ABSTRACT
In "The Centrifugal Classroom", Linda Woodbridge describes, "The postmodern: a decentered world where hierarchical, central authority yields to the power of the people, where the official feast succumbs to the anarchic, centrifugal forces of carnival—the decentering, antihierarchical perspective of feminism has contributed a good deal to the construction of that world. The modern city with its centralized skyscrapers and its Central Park is dissolving into the unfocalized postmodern landscape whose democratic suburbs and shopping malls refract each city's center into many centers". The transformation of the course begins, as Woodbridge suggests, with a rethinking of the physical geography of the classroom, an act that inevitably alters the mental geography of the course as well. The project begins with a series of "questions" appropriate to each phase of the project that serve to jump-start the students' research. The research journal represents a significant investment of time and energy, both from students and from the instructor.
