The Populus Learning Community

1. The Populus Learning Community People, Crowd, Multitude

2. What is Populus? In Populus, we “explore the dynamics of cultures and societies, masses and movements.” This year our general theme will be “Who are we? Searching for Identity in Material and Symbolic Culture.” We’ll explore ways in which society and culture shape our identity.

3. Some Questions We’ll Consider • How does society and culture influence our identities? • What role do material goods play in shaping our identities? • What role do texts and other symbolic knowledge play in shaping our identities? • How do we influence society and culture?

4. Populus Courses • Fall • UCOR 101: Thinking and Writing Across the Curriculum • CLSX 105C: Digging for Identity • UCOR 141: Biblical and Historical Perspectives • Spring • SOC 101: Survey of Sociology

5. UCOR 101: Thinking and Writing Across the Curriculum In UCOR 101 we will consider the ways in which we “read”“texts.” Not just essays, letters, books, but also “texts” such as blogs, tweets, sculptures, award winning movies, songs, clothing trends, and all other sorts of material artifacts our culture uses (and misuses) to create our individual (and public) identities. We will deeply analyze and explore history alongside popular culture and discover the ways in which we respond to, misread, and create. We will compose our own documents or “texts” to best argue and illustrate who we are as a people.

6. Classics 105C: Digging for Identity In this introduction to archaeology, we will consider the various artifacts that humans have created and used over a period of 2.5 million years. What can this stuff reveal about past people? How and why did they use it? How did it shape who they were? And how do we use (sometimes abuse?) it to define who we are today? This course will explore such questions. Along the way, we will learn about the aims, history, methods, and significance of the discipline of archaeology and will focus on archaeological sites in the Mediterranean and Near East. As will be immediately clear, at the heart of this course is the identity of human beings, past and present.

7. UCOR 142: Biblical and Historical Perspectives This introductory course introduces students to basic information about the Bible’s origins, contents, and history of interpretation. The first part of the course will focus on issues of interpretation. The second half of the course will focus on studying the complex unity-in-difference of the Bible as a single canon of diverse texts; we will reflect on the issue of the unity of the Old and New Testaments and some of the various ways the Old Testament and the New Testament can be read as co-existing in a difficult, tension-filled conversation with each other.”

8. SOC 101: Survey of Sociology • In this introduction to sociology course, we will consider how society shapes our identities, values, and behaviors. In particular, we will focus on how ascribed statuses (gender, race, ethnicity, and/or social class) influence our lives, shape our opportunities, and in part, define us. We will also consider how our lives might be different if we were living in a different culture or a different era. We will explore how society through the socialization process hides its influence on our identities, values, and behaviors. Finally, we will consider how we influence society and create social change.

9. Service Learning and Other Activities • In the Fall, we will be working with school-age children to help them explore the meaning of objects from an archaeological perspective. • In the Spring semester, we will be working at a soup kitchen to explore the impact of ascribed statuses on our identities and life chances from a sociological perspective. • We will be reading the graphic novel “Motel of the Mysteries” by David Macaulay and exploring its message for each of the courses.