Goddard Blog

A Beginning Farmer Shares Her Journey

Kelly Allen (BAS ‘14) is developing a small farm in Maine where she is growing and marketing vegetables to individuals and restaurants. Her self-designed studies this semester included garden preparation, permaculture design principles, soil science, composting, cold climate farming practices, growing fruits, grains, and beans, GMOs, seed saving, how to market vegetables, and an evaluation… Continue reading A Beginning Farmer Shares Her Journey

July 2013 Achievements

Students and Alumni Kyle Bella (MFAW ’14) had an essay called “Queering racialized bodies,” which explores the relationship between the poetry of Akilah Oliver, Ronaldo Wilson, and the intersections of queer identity and race published online at the Jacket2. Donelle McGee (MFAW ’12) had two poems published in the summer issue of Brainchild Magazine. Tony… Continue reading July 2013 Achievements

Installing The Good

  “Mother Nature wants us to be afraid,” says Rick Hanson, the author of Buddha’s Brain.  Survival of the most cheerful is not, after all, what counts over the millennia.  Survival of the alertest does. The individual who is sensitive to fear will be the first to tell her hunting and gathering comrades that she… Continue reading Installing The Good

Dialogue, Slow Living, & the Mandela Legacy

by Pamela Booker and Karen Stupski In the midst of summer’s scorching temperatures experienced across the country, South Africa celebrated with the world, Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday on July 18th. Although there continues to be grave concern for “Madiba’s” (the endearment used for the beloved elder statesman and also the name of the Xhosa clan… Continue reading Dialogue, Slow Living, & the Mandela Legacy

The Power of Indigenous Documentaries

A highlight for me of the Spring 2013 Port Townsend Undergraduate residency was our guest presenter Tracy Rector (photographed above by David Conklin.) Tracy is Executive Director and Co-Founder of Longhouse Media whose mission “is to catalyze indigenous people and communities to use media as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation, and social change.” Tracy… Continue reading The Power of Indigenous Documentaries

The Being of Human: Art, Ethics, and Engagement

Artistic Practice as/and Knowledge Production in an Age of Uncertainty: Some forty years ago, British visual anthropologist and social scientist Gregory Bateson suggested that the loss of aesthetic wisdom has brought humanity to the brink of unhoming ourselves on earth. “Mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream, and the like, is… Continue reading The Being of Human: Art, Ethics, and Engagement

Tom Lutz

Tom Lutz is the founder and editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. His books — Doing Nothing (American Book Award), Crying (New York Times Notable Book), Cosmopolitan Vistas (Choice Outstanding Academic Title), and American Nervousness, 1903 (New York Times Notable Book) — have been translated into twelve languages and have appeared on theNew York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in New… Continue reading Tom Lutz

June 2013 Achievements

Students and Alumni Maria Chaudhuri‘s (MFAW ’09) memoir, Beloved Strangers, which she started working on at Goddard, is due to be published by Bloomsbury UK in early 2014. Ron Heacock’s (MFAW ’13) story, “Inarguably Dead” is going to be published in the journal, Cease, Cows. Sarah Kishpaugh’s (MFAW ’14) essay, “Remembering Who You Are” appears on… Continue reading June 2013 Achievements

John Clinton Eisner

John Clinton Eisner is Lark’s Artistic Director and is primarily responsible for Lark’s vision.  He co-founded the Lark in 1994 as a community of theater professionals with a shared commitment to new play development. He divides his time between working directly with playwrights and creating strategies with artistic leaders in the U.S. and abroad to… Continue reading John Clinton Eisner

Damien Echols

Born in 1974, Damien Echols grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. At the age of eighteen, he was wrongfully convicted of murder, along with Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley, Jr., thereafter known as The West Memphis Three. Echols received a death sentence and spent almost eighteen years on death row… Continue reading Damien Echols

Damien Echols

Born in 1974, Damien Echols grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. At the age of eighteen, he was wrongfully convicted of murder, along with Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley, Jr., thereafter known as The West Memphis Three. Echols received a death sentence and spent almost eighteen years on death row… Continue reading Damien Echols

Writing and Art Making, a Dialogue

Occasionally I have to convince people of writing’s importance within an artist’s practice. To my mind, the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program’s (MFAIA) emphasis on developing strong writing skills—through the dialogue between students and advisors, as a documentary tool, and as a means of critical thinking—is a fundamental benefit of our curriculum. It serves to… Continue reading Writing and Art Making, a Dialogue

Digital Storytelling Takes Off at Goddard

At the Spring 2013 Port Townsend Undergraduate residency, and again at the Goddard Alternative Media Conference on May 18th, I led digital storytelling workshops. As a sociologist, I am interested in personal narrative as a research methodology. Plus, I am drawn to knowledge that is accessible to audiences inside and outside of traditional academic spaces. Digital… Continue reading Digital Storytelling Takes Off at Goddard

Kathryn Davis

Kathryn Davis is the author of seven novels: Labrador, The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, Hell,The Walking Tour, Versailles, The Thin Place and Duplex. She has been the recipient of the Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2006 Lannan Award for Fiction. She lives in Vermont and… Continue reading Kathryn Davis

Soul Cards and Reflection by Student Nirodha Stearns (MA PSY '13)

  I created fifteen “Soul Cards” [pictured at left] for the Expressive Arts exhibition at our MA in Psychology & Counseling Residency in April 2013. What started out as something like just a compliance to fulfilling coursework for a course on Addiction turned into an adventure in discovery, interaction and personal healing. My father died… Continue reading Soul Cards and Reflection by Student Nirodha Stearns (MA PSY '13)

The Compass, the Straightedge, and the Sector

  Jim Tolpin is a woodworker, prolific author, and faculty member at our neighboring Port Townsend School of Woodworking. We were delighted to have Jim as a guest presenter at the Spring 2013 Undergraduate Residency in Port Townsend, Washington. Jim taught a hands-on workshop, “By Hand and Eye: Design Strategies of Pre-Industrial Artisans for Post-Industrial… Continue reading The Compass, the Straightedge, and the Sector