 Release date: August 1, 2000 Contact: Deb Hammacher, Assistant Director, 404-727-0644, or dhammac@emory.edu
"Stressed-out Brain" Helps Freshmen
Understand and Cope With First Year of College
"Stressed-out Brain" Helps Freshmen
Understand and Cope With First Year of College
"Shakespeare and Music" Fulfills
Requirements on Many Different Levels Thanks to a grant from the college's joint activities fund, the students will see performances of the works they study, including the Atlanta Ballet's "Romeo & Juliet," and the Georgia Shakespeare Festival's "Midsummer Night's Dream." The Emory University Orchestra will perform a concert of works inspired by Shakespeare to complement the course. The class will look at the plays and how the various musical pieces relate, where they differ, and even music within the plays themselves. Students also will present reports on Shakespeare-inspired music not covered in the course, including contemporary pieces such as "West Side Story." Students will use a web site developed by Cavanagh for the course that eventually will include video and audio clips. "I think this course is going to be a lot of fun, and I’m
looking forward to learning a tremendous amount myself," says Cavanagh,
the English professor on the teaching team. "I like the music, and
I’ll be able to appreciate it with a higher level of sophistication."
For his part, Arnold is a great lover of literature and avid book collector,
so this class is the marriage of two passions. "To be able to concentrate
on music in this way, to look at it for its subject matter, I’ll
be able to teach pieces that I’ve never taught before," Arnold
says. He adds that the chance to work with a Shakespeare scholar is a
treat for him. Apparently a lot of students feel the same way; the course
filled up as soon as registration opened.
"Shakespeare and Melville:"
A New Course Taught by President Bill Chace That Explores Issues
of Leadership, Ambition and the Nature of Loyalty
Emory's Lipstadt Returns to Classroom
After Highly-Publicized Libel Trial
Theory-Practice Approach Helps Students
Understand Relationship Between Religion, Natural World Return to News and Events |
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For more information contact: TheWeb@emory.edu
High school might have been a breeze
for many incoming Emory freshmen. Dreams of careers as doctors, musicians,
lawyers, professors and business tycoons fill their heads as they head
for campus. Then comes the first semester of college filled with organic
chemistry or calculus, and a dizzying array of activities competing for
their time and attention. A new freshman-only seminar, "The Stressed-out
Brain," looks at the biology of stress, so students can understand
what's happening to them during their first year at college. They will
examine the difference between physical and psychological stress, what
causes it, the effects of short-term and long-term stress, and strategies
for coping with it. 
For music majors who still needs to fulfill a writing requirement, or
biology majors who are interested in classical music but intimidated by
taking a formal music course, or for those who just can't get enough of
Emory President Bill Chace has
taught for a total of 35 years, including throughout his presidency at
Wesleyan and now at Emory. But this semester, Chace (who is a James Joyce
scholar) is teaching a new course for non-English undergraduates on "Shakespeare
and Melville." The students will study a total of six plays and works
by these authors and explore issues such as the costs of action and inaction,
the advantages and disadvantages of great ambition, the private life vs.
the public life, and the nature of loyalty--to others, to institutions
and to codes of behavior.
Among the questions considered
by the students will be "how do we assay the probabilities that what
we find in a book can ever plausibly be connected to the life we have
led and known." Chace clearly brings a unique perspective to these
discussion topics. As he has noted, "…a professor can become
a president---only if he keeps clearly in his mind the ruling fact that
his presidency is but a peculiar distillation of his knowledge of the
classroom and its unique and captivating drama…" 
Professor Deborah Lipstadt will
return to the Emory classroom this fall to teach her undergraduate course
on the Holocaust after winning a highly publicized libel suit brought
by Holocaust denier David Irving. The trial, which concluded in London
this past spring after consuming a year of Lipstadt's professional and
personal lives, generated international media coverage that has brought
discussions on the nature of history and truth to the forefront of public
consciousness. During the course students will have an opportunity to
meet and talk with survivors of the Holocaust, and also to discuss with
Lipstadt the intellectual and emotional challenges of combating Holocaust
denial. Lipstadt, director of Emory's Institute for Jewish Studies, is
author of "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and
Memory" (1993), the first full-length study of the history of those
who attempt to deny theHolocaust. For more information go to: 
How do you teach students about the
Buddhist concept of sitting on a rock until you "become" that
rock? In a course on religion and ecology, Professor Bobbi Patterson uses
a teaching strategy known as theory-practice to help students understand
and internalize the relationship between religion and the natural world.
Students attempt to unpack the explicit or assumed practices behind the
concepts, from philosophical world-views such as Buddhism, or theistic
approaches such as Christianity. Once they identify those practices, they
go do them, whether it's meditation in a natural setting, or detailed
observations of an urban landscape. "The combination of thinking
and doing together," says Patterson, "allows students to become
both teachers and self-initiated learners. It's a powerful way to learn."
For more information on theory practice learning go to: