May 24, 2007

By Lauren Heaton

If the regular school year is reserved for serious learning, then summer, Antioch University McGregor has figured out, is a time to feed the mind some fun with a more edgy educational program. Next month, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first Antioch College Chautauqua, the McGregor Institute for Intellectual Development (MIIND) begins an eight-week series of bite-size courses on subjects such as Hitchcock’s films, the personal stories of a Holocaust survivor, memoir writing and a social history of the American-bred blues. The one-week seminars begin on June 18 and continue through the end of August.

Like the first chautauquas begun by Antioch College president Simeon Fess in 1907 as a series of lectures and entertainment meant to invigorate the intellect, the MIIND series includes a wide variety of courses taught by local and visiting professors and lecturers and open to area residents and current students alike. But unlike the 10-day program in the early 1900s that took place in Glen Helen and attracted so many people it created what a Fess biographer described as a ‘carnival-like atmosphere,’ the modern-day chautauqua continues all summer long and aims to provide continuing education opportunities for those interested in either course credit or just a week of adult interest learning.

Each course runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to noon on Friday. The audit fee of $250 per course includes breakfasts at 8 a.m. and lunches at noon in the Antioch College cafeteria. Registration began this month.

Starting the summer off with intrigue on the screen, McGregor English professor Jon Saari will teach a course called “Hitchcock” from June 18–22 in the Glen Helen Building. The course will focus on two periods of Hitchcock’s career, including his post-World War II American film noirs and his Hollywood blond period, during which all his films starred blond women. Analyzing films such as Rear Window, North By Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, and Strangers on a Train, Saari will talk about Hitchcock as an auteur who wrote and directed his own films to create the vision he saw and created artificial conflict to expose the darker aspects of human nature.

From watching films to teaching with films, Professor Jerry Holt’s course “Teaching the Movies” will follow from June 25–29 at the Antioch Inn. Holt, the dean of Liberal Studies at McGregor, has designed this seminar to help high school teachers utilize various eras of the American feature film as a classroom teaching tool for both history and literature courses. The themes will include films by Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra and Orson Welles, along with westerns, war films and others.

The following week, July 16–20, MIIND will present “Writing Your Culture,” with Lucrecia Guerrero, a novelist from the Antioch Writer’s Workshop who will teach composition at McGregor this fall. This writing intensive workshop, conducted at the Antioch Inn, is designed to teach how to recount one’s cultural heritage using sensory description, dialect, characterization and other tools to enrich the writing.

Holt will also facilitate a course on “The Holocaust” along with guest lecturer Sol Factor from July 23–27 at the Antioch Inn. Factor, a German-born Holocaust educator who was awarded a Mandel Fellowship through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will share his personal story. He will help students gain an understanding of the holocaust concept that affected not only Jews but all those under Nazi rule as well as other victims of genocide throughout history.

From July 30–Aug. 3, Holt will teach another course at the Antioch Inn on Antioch graduate Rod Serling, who created the television series “The Twilight Zone.” The social service philosophy of Antioch’s founder, Horace Mann, can be found in much of Serling’s work, including several episodes of his television series and some of his radio broadcasts in the 1950s and 1960s.

Next, from Aug. 6–10 at the Antioch Inn, Holt will teach “Ohio’s Secret History,” another course aimed at highlighting the untold stories of Ohio’s Native Americans, the frontier society, the heartland identity, natural disasters and the “hot button moments” in the state’s past, Holt said, which school teachers can incorporate into their curricula.

If participants choose not to open a book for professor Joseph Cronin’s course, “The Blues: A Social History,” he doesn’t care, he said, as long as they find time to hear the music he feels became the backbone of modern American culture. The course, which takes place Aug. 13–17 at the Antioch Inn, will use documentaries, performances, biographies and interviews to see how the music of blues kings and queens Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, The Allman Brothers, Stevie Ray Vaughn and others embodied the American transition from plantation fields to migrant laborers to urban settlers. The course will also explore a view of America that was shaped not by its coasts but by the movement that began at its center, near the Mississippi, and moved outward.

The MIIND series will wrap up with “Once Upon a Time in Glen Helen,” a course taught by Antioch University Archivist Scott Sanders from Aug. 20–24 at the Antioch Inn. Using the model of the early chautauquas to explore a theme, Sanders’ course will study how themes in American history, such as prehistory, early settlement, women’s history, transportation, progressive reform and utopian socialism, have shaped Glen Helen.

This year is the second year McGregor has sponsored a series of courses that are open to the public and foster an interest in lifelong learning. According to Holt, last year McGregor held three courses, some of them repeated this year. And, he said, he envisions the school will have many more courses from the business, management and education faculty to offer next year.

To register for MIIND, call 769-1818.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com