With Gwynne Brown ’95, Professor of Music
Classes for a Changing World is a new regular feature in Arches that will spotlight one of the scores of inspiring, innovative, and timely courses offered each semester at Puget Sound.
CLASS DESCRIPTION
The Wizard of Oz is a classic 1939 film musical that not only tells a great story through song, dance, and dazzling visuals, but also has provided a rich text for scholars from a rainbow of different disciplines to examine and interpret. This course, offered in fall 2024, used the movie as a starting place for connecting with classmates, exploring the liberal arts, and as an intriguing metaphor for the beginning of the college experience.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Like the other new 100-level Connections courses, CONN 139 combined an exploration of the course theme with discussions and activities to help first-year students thrive in college. We looked at The Wizard of Oz through disciplinary lenses including history, sociology, philosophy, music, and dance studies. The movie sparked lots of valuable conversations: Where can you find support? What obstacles do you face? How do you handle disillusionment? What does collaboration look like? Who is a leader?
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE…THE MURRAY BOARDROOM?
The class project was a free participatory screening of the movie in the Murray Boardroom. Audience members received goody bags with props to use throughout the movie—kazoos, "apples" (actually red beanbags) to throw, and bubbles for Glinda’s appearances. Three string players in the class performed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow" before the show. Students held up cue cards so the audience knew when to boo, chant, or applaud. It was a big success!
THE PROF’S PERSPECTIVE
I created this course because I love The Wizard of Oz, and I knew it would offer endless material for students to think about and discuss. The movie really resonates with the first-year college experience: new experiences and friendships, creativity and resilience in the face of challenges, and more. I didn’t realize when I proposed CONN 139 that Wicked would hit theaters during the semester! The whole class got to see it in November, and we enjoyed dissecting it together.
