Four courses designed for a general audience will be presented during the week-long Summer Seminar program at Hope College.
The seminars will run Monday-Friday, July 28-Aug 1. The courses are "Creative Writing: Sampler - Playing with Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Everything in Between!"; "Creative Writing: Memoir"; "Egg on Their Faces: Presidential Scandals in U.S. History"; and "Globalization and Poverty."
The seminars will meet concurrently from 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the air-conditioned Van Zoeren Hall on the Hope campus. Refreshments will be provided during mid-morning breaks.
All of the courses are available for undergraduate credit, on an audit basis or for graduate credit, depending on the needs of the enrollee. Class sizes are limited to 15 students per course.
"Creative Writing: Sampler - Playing with Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Everything in Between!" is open to all levels of experience and will emphasize writing and related readings, and will feature a method for dealing with distraction and procrastination that can be used in generating all different forms of writing. The course will be taught by Dr. Heather Sellers, professor of English at Hope.
"Creative Writing: Memoir" is intended to initiate a lifetime of writing and designed to work "for 18 to 88-year-olds," and will give students the opportunity to craft a variety of "snapshot" accounts of moments from their lives, ranging from everyday joys and sorrows to major events. The course will be taught by David James, adjunct associate professor of English and director of the writing center at Hope.
"Egg on Their Faces: Presidential Scandals in U.S. History" will examine the history of presidential scandals; their short- and long-term impact upon the United States and the presidency; and the circumstantial, societal, institutional and spiritual factors that precipitated presidential falls from grace. The course will be taught by Dr. Fred L. Johnson III, associate professor of history at Hope.
"Globalization and Poverty" will consider what globalization is, whether or not it is good for the nearly three billion people living on less than $2 a day, whether the planet exists in "global apartheid," the role played by different policies and factors, and how individuals can and should respond to globalization and global poverty in their daily lives. The course will be taught by Dr. Joel Toppen, associate professor of political science at Hope.
Enrollment for each seminar costs $230 for those who wish to audit, $375 for one hour of undergraduate credit or graduate credit, and $750 for two hours of undergraduate credit. Pre-registration is advised, although final registration will be on Monday, July 28, from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. in Van Zoeren Hall, which is located along 10th Street between Central and College avenues.
Those interested in attending a seminar should call the Hope College Registrar's Office at (616) 395-7760.