Syllabus 5/1 (2016) D. Phenix, “Semester-Long Study of Carnivals” SYLLABUS: A SEMESTER-LONG STUDY OF CARNIVALS Deinya Phenix, St. Francis College INTRODUCTORY ESSAY As a sociologist, I have a general interest in investigating the variety of influences on behavior. Over the last decade this general interest has developed along several areas, including crime and deviance over the life course, education, and structural aspects of cultural practices and representation. The course outlined below came about as a result of my work teaching the sociology of religion as a standalone course and teaching culture, deviance, stratification, and gender as modules of general principles of sociology courses. As these are not my primary areas of research, I made the pedagogical choice to incorporate community voices and experience in the lectures. As my personal hobbies of dance and music afforded me a network of talented individuals willing to visit the college and share their culture through guest lectures and demonstrations, I experimented with combining lectures by professional artists or religious practitioners with traditional textbooks and class discussion. On the suggestion of my department chair, I developed a new course that combined my avocational interest in music and dance with the academic topics of culture and systems of belief. At the same time, I observed that many of my students were routinely absent in the early spring due to the irresistible allure of “home” and the tradition of playing mas, i.e., marching, dancing, singing, and role playing in the few days before Lent. I decided that the pull toward this particular tradition, extravagant and popular as it was, had as much influence as many other social forces and as much certainty. As part of the course development, I did some exploratory research in Haiti and Brazil, and I have written some observations of racial consciousness, contested urban spaces, performance- based activism, social service, ethnic representation, and popularization of religious and cultural traditions. I have drawn on some of these themes in developing lessons to engage students in the sociology of carnival. Furthermore, as different as carnivals are across places, the significant overlap in certain practices and themes justifies the investigation of carnival as a single phenomenon. Taught from a sociological perspective, this course uses interdisciplinary materials in diverse formats to engage students in the discussion of the major sociological variables—gender, race, religion, and social class, linked to major social and historical processes—collective behavior, globalization, stratification, representation, social reproduction, and deviance. The course is not 1 Syllabus 5/1 (2016) D. Phenix, “Semester-Long Study of Carnivals” a deep study of any of these topics. Rather, the course introduces students to the application of these core concepts in examining a specific social phenomenon. Thus, the course content is intentionally broad. The course satisfies an upper level social science elective requirement for honors students. Per the college honors program requirements, the course does not have prerequisites. Thus, the first lesson in the course is an overview of the major principles of sociology. This overview equips the students with a basic vocabulary and orientation for following the sequence of readings and issues throughout the course. By the end of the course, the students will have several months of practice applying this vocabulary verbally and in writing. Carnival itself is a very broad term and highly varied set of practices. The inspiration for the course and my research is the pre-Lenten celebration based on the Catholic calendar. However, much of the content concerns the cultures of the African and Caribbean diaspora, and Carnival is defined loosely and includes seasonal celebrations all over the world and any time of the year. For example, students have investigated Mashramani, which occurs in Guyana on the anniversary of its independence in late February. A panel of “burners” presents on the annual summer Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock desert. Other countries and regions discussed are Spain, Italy, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, the southern United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. While there is no single theoretical frame for the course, there are two overarching theoretical frames linked by the cross cultural readings. The first such frame is the set of social and collective elements of the carnivalesque, including moral flexibility and the performative nature of mass celebration. Students begin to explore this frame as they read Ehrenreich’s (2012) statements about Dionysian rites in ancient Europe, and they continue to test this principle as they read about Brazilian Carnaval and American Mardi Gras. The notion of the carnivalesque is even tested in our discussion about disaster, crime and violence later in the course. Another foundational lesson in the course is on the notion of diaspora as a consequence of globalization, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade and contemporary migration. In reading Pieterse’s (1996) and Hannerz’s (1987) texts on globalization, students learn about globalization as an ongoing historical process and the propensity of cultures to blend or clash depending on the circumstances. Given this discussion, one of the course goals is connecting specific cultural practices to themes of ethnic and transnational identity. This theme is personally relevant for immigrant or first generation American students, but resonates with all classmates as we discuss connections with our respective heritages and then compare those to the connections discussed in the readings about carnival in the “first world.” The final writing assignment is a short research paper in which the student applies one or more of the concepts above to their choice of carnival in their choice of geographic location. Before students begin this term paper, they practice such application in weekly writing and discussion assignments. The writing and discussion assignments are designed to serve multiple purposes: (1) they are a guide for processing and assessing the comprehension of the reading; (2) they 2 Syllabus 5/1 (2016) D. Phenix, “Semester-Long Study of Carnivals” connect the readings, different as they may be, to each other. Discussions are based on the writing assignment and are conducted round-robin style. In addition to guiding students toward understanding the social forces of culture, identity and globalization, this course engages students as hosts of a speaker series, bringing in guest artists and scholars from the local community to lecture and demonstrate specific cultural practices. Given this, the writing assignments serve a third purpose: (3) they are a structure for students to generate informed questions for the guest speaker or for the class. Instructors of this course will need to build their own connections to historians, folklorists, musicians, dancers and activists in his or her community. Instructors will need time, approximately four months in advance of the course, to familiarize themselves with the artists’ and scholar’s work, to discuss expectations with the artists and scholars, and to negotiate and prepare speaking contracts with the college or university. As public events with guest lectures usually require speaker honoraria and refreshments for the audience, the course requires a department or shared budget of approximately $2000. Films are also part of the course design, and colleges may find increasing the proportion of film content more cost effective. Speakers are asked to give a formal lecture for 30-40 minutes, then offer a musical or visual demonstration, then open for questions and interactions with the students and other audience members. As the guest lectures and performance/demonstrations are open to the public, additional questions will emerge after the (prepared) questions of the students. By hosting local or regional guest speakers, students will avail themselves of the cosmopolitan capacity of the college or university. In speaking as guests in the series, scholars and artists have the opportunity to reach an audience of undergraduate students primed to ask them questions rooted in the literature and prior class discussion. Even in small or rural communities, instructors should be able to foster such connections between the college community and the practitioners of the culture under study. Honors program policy has also informed my choice to include excursions as part of the course. I use two local establishments for that purpose: the first establishment is a museum with an ongoing exhibit; the second is a local business that imports and distributes materials used in celebration and other carnivalesque practices. Neither type of establishment may be obvious or available in the vicinity of some college campuses, so some initial research, creativity, and liberal use of technology may be essential to running this course. To conclude, this course exists to fulfill the need for upper level sociology or general honors elective that is at the same time responsive to the cultural interests of students and a rigorous investigation of these interests. The course is designed as part of a comprehensive liberal arts curriculum and as such it addresses the college goals of global awareness and preparing students to become citizens of the world. It fits in with the rest of the sociology and honors curriculum in being an application