REL professors teaching at the cutting edge
Team Research Communities
Anne Porter and Lynn Swartz Dodd have been selected by the College to lead Undergraduate Team Research Communities. Team Research "allows students and faculty to work together in intellectually intense, yet informal settings" over the course of the academic year. Prof. Porter's team will be focusing on Community and Tradition. While Command and Control: The Archaeology of Power is the theme Prof. Swartz's group will be pursuing.
Multimedia Literacy
Courses by Bruce Zuckerman and Sheila Briggs will be featured as part of the College's collaboration with the Institute for Multimedia Literacy.
As part of the Multimedia in the USC Core, Prof. Zuckerman will be teaching LING 295g - The Ancient Near East: Culture, Archaeology, Texts. LING 295g "is a linguistics class that uses digital imaging to examine ancient inscriptions and to explore the development of writing in the ancient world. Professor Zuckerman will focus this semester on a collection of 50 cylindar seals housed at the Spurlock Museum. Working in tandem with a similar course at the University of Illinois, students will examine, analyze and document these ancient seals, building a unique – and unparalleled – database for other scholars to use."
Prof. Briggs will be teaching REL 132g - Religions of the West. In the course, students will examine "the emergence of the three Western monotheisms out of the world of Western antiquity, beginning with second-temple Judaism and ending with the Muslim conquests in the 7th century.
Besides rigorous training in the course subject matter, these classes will provide "hands-on experience in multimedia authorship in an intensive learner-centered environment."
REL faculty have been at the multimedia forefront; Dean Aoun recently cited Professor Dodd's courses as a prime example:
Many of our faculty have already incorporated multimedia teaching into their courses, and I would like to share one stellar example with you. For a course in Near Eastern and Mediterranean archaeology taught by Lynn Swartz Dodd, three students prepared a report on ancient Troy that was a computer-generated, fully interactive presentation. To produce their report, not only did they pore over excavation reports, ancient writings, and archaeology books, they studied computer graphic design and animation programs. The end result resembled a superbly-orchestrated website and included a three-dimensional model of Troy. It allowed viewers to survey the city's geography, study Homer's account of the Trojan War, and critically explore questions of historical accuracy.