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.
The year begins with the familiar: how we perceive and make sense of our own lives. It moves into another person’s experience, the social worlds we participate in, and perspectives beyond the individual human viewpoint.
These arcs give the year direction. The particular questions remain open to research, contributors, and what the founding cohort discovers.
A DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRESSION
Each arc changes what Fellows can notice and do.
01
SELF
What am I perceiving?
WHAT DEVELOPS · PERCEPTUAL AWARENESS
Fellows examine how attention, memory, embodiment, identity, and certainty shape what they notice. They practice distinguishing what happened from the interpretation they first gave it.
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
Fellows encounter another person as distinct from themselves. They practice listening without projection, staying present across disagreement, and noticing where their first account of someone was incomplete.
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?
SOCIETY
03
What am I participating in without realizing it?
WHAT DEVELOPS · PARTICIPATORY AWARENESS
Fellows recognize how groups, norms, incentives, moral frameworks, and institutions shape what feels natural, possible, or true. They examine their own participation within those systems.
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
Fellows shift among organisms, systems, and timescales. They practice seeing patterns and interdependencies that a single human perspective can miss.
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?
Fellows make something with what they discover along the way. Creation asks them to loosen attachment to an individual idea, work across perspectives, and discover what making reveals that discussion alone cannot.
05
CREATION
What can we make possible together?
A midyear and a final public offering give the cohort’s learning a life beyond the room. Each offering can meet a real audience, receive a response, and be revised.
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.
Modus is designed to expand the range with which Fellows perceive, relate, discern, participate, act, and create. These capacities are not ends in themselves. They support more deliberate choices, more honest relationships, and contributions better aligned with what Fellows value.
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 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.