Instead of taking the usual academic or “personal growth” workshop, some students who stayed on campus this year during Winter Term chose to immerse themselves in projects tinged with a certain urgency and significance because of their relation to the events of Sept. 11.
“The goals for interdisciplinary [classes of this nature] are to involve all participants in a meaningful intellectual life as a community,” Professor of English and Director of Winter Term T.S. McMillin said. McMillin was the main force behind the formation of the 9/11 classes. His position as WT Director was created this year, in efforts to widen the scope of on-campus Winter Term offerings.
McMillin headed the largest and most popular of the Sept. 11 related classes, the Special Current Event Project. Through faculty lectures SCEP brought together several perspectives on the events of Sept. 11 and explored different ways for the nation to respond to terrorism. The class included lectures on everything from U.S. foreign and military policy to questions of how art will be affected by the tragedy.
“Part of the importance [of this course],” McMillin said, “is that it can bring to the fore our fears, uncertainties, questions and complaints…and enable us to figure out what to do next.”
Professor of Art History Andrew Shanken’s class, “Design after Destruction,” dealt with the more practical issue of what to build in place of the World Trade Center. Students studied several different solutions to the problem, later formulating and outlining their own ideas. The small class also took a road trip to New York to see the ruined building site they would be working with, viewing it from several different angles.
“Being able to see the devastation and the horrible beauty of the crater was an altering experience,” Shanken said. “I think the success of the trip was that it really made the complex problem [of rebuilding ground zero] palpable.”
The class’s goal of drawing up a practical but meaningful replacement for the World Trade center was daunting. In the end, Shanken was impressed by the sensitivity with which his students dealt with the important issues in their plans.
He pointed out to his class that despite the tragic deaths that it caused, the destruction of the World Trade center opened up certain possibilities for development in New York City. In their plans, all the students preserved some of the open space that has been left among the ruins.
“The great commodity [in New York City] is open space,” he said.
Shanken hopes to have his students’ plans published in the Journal of Architectural Education.
Professor of Theatre Roger Copeland’s class, “Art in the Aftermath of 9/11,” also attempted to respond to Sept. 11 in constructive and creative ways. With several students, he started a digital video that looks at the tragedy from an artistic and poetic viewpoint.
“My purpose is to explore whether art can add anything to the barrage of non-fictional commentary that an event of this magnitude inspires,” Copeland said. A central image in the film is the juxtaposition of ground zero with Brueghel’s tower of Babel, one of the earliest images in Western mythology of a skyscraper.
“The connection just came to me based upon how much the gnarled remains of the steel frame [of the World Trade Center] actually looked like the Brueghel painting,” Copeland said.
McMillin feels that these new classes made Winter Term more intellectually stimulating and involving than it has been in the past.
“We have made an important move this month; we have made an escape from escape, a retreat from retreat, turning to each other and to numerous facets of our world today,” McMillin said.