Marquadt


I like to try to show my students that our view of the ancient world is al-ways changing. I’ve been working on this topic off and on for my whole ca-reer and I still find it exciting.

P: Through your time teach-ing about women and gender in classical antiquity, have you seen a change in the ideas or topics that students latch onto?

L: There was a much more fluid range of gender identities, ironically, in the ancient world then traditionally there have been in our own society, which is sometimes surprising to students. The students are very interested in those issues of gender identity, and not just what it means to be a male, or what it means to be female, but ev-erything in between. You don’t have to explain gender as a construction to them anymore.

P: I wonder if you could provide some background about your own liberal arts education and if it has influenced you in any-way?

L: I went to a small liberal arts college, which I think gave me the freedom to explore the humanities and the arts and to feel like that was a valuable thing to do. I’m really worried that today’s students, especially here at UW, don’t feel that’s something they want to, or can do. We definitely have a trend towards getting the job and having the career, more so than I’ve ever seen before. I was really interested in the Western Tradition, so I went to St. Johns College and got a masters de-gree, which has a great books pro-gram. That’s my connection, I think, with Integrated Liberal Studies– I had this education of understand-ing the major ideas and questions in the Western tradition. I also gained an appreciation for discussion as an important pedagogical method. Also, the idea that humanities matter and they are worth our time and atten-tion. It is important to understand the past as a way to understand the present.

P: What role do you see ILS play-ing within the University at this time, and in the future?

L: I think the original idea of hav-ing an integrated way to take most of your Gen eds is really important. But putting aside the practicalities, I think its this idea of really engaging in some for the most important ques-tions we ask ourselves as human be-ings, not just because it’s the western tradition. These texts are important because the ideas they convey are im-portant to how we think about our-selves as human beings: What does it mean to be human? Why should we understand the past? Who am I? [This] tradition has become a tradi-tion because there’s something com-pelling about [its] questions. That said, I still think you can ask new questions about this tradition.

In its best form, ILS attracts in-tellectually engaged students who want to think across disci-plines about these big questions and they want to talk about it with other people who are also interested in these questions and think they are important and think they should be dis-cussed not just in class, but in life. I do think that no one else is doing what, in its ideal version, ILS does.

Professor Laura McClure’s Recommendations:

Lady Bird (2017)

In The Darkroom by Susan Faludi

Scandanavian Crime TV Shows


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