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Course Description

This course will cover the memoir, fiction, and non-fiction of three southwest women writers. Terry Tempest Williams, Ana Castillo, and Leslie Marmon Silko use their narratives and essays to explore loss, healing, and search for place in the larger design. They use writing to explore race, nation, gender, place, and class and how these shape self-perception as well as our view of the world and our place in it. Through their writing, they call on women and caring others to change mainstream society from one of exclusion to inclusion and to end oppression. As they explore the ethics and politics of place, spiritual democracy, and the responsibilities of citizen or civic engagement, we will trace their journeys through these explorations. Class work will include group work, presentations, and a final research paper that explores citizen engagement. In the spirit of citizen or civic engagement, I will also require students to participate in at least two acts of citizen or civic engagement outside the class and during the semester (participate in UNM's Spring Storm, for example) and write about it in relation to our class readings and discussions.

Examples of civic engagement:
Images from Washington Campus Compact (photo contest honorable mention, Tatjana Nijemcevic), Colorado College (Erin Bennett ’06, Rosalie Bouck ’06, and Mel Wright ’07 apply weather protection to a house being built by Habitat for Humanity in Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the first block break of 2005-06. Photo by Elizabeth Kolbe ’08), and The Center for Civic Engagement (Read Aloud Meriendas, Lopez Elementary Family Read Aloud Program)
 

WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS: SUBHANKAR BANERJEE PHOTOGRAPHY AND
POWERPOINT SLIDESHOW FROM CLASS (this pps. is a large file if you have dial up, so click on first link, "World Without Borders," go to the bottom of screen and click on "photographs" to see the images)