How do we think about the relationship between individual and collective experience? What are different ways that we seek out connection and belonging? How are places and space created to encourage or discourage community making?
Seminars in the Community Learning Community will foster a sense of belonging by exploring the meaning of community and connection; performance in all its aspects; and the creation of a common experience. We look forward to gathering together, exploring community making in multiple ways, and deepening our understanding of ourselves and others.
Signature Events include: visits to local museums, art galleries, music venues, public art and theaters; community meals; service opportunities; movie nights and more.
Quick Facts
Faculty Coordinator: TBD
Capacity: 80
Founded: starting fall 2021
Fall 2021 Courses
A City Divided: History, Arts, Culture, and Erasure in East Austin
A City Divided: History, Arts, Culture, and Erasure in East Austin
Faculty member teaching this course: Liza Manjarrez
The 1928 Plan drew a line in the city’s physical and social fabric forcefully making East Austin the primary home for Black and Latinx residents. Over the last fifteen years, the face(s) has been changing with new developments once again displacing the community. Explore the history, art, culture of East Austin.
Community: Finding Spaces of Belonging
Community: Finding Spaces of Belonging
Faculty member teaching this course: Jennifer Jefferson
Welcome to your new St. Edward’s college community! What does that mean? What are communities? How are they shaped and maintained? How can they help people feel more connected and give a sense of belonging? In this course, we'll explore a range of communities and try to identify ways that they provide people with a sense of connection and belonging.
The Self and the World: Music, Movies, and Essays
The Self and the World: Music, Movies, and Essays
Faculty member teaching this course: Chris Flynn
Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, and many more … This class looks at how artists write, film, and sing versions of themselves, and explores how self expression moves us into community with others. Film critic Timothy Corrigan has written: “the essayistic indicates a kind of encounter between the self and the public domain.” In this class students will analyze and express their own journeys and links with the world around them.
Theater and Community
Theater and Community
Faculty member teaching this course: Michelle Polgar
If, as Charles Vogl writes, we are living in the loneliest period in American history, then what role might theatre play in bringing us back together? How do we define “community;” what constitutes “theatre,” and what makes it enticing? Though performance, guest lectures, field trips, readings and class discussion, students will investigate theatre as a means to build, reflect, engage and inspire communities. There will be show tunes.