High School Seminars

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Roam)

This seminar offers a wide-ranging discussion about a variety of approaches that computer scientists, philosophers and dreams have taken to the creation of “intelligent” systems. We read from several books (including Douglas Hofstader’s Gődel, Escher, Bach and Stephen Pinker’s The Language Instinct) and articles (Marvin Minsky on robots and the future), build robots (lego logo with sensors, motors and programs), watch video clips of various robotics/AI projects, and train simulated neural networks. We argue about the kind of “understanding” that is lacking in a mechanically derived proof, and we consider (from several angles) the proposition that humans may combine illogical behavior with illusions of “understanding.” We study grammars for mathematical languages, knowledge representation, and the mechanics of neurons. We also try to write “smart” programs: little robots that find their way out of mazes, computers that try to make conversation, and games that “learn” by working their way through an expanding database while trying to play twenty questions. No programming experience necessary.

THE ART OF DEBATE AND RHETORIC (TBA, Mason)

The Debate and Rhetoric seminar meets as a single House once a week in the late afternoon seminar period. We break up into smaller committees to debate and vote on resolutions, practice speaking in various formats, arrange impromptu and prepared intramural debates in both large and small houses; and participate as individuals and as a team in the Princeton Model Congress in November and other Model Congresses. We also plan to host a Saint Ann’s Model Supreme Court, and we plan to host a Saint Ann’s Model Congress in the fall of 2006. The House is largely self-governing, on the premise that the secret of free speech is respect for difference of opinion, and rule by majorities—democracy—depends on the assent of minorities. Students who elect this seminar should not commit to more than one extramural season sport with practices or games that conflict with class meetings. There is a strict limit of 40 members.

COMMUNITY SERVICE: MORE THAN JUST BOOK DRIVES (First semester) (Gnagnarelli)

In the late 1960s, someone came up with the notion of “random acts of kindness.” For instance, what if when you were going through a tollbooth, you paid for the car behind yours even if you didn’t know who was in it? How does this alter society? This seminar discusses the concepts of philanthropy and volunteerism, and also primes the real life skills needed to help organizations achieve their goals of improving both our local and our global society.

Each student in the class chooses from an array of educational, social, political or environmental issues and plans his/her own particular community service initiative. These projects may be individual or involve a number of students. As a class, we visit community service programs around the city, model a large project for the class, and offer feedback for each project designed by class members. Furthermore, we document both the work our school is doing in different neighborhoods and any initiatives with which we are collaborating in the wider world.

While we surf the net and scan The New York Times looking for new possibilities, we also help connect other students with organizations we have formerly partnered with, including the Brooklyn DA’s office, Brooklyn Parents for Peace, Habitat for Humanity, Chung Pak Day Care Center, Project Reach Youth, Long Island College Hospital, Legal Outreach, P.S.8, Publicolor, Teach for America, the Prospect Park Alliance, Project Cicero, Room to Grow, US-Africa Children’s Fellowship, Lighthouse for the Blind, 78 th Precinct Sports, and the Arab-American Family Support Center.

CONTEMPORARY CHINA (Weiss)

Using Kenneth Lieberthal’s Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform as a primary text, this seminar closely examines the political economy of China during the Reform Era from 1977 to the present. Particular topics of concentration include: elite politics and the role of the Chinese Communist Party; relations between the central government and local authorities; the rise of private sector economic institutions and the consequences for the state sector; human rights; the question of democracy and democratic institutions; China’s foreign policy and foreign economic policy with an emphasis on the participation of China in the World Trade Organization; environmental issues; and the uneven improvement of general living standards in different regions of the PRC. To supplement the political-economic perspective, we also look at samples of contemporary Chinese literature and popular culture beginning with the Tiananmen Massacre period in 1989 through the 1990s.

ETHICS & AESTHETICS (Aronson)

This course begins with a consideration of the ancient Greeks, in particular Plato. While considering Plato, we keep a special eye on method, metaphysics and epistemology, since more than a few important streams of thought in Western philosophy have their source in this philosopher’s views on the structure of the world and on what qualifies as knowledge. As the course moves forward, we focus on two areas of the Western philosophical tradition that are of particular relevance to the lives we lead, namely, ethics and aesthetics. Our discussions, however, necessarily touch on a variety of topics, including political philosophy, philosophy of science, the linguistic turn in philosophy, and modern art and poetry. Throughout the course we talk about metaphysics and epistemology. The reading list includes works by Plato, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Danto, Wallace Stevens, W.V. Quine, and Thomas Kuhn.

GENETIC PROGRAMMING (Bengali)

How can computers attack problems by evolving solutions according to natural selection? What happens when a computer can reprogram itself? Can a network (like the Internet) support artificial life more advanced than viruses? Students explore the answers to these questions and more through readings and discussions, and by writing their own programs in the LISP programming language. Prerequisite: Programming 1 or permission of the instructor

HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE (The English Department)

The High School Literary Magazine is created by a board of students and faculty advisors who are eager to find and publish excellent high school writing. The Board (about fifteen students selected by the English Department and the Head of the High School) meets once a week during a seminar period to discuss and select poetry and prose. In addition, board members type all selections and, in April, lay out the magazine. Because the work is heaviest in February, March and April, students must give several extra hours a week during this period.

INTERNSHIP AT THE PRESCHOOL: GETTING UP OFF THE CHAIR (Fuerst)

If we do not want to lose the virtue of letting ourselves wonder and be amazed (which is, in the end, the art of getting up off the chair), it would be a good idea to observe how young children seek amazement, use it, and celebrate it.
—Loris Malaguzzi

At the Preschool, amazement is a daily occurrence for three- and four-year-olds, and for the adults who work with them. Your participation in this amazement requires you to create space in your schedule to be in a preschool classroom at a mutually arranged time once a week. We meet on an individual basis to draw on your observations, from which you devise a final project reflecting your particular interest in working with this age.

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTATION THEORY (Bean)

How hard is addition? How hard is it to figure out if a number is prime? What kinds of math problems are easy, what kinds are hard, and just how hard are they? Are there any that cannot be solved? The field of computational theory is the formal study of complexity: we do not solve math problems in computation theory; rather we ask, if we were to solve a math problem, how long would it take us? How much paper would we need? These are difficult questions. Their answers require rigorous constructions and detailed proofs.

This course is designed for students with a strong mathematical background and an interest in abstract mathematics, computer science, or both. We examine various models of computation and their comparative computational power. Topics covered may include: circuits, finite state machines, pushdown automata, Turing Machines, non-determinism, time- and space-complexity classes, the P=NP dilemma, the Halting Problem, and computational incompleteness. There are short problem-set homeworks each week.

JAPANESE BOOKBINDING (Second semester) (Nelson)

Learn the history of several styles of Japanese books and create journals, albums, and other blank books. We also make some surface decorated papers to be used as covers. Limited to six students.

 LATIN AMERICA : VIVA LA REVOLUCION! (Flaherty)

Latin America ’s political and aesthetic revolutions of the last century are the subject of this course. We examine the colonial legacy, North America’s first clumsy steps into the region, Castro’s revolution in Cuba, and the ideological battles of the 1980s. We read some of the great modernist writers the region produced: Ruben Dario, García Marquez, Vallejo and Borges, as well as classics such as Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries. We also look at the musical bedrock that is the “Latin tinge,” the rhythm and feel that has influenced jazz and flowered in the tangos of Argentina, the son of Cuba, the salsa of Puerto Rico, and the reggaeton of today. No writing – reading, listening and enthusiasm are vital. We are Americans in a much larger sense than the shrill jingoism of our political climate reveals. Come and explore our vital and complex relationship with our hemisphere.

LITERATURE OF IDEAS/SPECULATIVE LITERATURE (Everdell)

Some of these are called ‘Great Books,’ some are ‘science fiction.’ Still others are called ‘utopias’ or ‘philosophy texts.’ We read them without such discrimination, in chronological order, looking only for the history of ideas and for the ideas themselves, especially, this year, ideas about ethics (what should one do, and why?). Among the choices: Plato, Timaeus; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations; Lucian, True History; Augustine, Confessions; Dante, Paradise; Cusa, Learned Ignorance; More, Utopia; Montaigne, Cannibals; Bacon, New Atlantis; Descartes, Discourse on Method; Pascal, Pensées; Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Voltaire, Micromégas; Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences; De Maistre, Saint Petersburg Dialogues; Shelley, Frankenstein; Marx, Communist Manifesto; Bastiat, The Law; Hawthorne, “Rappaccini's Daughter”; Wells, The Time Machine; Abbot, Flatland; Jarry, Ubu; Kokoschka, Murderer, Hope of Women; Strindberg, A Dream Play; Kafka, The Trial; „ apek, RUR; Lang, Metropolis; Huxley, Brave New World; Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond; Camus, The Fall; Heinlein, Coventry; Oliver, Rite of Passage; Skinner, Walden Two; Pohl & Kornbluth, Space Merchants; Burgess, Wanting Seed; LeGuin, Left Hand of Darkness; Berger, Regiment of Women; Raspail, Camp of the Saints; Borges, Ficciones; Lessing, Memoirs of a Survivor; Calvino, Cosmicomics; Lovelock, Gaia; Auster, In the Country of Last Things. This is a full year seminar held on Tuesday or Wednesday from 4:30-6 PM. Students who elect this course may not commit to more than one extramural season sport.

MOBY-DICK (Laufer)

In times of great ideological contention, few novels deserve our attention as much as Herman Melville’s masterpiece. But study of the novel, while consistently enjoyable when handled well, should not be taken lightly or undertaken alone. Indeed, the worth of this book is to be found, in part, in its complexities, its multiple registers, and its ambiguities, so we proceed slowly and carefully, making sure to tease out the difficulties of the novel even as we take the time to appreciate its great and varied pleasures through communal effort and critique. Beginning our study with two of Melville’s most important sources, Shakespeare’s King Lear and the Book of Job, we go on to supplement our reading with a steady, if modest, current of secondary material and follow Moby-Dick with a study of Benito Cereno, a Melville novella that shed significant retrospective light on the author’s greatest work of fiction. The bulk of the seminar, however, consists of a close reading of this towering novel. In our approach, we take as our motto a line from Melville himself: “There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.” Students are also invited to participate in our own epic literary adventure: a marathon reading – in one go, start to finish – of the entire novel.

PARAMETERS OF PREJUDICE (First semester) (Ross)

Feeling oppressed lately? Most Americans do at some point or another. The strong feelings engendered by the issues of affirmative action and reparations, for example, reflect this heightened sensitivity to the problems of prejudice. Intergroup tensions in our multicultural society, and the prejudice and stereotyping that result, can at times appear to be a mainstay of the American condition.

Prejudice, however, is not a particularly American problem. It is a human one. This course is based on the premise that certain patterns of prejudice are universal, and that by analyzing these patterns in a psychological context as well as a non-American context, we may gain through dispassionate analysis a better understanding of our own problems.

We commence with a broad review of various social science theories of prejudice and stereotyping, then analyze various minority groups and their problems. We consider, for example, the differences between racism and prejudice and develop a definition of prejudice. We discuss the roles that religion, nationality and political ideology have played in promoting prejudice. Other topics of discussion include various minority groups and their problems, instances of genocide and how they relate to prejudice, slavery as it existed in the United States, whether teenagers can be considered an oppressed minority, and fringe movements such as “Animal Liberation.” All classes begin with a general discussion of relevant incidents in the news or in our everyday lives.

The principles learned from analyzing these case studied are applied to selected issues of particular concern to Americans. We end the course with a “no holds barred” discussion of the arguments for and against affirmative action and reparations.

PHILOSOPHY & AESTHETICS OF WESTERN MUSIC (Fefferman)

Why do you like your favorite music? What is the difference between music and noise? Is there any distinction between high art music and low art music? Is there any useful objective measure of musical merit? To what extent does music mirror language? What goals do we have as listeners?

These questions and many more are explored in an informal, conversational context. Music offered for consideration is generally taken from classical and modern “scored concert music,” but specific examples are drawn from genres including rock, jazz, pop, rap, smashup, Indonesian gamelan, and the religious chant traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Students are encouraged to bring in any music that they find relevant to class discussion. As questions arise, we may seek the written opinions of such venerable folk as Plato, Boethius, Monteverdi, Adorno, Boulez and Cage.

The meat of this seminar is the listening and discussion that occurs in class. A few short readings and listenings may be assigned depending on the trajectory of the course. Students are asked to choose their own topics for a single short paper that incorporates some of the ideas discussed in class. Comfort with musical notation is helpful, but not required.

POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP (Skoble)

In the workshop, we learn how to use the tools of poets. We also take poems apart to see how they work, and we put things together to see if they work. Construction and experimentation, exploration and imitation are the processes we use to help us create poems. The poetry workshop meets one period each week: to share our efforts, to read and discuss, and, of course, to write.

 QUILTING (Brousal)

Through the ages, in ancient Asian, European and American cultures, quilts have been made, mostly by women, as forms of resistance, vehicles of communications and, of course, useful textiles to keep their families warm. In this seminar, students examine an encyclopedia of quilt patterns from the United States and other countries. Pick one—or design your own—and then, with painstaking work, occasional snacks and lots of collaboration, move from design to finished quilt. We are looking for boys and girls, but must limit the class size to eight students.

THE ROAD IN AMERICAN CULTURE (Bakalar)

Americans have a unique relationship with “the road.” From the first “post roads” through the trails taken by pioneers heading west, down to our present-day highway systems, the mobility and freedom represented by “the road” are seen as fundamental to the development of the culture. More than just a conduit, the road has come to be a special signifier of the American character.

In On the Road, Jack Kerouac creates an archetype that, though iconoclastic, represents fundamental aspects of this development. After looking at this work and establishing some of the ideas, language and iconography essential to it, we explore some of the influences on Kerouac, as well as other historical and more “mainstream” aspects of the development of this “road culture.” We then continue with some post-Kerouac treatments in film, books, photographs and music.

In addition to Kerouac, we read Walt Whitman, Jack London, Woody Guthrie, Tom Wolfe and others. There are various history articles and excerpts. We look at the work of photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Robert Frank. Movies include Sullivan’s Travels, The Wild Ones, Easy Rider, and Thelma and Louise.

SKETCH COMEDY (Pickford)

Love Saturday Night Live? Wonder how anyone can write, produce and perform sketch comedy? Hate Saturday Night Live? Wonder how anyone can write, produce and perform such bad sketch comedy? Think you “have what it takes” to write, produce and perform an original sketch comedy show? Believe there are too many questions in this course description? This seminar encourages writers to be actors, actors to be writers, and class clowns to be class clowns. When we are not fiercely debating the philosophy of what is and is not funny, we read, watch, improvise and write scenes using styles such as shnoogs, farces, satires, parodies, and the renowned running-into-a-wall style of comedy. The seminar culminates in a year-end performance.

 SYMMETRY IN MATH AND PHYSICS (Nachumi)

In this course we explore the concept of symmetry, as expressed in the theory of groups of transformations. We seek to answer such questions as: what does symmetry mean geometrically and algebraically? We also discuss examples of symmetry principles in physical systems.

VISUAL STORYTELLING: MAKE OF IT WHAT YOU WILL (Klein)

There is more than one way to skin a cat:

1. Take a story and turn it into a tattoo.

2. Take the same story and turn it into a music video.

3. Take the same story again and turn it into a set model.

In this seminar, we examine the many lives of a single text by interpreting it both two and three dimensionally. Weekly meetings combine a studio and discussion approach. Course work consists of quick sketchbook exercises as well as one fully realized project each semester, ranging through an installation, a collage, a photo or even a sweater. Guest artists visit in relation to specific assignments.

THE WORLD OF THE PARANORMAL (Hawkes/Nacol)

On March 19, 1917, a young Englishwoman living in India was enjoying a quiet afternoon with her baby when she was surprised to see her brother – who was supposed to be back home in Britain with his Royal Air Force unit – standing in the bedroom door. She turned away for a moment to put her baby in its crib; when she turned back, her brother was gone. A se arch of the house and neighborhood revealed no trace of him. Later she learned that his plane had been shot down in France at the exact moment she had seen him standing in the doorway.

This type of paranormal event is known as a crisis apparition, and the investigation of such phenomena is called parapsychology or psychical research. Described as “the science of things that cannot possibly happen, but do,” it includes haunting, poltergeists, out of body experiences, trance channeling, precognition, telepathy, telekinesis, reincarnation, and object reading. Are these things all a lot of baloney, or can people really read each other’s minds, move objects without touching them, communicate with the dead, see the future, and so on?

Modern science now admits there is no “one correct way” of describing how everything in the universe works, and in fact “pluriverse” has been suggested as a more accurate name. Does perceiving reality in different ways offer different possibilities of interaction with it? Using case histories from the annals of psychical research, this course explores the various phenomena mentioned above, as well as the efforts that have been made to observe and theorize about them. If time permits, we may take a look at various portrayals of the paranormal in literature and film.

YOU’RE THE DJ: A HANDS-ON INTRODUCTION TO DJ-ING, MIXING, REMIXING AND TURNTABLISH TECHNIQUES (First semester) (Connolly)

Before the iPod, before MP3, before even 8-tracks and tapes, there was vinyl, and it’s still going strong. This class gives students a chance to study the history of DJing in American and global culture through films and readings – but, more important, it teaches them the basic skills needed to perform live sets, create mixtapes, beat match, mix and remix music and get a feel for basic scratching techniques. Students learn on the industry-standard equipment: Technics SK-1200 MKII Turntables, DJ mixers and, of course, records. Newer technologies allowing manipulation of MP3s and CDs using turntables are also featured, and possible field trips include the Chelsea flea market for bargain bin recording digging, and DJ competitions around the city. Required experience: none. However, if you could battle Q-Bert without breaking a sweat, this class is probably not for you.

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