Summer Program for Juniors (TASP) | 2010 Programs
"No one had wanted me to truly think before, and TASP came not politely asking, but demanding that I read and analyze, present my view and then defend it." - Meredith Durkin, student
Cornell I Program
Cornell II Program
UT Austin Program
Cornell I Program
Democracy and Diversity
Telluride House, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
June 27 - August 7, 2010
Faculty: Professor Laura Donaldson, Departments of English and American Indian Studies, Cornell University; and Professor David Peritz, Department of Political Science, Sarah Lawrence College
Factotum: Joy Liu, Brown University
Since America’s revolution and founding, United States history has been bedeviled by exclusions that have called into question our commitment to the creed that all men are created equal. Today, contemporary politics is characterized by various cross-cutting dimensions of social and cultural diversity: religion, value, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and culture. Does democracy work only in homogeneous societies that neutralize various sources of difference and diversity? It has long been maintained that only in this way can a people be sufficiently similar to form shared political understanding and projects. Absent considerable commonality—religious, linguistic, ethnic, racial, ethical—it is feared that democracy deteriorates into the tyranny of the majority or a war of all against all. But we are in the midst of a dramatic shift in which democratic societies are increasingly diverse and their citizens less willing to “forget” their ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, cultural, racial, linguistic, and other differences in order to melt into a dominant national culture.
These developments raise some basic questions. Is it possible to achieve sufficient agreement on fundamental political issues in a diverse society to sustain democracy? Can the character of political community or the nation be reconceived and reformed? If not, is democracy doomed? Or might it be possible to reform democracy to render it compatible with conditions of deep diversity? If so, does the democratic claim to legitimacy also need to be transformed? In this course, we will study exemplary historical statements of the ideal of democracy, looking at the writings of Rousseau and John Stuart Mill. We will then explore works that bring these themes together by attempting to (re-)articulate the relevance of specific identities to political engagement and the general ideal of democracy in light of increased diversity.
Texts for the seminar will include, among others: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays (John Gray, ed.); Gary Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America; Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract (Roger Masters, ed.).
top
"TASP has changed the way I look at history, society, and even myself."
- Sasha-Mae Eccleston, student
Cornell II Program
Gods and Heroes of the Celts and Vikings
Telluride House, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
June 27 - August 7, 2010
Faculty: Professor Thomas Hill, Department of English, Cornell University; and Professor Charles Wright, Department of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Factotum: Jacob Denz, Princeton University
Medieval myths and legends provide insight into the beliefs, customs, and cultures of a distant time but are also the source of many retellings and adaptations in modern times.
In this course we will read the myths and legends of the Celts (the Irish and Welsh) and of the Vikings (the Icelanders and Scandinavians) from the Middle Ages. In the Celtic part of the course we will read Irish tales of gods and goddesses, druids and druidesses, heroes and heroines: tales of voyages to the Celtic Otherworld, of feasts where warriors contend for the “champion’s portion,” of strange births and tragic deaths, of magical transformations, of courtships and cattle-raids. Texts include the Ulster Cycle stories about the boy-hero Cú Chulainn, King Conchobar, Fergus, and Queen Medb, culminating in the great Irish epic, the “Táin Bó Cuailnge” (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”). We will also read the Welsh collection of stories called the Mabinogion concerning the journey of Pwyll to the Otherworld, the marriage and humiliation of the lady Branwen, the adventures of Pwyll’s wife, Rhiannon, and son, Pryderi, in an enchanted land, and the adultery and treachery of Blodeuedd, a woman conjured out of flowers. In the Old Norse–Icelandic part of the course we will read selections from the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson and from the Poetic Edda, both dealing with the creation of the world, the origins and adventures of the Norse gods (including Odin, Thor, and the trickster Loki), and their final defeat by the monsters of Ragnarök. We will also read selections from the heroic epic literature of the Icelanders, their sagas and thaettir (short stories) about such diverse topics as killings, burnings, and pet bears. Among the texts we will read will be Hrafnkels saga, Egils saga, and at least portions of Njáls saga. All readings will be in modern English translation (excellent ones are available), and the course presumes no previous knowledge of these topics.
UT Austin Program
Changing Minds, Winning Peace: Cultural and Public Diplomacy in Today’s World
The University of Texas at Austin
June 27 - August 7, 2010
Faculty: Professor William Glade, Department of Economics; and Professor Lawrence S. Graham, Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin
Factota: Breanna Byington, Cornell University; and Mariam Rahmani, Princeton University
In response to 9-11, that horrendous watershed in 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives issued a report titled “Changing Minds, Winning Peace.” The report’s authors aimed to rebuild and strengthen the country’s efforts at “public diplomacy,” which had decayed over the previous decade. The challenges posed by America’s relations with the Islamic world seemed to exemplify political scientist Samuel Huntington’s controversial “clash of civilizations” concept. To deal with this problem, academics and diplomats invoked a cultural diplomacy (CD) focused on the arts, humanities, and social sciences that was later described as “the linchpin of public diplomacy.” We shall draw on books, articles, and reports, supplemented by interviews, to provide a critical view of the policy process in CD and gain a deeper understanding of contemporary foreign policy.
Cultural diplomacy occupies the intersection of public diplomacy with the long-contested arena of domestic cultural policy. Although America’s organized international cultural relations began in the 19th century, they were conducted almost entirely by private and not-for-profit organizations. Sustained federal involvement began only on the eve of World War II when the State Department sought to counteract German and Italian influence in Latin America. After the war, such involvement became an instrument for building democracy in the former Axis powers and soon was enlisted, alongside public diplomacy, in the decades-long Cold War. The post-war creation of the Fulbright program focused CD on enhancing mutual international understanding, which in turn influences the efficacy of public and other forms of diplomacy as well. When the Cold War ended, interest in CD waned until the Middle East crises called for yet another drastic rethinking of its role as well as that of public diplomacy in general.
We hope to shed light on how our international policy is made and how this affects cultural production and consumption in our relations with the rest of the world, where the bulk of cultural interaction is organized not by governments but by the market and not-for-profit institutions. The prism provided by this exercise should, along with the reciprocal impacts of other countries and cultures on us, yield a firmer understanding of how world affairs influence life here at home. Background readings and locally available resource people, coupled with individual student projects, will be used to enrich the overall learning experience and provide experience with the seminar approach in universities.
Examples of books that we will read during the seminar include: Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics; Donald Snow and Eugene Brown, Beyond the Water’s Edge: An Introduction to U.S. Foreign Policy; Peter J. Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium.