THE CURRICULUM
What becomes visible when the view widens?
Eight inquiries move through Self, Other, Society, and World. Creation runs through the year, giving what Fellows discover a form others can encounter.
An animating question throughout the year
What does my fuller participation in life make possible, and for whom?
Eight inquiries explore Self, Other, Society, and World, with Creation woven throughout. Fellows examine familiar assumptions, discover capacities they may have overlooked, and explore what becomes possible with others. The arcs give the year direction; what each Fellow carries forward remains open.
A DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRESSION
Each arc changes what Fellows can notice and do.
01
SELF
What am I perceiving?
WHAT DEVELOPS · PERCEPTUAL AWARENESS
Examine how attention, identity, and experience shape what you notice. Discover desires, strengths, and ways of knowing that familiar roles may leave unexplored.
POSSIBLE INQUIRIES
How much of what I perceive was decided before I looked?
When does conviction become a constraint?
Which parts of my identity still fit, and which have I simply continued?
02
OTHER
What becomes visible through someone else?
WHAT DEVELOPS · RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Encounter someone genuinely distinct. Practice listening without projection and discover what trust and sustained attention make possible between you.
POSSIBLE INQUIRIES
What do I miss when I assume another person experiences the world as I do?
What does it take to remain curious when I feel threatened or misunderstood?
When does helping another person become a way of controlling them?
03
What am I participating in without realizing it?
SOCIETY
WHAT DEVELOPS · PARTICIPATORY AWARENESS
Recognize how norms, incentives, and institutions shape your choices, and how your participation helps sustain or change them.
POSSIBLE INQUIRIES
How do institutions shape what feels natural or true?
What am I helping create simply by participating?
How do we change a system without reproducing what we are trying to change?
What becomes visible when the human is no longer the measure?
04
WORLD
WHAT DEVELOPS · FLEXIBILITY OF SCALE AND FRAME
Explore other forms of intelligence, living systems, scales, and timescales. Examine how your choices participate in a world you are already part of.
POSSIBLE INQUIRIES
How do we recognize intelligence when it does not resemble our own?
How does believing ourselves separate from nature change how we live?
Does the living world have interests of its own?
05
CREATION
What can we make possible together?
Discover what you can make possible together. Give learning a shareable form, encounter its effects, and revise through response.
A midyear and a final public offering bring the cohort’s learning into contact with others. These are expressions of the year alongside changes in relationships, daily practice, and commitments.
STRUCTURE AND DISCOVER
Held with intention. Responsive by design.
The questions shown here offer a glimpse of the territory, not a published syllabus. The five-step inquiry cycle is explained on the Method page ↗.
Held with intention
Five arcs, with Creation woven throughout the year.
Eight inquiries across the year.
Developmental learning outcomes.
A continuing cohort and repeating method.
Responsive by design
The questions emphasized.
Scholars and perspectives invited.
Encounters and fieldwork.
What the cohort creates
ACROSS THE YEAR
The capacities accumulate.
Fellows practice noticing more, drawing on overlooked capacities, and responding with greater imagination, care, and deliberation. These capacities develop within and between people. Their significance lies in how they change lived choices and what those choices make possible for others.
Notice and discern
See a familiar interpretation as one possible account. Separate observation, assumption, and evidence.
Hold and change position
Stay with a tension, consider another frame, and revise a view without losing integrity.
Relate and participate
Encounter difference with greater care and recognize the systems one helps sustain.
Act and contribute
Respond with greater range, make something with others, and learn from its reception.
Help shape questions worth living.
Modus House is inviting researchers, facilitators, practitioners, cultural institutions, and founding partners to help refine the questions, encounters, and forms of Fieldwork that will animate the first year.