Multi-paged booklet, stapled with a stylized cover page. Matte paper, off-white. Includes introduction to BMC and course offerings and descriptions. Front cover exhibits new design and the font throughout differs from previous bulletins.
Fall 1950 black mountain college bulletin volume 8 no.3
August 20, 1950
Black Mountain College is now completing its seventeenth year of existence as a center of modern educational experimentation. Although it is impossible to completely capture in words the quality of an educational experience, a brief resume of the year’s outstanding activities may indicate the type of work which is possible here.
Right now we are hearing the last concert of contemporary chamber music by the summer quartet; we are playing Noel Coward, Martin Flavin, Bernard Shaw in our lakefront playhouse; we are anticipating a dance concert by Katherine Litz, summer guest faculty in dance; and we have recently heard a Sunday night lecture by Natasha Goldowski on “The social behavior of molecules.”
All year artists, scientists, and craftsman have been busy. Besides the regular exhibits of students and teachers on Sunday evenings, we saw during the fall and spring the work of Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cooper Union, and former students Joan Stack, Ray Johnson, Si Sillman, Joe Fiore and a one-man show in Cleveland, Ellen Siegel won an award in the International Weaving Exhibit, Hazel Larsen received $500 from the Modern Museum for her work in the Infantile Paralysis poster contest. Hazel Larsen and her photography students prepared the college viewbook this year, and published the first number of a photography magazine. Ceramics were exhibited by Robert Turner and members of his new workshop.
Black Mountain College continues to be extraordinary by doing things without “departments”. The lights are on in the new science laboratory on the knoll, and student architects and builders Paul Williams and Dan Rice are hurrying to finish the building for fall use. Three plays were given during the year: “The Judgement” by Franz Kafka was adopted for stage and directed by student Mark Hedden. M.C. Richards translated and directed Jean Coctaeu’s “Marriage on the Eiffel Tower”, which used the talents of dancers, composers, scene designers, and instrumentalists. “The Death of Cuchulain” by W.B. Yeats was performed on the terrace under the Studies Building, and play readings of Paul Goodman’s “Jonah” and Shakespeare’s “Henry IV,I” were given in the community house.
Three writing students, Mark Hedden, Mary Fitton and Jack Boyd, had their work selected by the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina to be discussed at the Spring Arts Forum by R.P. Blackmur and Lionel Trilling.
Modern dance programs, Saturday night concerts, informal music by faculty and students, a medieval party, and special lectures enhanced week-ends.
Among many physical improvements; new porches on South Lodge, the Round House, and the dining hall; fire escapes on the lodges, new roofs. The design class made a new entrance to the Studies Building. The college truck has a new coat of green paint, there is a new calf at the farm, and automatic water heaters in the college buildings. (This because we cut wood for a month last winter instead of buying coal during the strike.) The kitchen has been remodeled, a flower garden blooms where the old chem lab burned, five new ducks have been purchased, and a strawberry patch is planted up the road.
Though we will lose three faculty members this fall, we gain Wesley Huss (of Friends Service and Hedgerow Theatre, Philadelphia) as business manager and teacher of dramatics. Alvin Freeman and family are leaving the college; he is going into active service. Ellen Siegel has resigned to do free lance weaving in New York. N.O. Pittenger, who served as Rector last summer, resigned in November because of health. A successor is being sought.
Among the many visitors to the college during the year have been Nathan Rosen, who came from Chapel Hill to talk about Relativity; Charles Olson, from Washington D.C., to exhibit the drawings of Cagli and to lecture on Objectism in Verse; Merce Cunningham, from New York, to give a week’s classes in dance technique and composition; Richard Ballou, from the Ethical Culture Schools in New York, to talk on educational philosophy. This summer Katya Delakova and Fred Berk made a visiting dance appearance.
Student Peter Nemenyi was graduated in mathematics this spring by Dr. Emil Artin of Princeton University, and received a teaching fellowship in the graduate school of Princeton for this fall. The Summer Session has, in addition, produced much activity in writing (Paul Goodman), sculpture (Leo Amino), acting (Robert Klein), esthetic thought (Clement Greenberg), painting (Theodoros Stamos).
The fall semester opens Sept. 20, 1950. For further information or application forms write the Registrar, Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, N.C.
Black Mountain College Bulletin Volume 8, Number 3
Issued four times a year in April, May, August and November. Entered as second class matter November 4, 1942, at the Post Office at Black Mountain, North Carolina, under the Act of August 24, 1912.
Courses to be offered during the Fall term
Anthropology of Africa Paul W. Leser
African civilizations. Culture areas. Prehistory and history of African tribes. Negro states and political institutions. Social organization. Economic conditions. African arts; languages. The physical races of Africa.
Illustrative cultures; Pygmies, Bushmen, Hottentots, Zulus, Bathonga, Ovimbundu, Masai, Wachagga, Boganda, Shilluk, Beni, Yoruba, Dahomeans, Ashanti, Mano.
European colonization. Acculturation problems. Africa today.
Social Anthropology Paul W. Leser
Economic life. Food gatherers, hunters, farmers, herdsman. Development of agriculture. Money and trade. Division of labor. Communism and private property. Social institutions. Family. Kinship. Sodalites. Education. Age classes. Initiation rites. Castes, classes, slavery, serfdom. The state. Government. Criminal and international law. War. Moral Ideas. Religion. Monotheism, Polytheism, Magic, Totemism, Animism, immortality. Wester superstitions and their origins. Art. Painting and sculpture. Music. Dance. Applied arts. Science.
Introduction to Genetics Paul W. Leser
History of Genetics. Reproduction. Discovery of sexuality. Heredity. Variations due to environment. Variations due to hybridization and recombination. Variation due to mutation. Mendel and his work and methods. Mendel’s law of inheritance. Dominance. Genes. Segregation. Independent assortment. Difference between genotype and phenotype. Investigations since Mendel. Genes and Chromosomes. Linkage. Sex-linked factors. Interaction of factors. Crossing over. The determination of sex. Inbreeding and hybrid vigor. Lysenko. Schroedinger.
The Philosophy of Education A.W. Levi
The nature, meaning and function of modern education. The relation of education to society, tradition and hope. The meaning of college and educational community. Freedom and authority. Probably readings from the following: Plato, Rousseau, Newman, Hutchins, Meiklejohn, Dewey, Kantor.
Social Philosophy Today A.W. Levi
The nature of modern society and the modern state. Philosophical attempts to deal with the problem of power, the relation of economics and politics, and the resolution of conflict. Probably readings from the following: Mill, Marx, Veblen, Mannheim, Bosanquet, Laski, Dewey.
Philosophy from 400 B.C. until 1600 A.D. Max Dehn
The successive emergence of ideas; reading and discussion. The course will be continued in the spring term under Dr. Levi.
American Literature before 1860 David H. Corkram
Predominantly the literature of the early Nineteenth Century, with primary emphasis on the moods of fiction.
Reading Literature M.C. Richards
Materials and approach will be decided after consultation with students who are interested in studying literature. There is always the possibility of working in poetry, fiction, expository prose, drama. One aim is constant: understanding what one reads.
Writing M.C. Richards
The interest is in developing in a student the ability to write whatever he wants to write. This usually takes training in observation, emotional freedom, aural imagination, verbal awareness, nerve. Students are of all levels and bents.
The World of Franklin and Jefferson David H. Corkran
Social, political and intellectual history of Eighteenth Century America.
The South in U.S. History David H. Corkran
A survey of the men, institutions and other forces which have made the South the most distinctive region of the U.S.
Geometry Max Dehn
Elementary, projective, and analytic.
Calculus Max Dehn
Elementary and advanced.
Higher Mathematics Max Dehn
Tutorials in higher algebra and number theory.
Introductory Physics Natasha Goldowski
A course designed primarily for students who are not specializing in science.
Physics and Chemistry Natasha Goldowski
Courses will be arranged according to the level and needs of the students.
Linguistics Fiola Shepard
How we speak and why. Problems of communication. Phonology, morphology, etymology.
French and German Fiola Shepard
Classes for small groups of students who have had no experience, or an unsatisfying experience, of learning foreign languages.
Russian and French Anna Goldowski
Individual tutorials in each language.
Drawing Joseph Fiore
Work in the drawing class will be concerned primarily with drawing from life and still objects, but will also include exercises in control, and free studies in any black and white medium. Emphasis will be places on line, both as a plastic element in itself and as form-defining. Beginning and advanced students will work in the same group.
Painting Joseph Fiore
The work will deal with the painting as a whole, and will not be restrictive as to subject matter, except in the case of beginners, who will be expected to work from still life. Emphasis will be placed on color, plastic and formal relationships, and maintaining the picture plane. Technical considerations will be dealt with as the need arises. Tutorial instruction on request.
Design W.P. Jennerjahn
Things created by design are essences in themselves and consequently offer quality, character, and completeness, in contract to the well-intended, but unfounded creation. No direction is possible in the arts and crafts without an understanding and a controlling of certain basic elements. Using form and texture in the beginning in two or three dimensions, the class traces their workings through forms of visual communication (including Graphic Art forms, Typography, Ads, and Photography). Introduction, analysis, and problems in each major field are presented by the instructor in that field, so that design is considered in Printing, Photography, Ceramics, Physics, Architecture, and Anthropology (which provides a more active stimulus than art history). In addition, weekly problems are aimed at sharpening the senses and demanding imaginative use of conventional and new materials by controlled fabrication and combination. Tutorials are available for advanced students.
Color W.P. Jennerjahn
From antiquity to the present time, color has played a changing role in religion, hierarchies, social custom, language, psychology and business. Naturally it has shown magical changes at the hand of the artist. By disciplined and free studies the class discovers the polarities of color and tries for fresh attitudes through the riddance of color habit. To approach color admitting its multifarious character rather than to try and fit it into confining categories is the concern of the study. A color need not be bound by warm-cool, advancing-receding, melancholy-jubilant, split complement identifications. Studies are made from everything colored; but mainly colored paper, casein and oil paint, and silk screen. Advanced color students are offered a tutorial based on slide projection, scenery and costume color, or a special interest of their own.
The Shaping Forces in Music Vollmer Hetherington
A study of the elements of music, including melody, harmony, form, counterpoint, and rhythm, with a historical analysis of the development of each, as well as practical writing in the materials studied. Open to anyone with a reading knowledge of music.
Music Theory and Practice Vollmer and Louise Hetherington
Tutorials in solfeggio, harmony, composition, counterpoint, and other theoretical subjects depending on the needs of the student. Choral singing, individual instruction in violin and piano.
Voice Training Johanna Jalowetz
Individual lessons aiming toward development and conscious control of the voice. Final study and interpretation of songs and arias.
Bookbinding Johanna Jalowetz
Includes book repair, casing and binding
Ceramics Robert C. Turner
The course will deal with three phases of ceramics: work with material toward a sculptural approach, methods of production, and the technical aspects involved in the making of pottery. Methods will include hand building, use of moulds, and wheel throwing.
Dance Technique Elizabeth Jennerjahn
Training of the instrument so that it may become free for creative work.
Creative Dance Elizabeth Jennerjahn
Experimental work with the design and rhythmic possibilities of movement. The class, as well as the technique class, will probably be supplemented by one or two-week visits by outstanding modern dancers such as Merce Cunningham and Katherine Litz.
Percussion W.P. Jennerjahn
Study and practice in feelings, playing, and writing rhythms as used in dance. Feeling rhythmic phrasing over an underlying pulse. A quest for the fitting instrument, no matter how unorthodox. Construction of tom-toms and beaters for class use.
Acting Wesley Huss
The primary aim of the acting class will be the development of the use of the whole self as an expressive instrument.
Theatre Wesley Huss
An understanding of the functions and meaning of theatre and its component parts will be approached through production.
Farm Workshop Raymond S. Trayer
Practical work in the operation of a small general farm, including livestock management, soil improvement, crop rotation, use of farm machinery.
Photography Hazel Larsen
The basic thinking of the course is concerned with the desire to take the photograph. Form this stems respect for photographic equipment, a thinking in design, and an exacting darkroom procedure.
Printing J.H. McCandless
Work with the various elements of graphic design, including different papers, type faces, and ink colors or combinations. Fundamentals of hand composition and presswork. Design and printing of work for the college, or the student’s own compositions.
