This spring quarter, the Honors community welcomed Professor Oliver Sutter as the new Interim Honors Director for the Honors Program at La Sierra University. I recently met with Professor Sutter to learn more about him and his plans for the Honors Program.
Professor Sutter joined the La Sierra community in 2012, teaching a variety of classes across campus, before becoming part of the Honors community three years ago. Honors students know him for the Science and the Future class, typically taken during junior year, that he teaches with his brother Dr. Nate Sutter. The class draws on the science fiction genre in film and literature to explore issues such as climate change and emerging technologies. As he explains, “It is a humanities class for science majors and a science class for humanities majors,” where students draw from interdisciplinary methods to produce their final projects.
As an undergraduate, Professor Sutter attended Cal State San Bernardino, where he received a B.A. in Art, before moving on to Claremont Graduate University, where he earned an M.F.A. in Painting. His academic interests lie in the intersection of formalism, nostalgia, and memory as they relate to visual ephemera found in glitches in video and digital media. In other words, “the way technology looks when it breaks down or malfunctions, such as when the effects of digital representation become outdated.” He is also interested in the “intersectionality, intertextuality and liminality of singular things which are simultaneously multiple things, like Schrödinger’s cat.”
Watching films, however, is not only one of his academic pursuits but also a hobby of his. He shared that he is “a little bit of a Star Wars fan.” Besides film, Professor Sutter has several other hobbies, including gardening and traveling. For example, he likes to grow different varieties of palm trees and plumerias at home in his garden. He is also passionate about learning more about the natural and cultural history of the Mojave Desert.
Looking forward, Professor Sutter hopes to grow the Honors community, both in South Hall and across campus. While the pandemic is not over, he highlights that the possibility of safe, in-person events will grant students new opportunities for their academic explorations. In particular, he hopes to start an Honors book club and a reoccurring film series, where students can experience influential and important films that are otherwise, for the most part, unknown. He also hopes to expand in-person, student-led events throughout the year by building a sense of community and belonging.
–– Loren Klim (Philosophy, Class of 2022)