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African Studies

Faculty at the five campuses sustain a range of collaborative activities through the African Studies Council, which includes representatives from each of the five institutions. Among these activities are oversight of the Five College African Studies Certificate Program, organization of a very active Five College Faculty Seminar in African Studies, and sponsorship of lectures, other cultural events, and longer residencies by distinguished visitors (most recently, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, film-maker Safi Faye, and writer Ama Ata Aidoo). The Council also publishes a list of courses in African Studies currently being offered at the five institutions.

Since mid-1997, the African Studies Council has acted as the editorial board of the African Studies Review, the principal journal of the African Studies Association. Council members Ralph Faulkingham (UMass) and Mitzi Goheen (Amherst) co-edit the journal, and Eugenia Herbert (Mount Holyoke) is book review editor.

In November 2001, the Council announced the Five College African Scholars Program. With partial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Program will bring cohorts of African scholars with research interests in African studies to the five institutions for one-two semester residencies, initially for a period of five years. Fellows of the program will be supported in residence at the five colleges as they prepare research projects for publication. They will also participate together in an ongoing faculty seminar with colleagues from the five institutions. The Council expects to welcome the Program's first Fellows in January 2003. For further information, contact Nathan A. Therien, Director for Academic Programs, Five Colleges, Incorporated.

The African Studies Council is chaired by Léonce Ndikumana (UMass Amherst).

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Anthropology
The study of anthropology is greatly enriched by the presence of a large and varied range of scholars at the five campuses who meet regularly, share their research, and lecture in each other's classes. A weekly newsletter, Megamemo , issued by the University's Department of Anthropology/Archaeology, keeps students and faculty alike informed about new courses, lectures and films at the campuses, as well as major events being sponsored here and elsewhere.

As part of a wider collaborative effort to expand the opportunities for undergraduate study and field work in medical anthropology and related areas, the anthropologists helped to develop a Five College Certificate Program in Culture, Health, and Science (CHS).

One of their newest collaborations is a day-long Five College Symposium each year in which undergraduates present their research to the faculty and to their peers at all the campuses.

Art
The faculty in studio art collaborate to offer a unique team taught course once each year. The Five College Advanced Seminar in Drawing aims to give upper-division students an opportunity to carry on a semester-long visual exploration of a theme as they are exposed to a multitude of perspectives and styles and mediums presented by faculty from all five campuses, many of whom are practicing artists who show regularly. The course has space for up to five upper-division students from each campus and sessions rotate from campus to campus each week. One faculty member serves as coordinator of instruction and meets with the class twice a week. Up to nine other members of the faculty take turns offering one lecture a week. The course includes two open crit sessions in which all members of the faculty take part, and a student exhibition featuring work produced in the course.

The members of the planning committee for the course include:
Amherst College - Bob Sweeney
Hampshire College - Bill Brayton, Judith Mann
Mount Holyoke - Bonnie Miller, Joe Smith, Nancy Campbell
Smith - Gary Niswonger, John Gibson, Dwight Pogue
University - Hanlyn Davies, Ron Michaud

Five College Canadian Studies
The Canadian Studies Program sponsors forums on Canadian history and culture as well as on current issues. From time to time, the program also makes available modest stipends to support faculty and student research or research-related travel to Canada. In the past, many of its activities have been funded by grants from the Canadian Embassy and a modest bequest, as well as the Five College Faculty Seminar Program.

in 1998-99 and 1999-2000, the program co-sponsored a project linking a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University with a similarly diverse group from Concordia University in Montreal for an exploration of "Identify, Culture, and Citizenship: New Perspectives on Governance in Canada." The project was funded under the Program for International Research Linkages of the International Council for Canadian Studies, which in part supported an ongoing seminar held alternately at the two institutions throughout the 1997-98 academic year. Other sponsoring groups for the project included the University of Massachusetts Translation Center, and the Center for Research on Citizenship and Social Transformation at Concordia University.

The chair of the Five College Canadian Studies Program is Robert Schwartzwald, Associate Professor French and Francophone literature at the University, and chair of the Five College Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA).

The Five College East Asian Languages Program (EALP):
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
Faculty members in East Asian languages meet regularly throughout the academic year to exchange information about course offerings and to support professional development for faculty and teaching assistants at the colleges and University. Recently, they have organized and participated in workshops on the teaching and assessment of oral proficiency, the use of "authentic texts" in the classroom, and uses of web-based and other forms of computer-assisted instruction. The program also supports joint trips by faculty to professional conferences and outreach projects for pre-college instruction in East Asian languages.

Because instruction in Chinese and Japanese is broadly coordinated across the five campuses, after completing introductory instruction at their home campuses, students are able to select among a range of advanced-level courses at the other campuses, particularly the University. Instruction in Korean, both at the beginning and intermediate levels, is presently offered at Smith College.

To find all current offerings, including introductory language acquisition courses, consult the Five College Course Catalog. The Program mantains a special list of upper division courses.

For 2000-2001, the faculty co-chairs of the Five College East Asian Languages Program are Maki Hubbard, East Asian Languages and Literatures, Smith College and Wako Tawa, Asian Languages and Civilizations, Amherst College.

Film Studies at the Five Colleges
The Five College Film Council works to coordinate the study of film and video at all five campuses. The members of the Council include faculty drawn from a number of disciplines ranging from foreign languages to literature, history and media studies. They meet regularly to exchange information about courses as well as faculty appointments, and plan a coordinated approach to meeting common needs for instruction.

The Council oversees the shared teaching duties of joint faculty appointments who provide instruction in the hands-on experience of production to complement and bridge to courses in film theory and history currently offered at each campus.

The Council also sponsors an annual festival of student film, held in the spring.

Visit the UMass Film Studies Website for a schedule of film classes offered throughout the Five Colleges, and more information.

Multicultural Theater
The Five College Multicultural Theater Committee is funded by the chairs of the theater departments as part of their Five College budget and charged with furthering a multicultural perspective in theater. It does so by supporting productions, visits from guest artists, and workshops that promote an appreciation of diversity and difference. The committee has special interest in encouraging student productions that have a multicultural focus. Guidelines for grants are available from a member of the committee and from the Theater Departments.

In the spring of 1997, the committee launched WORD!, an annual multicultural student play-reading festival designed to encourage student writers who are engaging multicultural themes. Each year in the spring semester, up to ten short, original works are selected to be presented as staged readings. Their authors receive an award of $100 from the James Baldwin Memorial Fund. The festival is hosted by a different campus each year.

More information about the Five College Multicultural Theater Committee, about requests for funding, and about WORD! is available from a member of the committee:

Amherst College - Peter Lobdell, Department of Theater
Hampshire College - Kym Moore
Mount Holyoke College - Alycia Smith-Howard
Smith College - Kiki Gounaridou (spring)
University of Massachusetts Amherst - Gilbert McCauley and Roberta Uno

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