For the 2024-25 academic year, the theme for the Symposium will be "Black & White." It is a seemingly simple dichotomy that stretches across disciplines and thinking. Scientifically, white is pure light and black marks the light’s absence. In terms of color, black and white are thought to be shades and not colors at all. But symbolically, black and white are powerful signifiers across cultures with layers of complimentary and conflicting meaning.

Humans recognize the limitations of a binary like black and white but may also simultaneously take comfort in the order and simplicity it offers. We reach for truth, news, and facts in black and white. Complex histories of race and ethnicity are condensed to black and white with accompanying stereotypes. Harmony in nature and the mind is represented by Yin and Yang, the oppositional forces swirling between dark and light, night and day, cold and hot, feminine and masculine. Growing out of these cultural traditions, popular culture like literature, film, video games, photography, fashion, food, etc. draw from this layered symbolic history. Courses in this year’s Symposium will consider black and white from a variety of disciplines and approaches. The discourse generated will explore the ways reality and symbolism intersect.

Courses

This team-taught course will provide opportunities for students to look at AI from a variety of contrasting perspectives, as described below. Students will discuss and reflect on how AI, emerging prominently only a few years ago, has affected their academic and professional lives and how they perceive those effects carrying forward to the rest of their lives. Within the theme of the Symposium, the course is intended as a study in contrasts: i) the dramatically different, yet sometimes similar, impacts of AI across academic disciplines; ii) thinking, learning, and writing with and without AI tools; iii) impact of AI tools in university vs. industry / corporate settings; and iv) the contrast between short-term reactive and long-term thoughtful applications / integration of technology into our lives.

This course takes us on a multidisciplinary shuttlecraft journey through some of the most important questions about the human study and exploration of space. Any future of humans in outer space will require advanced technological achievement, but space also contains culture, economics, and politics. The course will touch on the current frontiers of astrophysics and space exploration, and it will interrogate how we derive social meaning from outer space in the form of science fiction literature and visual media. We ask what future humans imagine and are beginning to build for themselves in space: is it an inclusive democracy, or something else?

This course offers an introduction to fat studies through a historical and cultural analysis of fatphobia, bodily representation, and the invention and biases of the weight loss industry. Weight loss advice has been predicated on the straightforward calculation of "calories in, calories out," in a very "black and white" approach to how bodies work. It simply isn't true. We will explore the emergence of fat liberation in the context of bodily positivity, body neutrality, and the new weight loss drugs. This course will challenge the binaries around health, wellness, and what counts as an acceptable body, showing that healthy bodies exist in all sizes and shades of grey.

In this course, students will explore ethical and moral frames in popular culture through the symposium metaphor of Black & White. Together, we will consider the morality at play in popular fictional worlds from television, film, literature, and games, including Star Wars, Dune, Middle Earth, A Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad, and more. Supported by readings in moral philosophy, media studies, pop culture studies, and sociology, we will analyze the moral frames in these works, focusing on the evolution of the Black/White metaphor in communicating good and evil in the characters and stories we consume. While class discussions will focus on the fictional worlds that loom largest in the public imagination, students will have an opportunity to apply the same critical lens to a fictional world of their choosing. Over the course of the term, they will work toward a final project that will synthesize the ideas explored in class with their own critical reflections and research. Students will have an opportunity to workshop their ideas in small groups. To bring everything together at the end of the term, students will run panel discussions, pulling from their individual projects and making connections with the work of their peers.

In social discourse, using black and white language can sometimes oversimplify complex issues or overlook important nuances. However, it can also serve as a powerful rhetorical device to emphasize contrasts and make a point more forcefully. Critical consideration of language use when discussing matters related to race, gender, and other sensitive topics is essential to sharpen awareness of the potential impact of words. Phrases like “black and white” or “no grey zones” can sometimes imply a binary perspective, which may oversimplify complex issues and fail to acknowledge the nuances of individual experiences. This course aims to delve into the pivotal role of language in comprehending and tackling intersectionality, particularly in the formation and discussion of social identities. Language that acknowledges intersectionality grasps the intricacies inherent in each individual's identity. Examining language in this way facilitates a more nuanced understanding of a wide array of perspectives and experiences.

In this course, students learn the tradition and practices of experimental ethnography as a big-tent methodology, which can be used as a framework for designing and explaining many different kinds of projects. The course will include readings and lectures on the history of experimental ethnography and its relationship to the Surrealist movement. We will also look at contemporary examples in the digital humanities, participatory research, and as political intervention, and discuss how emerging technologies have been used by practitioners. Case studies will include examples from a range of geographic regions and cultural moments. Co-instructors will use these examples to show how experimental ethnography brings arguments from the critical tradition into the design of research, art, and community action; and how it might be used in teaching, programming. This is a portfolio-based class and course activities will ask students to practice the method through a diversity of small assignments.

A dynamic and thought-provoking course delves into the intricate relationship between clothing and activism, examining how garments have served as powerful tools for expressing, challenging, and transcending “black and white” social norms through trickle up theory, gender fluid fashion, and bodily autonomy. Grounded in critical theory, social and historical frameworks, and utilizing a critical social science lens, Fashioning Activism explores the multifaceted ways in which clothing becomes a potent means of cultural resistance and transformation. In the class, students will complete a narrative assessment of their own fashion activism or that of a popular cultural figure through wardrobe analysis, photo analysis, and comparative analysis. Students will then synthesize their findings into a multi-media project and a collaborative class zine.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” “Good things come to those who wait,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “Just do it”; all sayings that are as profound as they are trite. What happens when the meaning of words that are meant to guide us lose their power? What don’t we know about the origins, implications, and reinterpretations of these phrases? This class invites students to uncover new meaning in old paradigms. Drawing from poetry, marketing, propaganda, and philosophical texts, each week will explore the gradient of nuance and heuristics that shape our world. Students are invited to dig into the ways that binary mental models offer a false sense of security at the expense of nuanced living, culminating in a student-created book of Metaphors to Live By; new interpretations of black-and-white sayings. Each student will contribute three metaphors/aphorisms to live by along with a critical reflection on how their metaphors break the binary, which they will workshop with their peers.

Current Faculty Cohort

• Ali Howell Abolo, Associate Professor and Program Director of Fashion Design
• William Albertson, Instructor of English as a Second Language and Linguistics in the Department of English
• Jesse Ballenger, Teaching Professor in the Health Administration Department in the College of Nursing and Health Professions
• Jen Britton, Executive Director, Sustainable Development Strategy
• Llana Carrol, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy
• Jessica Creane, Professor of Serious and Experimental Games in the Department of Game Art and Production
• Alexander Jenkins, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication
• Alison Kenner, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and affiliated with Drexel University’s Center for Science, Technology and Society
• Melinda Lewis, Director of Strategy in the Pennoni Honors College
• Christina Love, Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Physics and Director of Start Talking Science
• Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Mathematics
• Simone Schlichting-Artur, Teaching Professor of German in the Department of Global Studies and Modern Languages
• Scott Warnock, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education and Professor of English in the Department of English and Philosophy
• Steven Weber, Drexel University Vice Provost for Undergraduate Curriculum and Education and Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering