The Populus Learning Community

1
The Populus Learning Community
People, Crowd, Multitude
2
What is Populus?

• In Populus, we explore the dynamics of cultures
  and societies, masses and movements. This year
  our general theme will be Who are we? Searching
  for Identity in Material and Symbolic Culture.
  Well explore ways in which society and culture
  shape our identity.

3
Some Questions Well Consider

• How does society and culture influence our
  identities?
• What role do material goods play in shaping our
  identities?
• What role do texts and other symbolic knowledge
  play in shaping our identities?
• How do we influence society and culture?

4
Populus Courses

• Fall
• UCOR 101 Thinking and Writing Across the
  Curriculum
• CLSX 105C Digging for Identity
• UCOR 141 Biblical and Historical Perspectives
• Spring
• SOC 101 Survey of Sociology

5
UCOR 101 Thinking and Writing Across the
Curriculum

• In UCOR 101 we will consider the ways in which
  we read texts. Not just essays, letters,
  books, but also texts such as blogs, tweets,
  sculptures, award winning movies, songs, clothing
  trends, and all other sorts of material artifacts
  our culture uses (and misuses) to create our
  individual (and public) identities.
• We will deeply analyze and explore history
  alongside popular culture and discover the ways
  in which we respond to, misread, and create.
• We will compose our own documents or texts to
  best argue and illustrate who we are as a
  people.

6
Classics 105C Digging for Identity

• In this introduction to archaeology, we will
  consider the various artifacts that humans have
  created and used over a period of 2.5 million
  years. What can this stuff reveal about past
  people? How and why did they use it? How did it
  shape who they were? And how do we use (sometimes
  abuse?) it to define who we are today? This
  course will explore such questions. Along the
  way, we will learn about the aims, history,
  methods, and significance of the discipline of
  archaeology and will focus on archaeological
  sites in the Mediterranean and Near East. As will
  be immediately clear, at the heart of this course
  is the identity of human beings, past and present.

7
UCOR 142 Biblical and Historical Perspectives

• This introductory course introduces students to
  basic information about the Bibles origins,
  contents, and history of interpretation. The
  first part of the course will focus on issues of
  interpretation. The second half of the course
  will focus on studying the complex
  unity-in-difference of the Bible as a single
  canon of diverse texts we will reflect on the
  issue of the unity of the Old and New Testaments
  and some of the various ways the Old Testament
  and the New Testament can be read as co-existing
  in a difficult, tension-filled conversation with
  each other.

8
SOC 101 Survey of Sociology

• In this introduction to sociology course, we will
  consider how society shapes our identities,
  values, and behaviors. In particular, we will
  focus on how ascribed statuses (gender, race,
  ethnicity, and/or social class) influence our
  lives, shape our opportunities, and in part,
  define us. We will also consider how our lives
  might be different if we were living in a
  different culture or a different era. We will
  explore how society through the socialization
  process hides its influence on our identities,
  values, and behaviors. Finally, we will consider
  how we influence society and create social change.

9
Service Learning and Other Activities

• In the Fall, we will be working with school-age
  children to help them explore the meaning of
  objects from an archaeological perspective.
• In the Spring semester, we will be working at a
  soup kitchen to explore the impact of ascribed
  statuses on our identities and life chances from
  a sociological perspective.
• We will be reading the graphic novel Motel of
  the Mysteries by David Macaulay and exploring
  its message for each of the courses.