. This online course is offered through the Center for Distance Learning. You can take this as an individual course or as part of an online degree program, with term starts in March, May, September, November and January. View current term offerings and all online courses. Click here to register for online courses.
Other Areas: The Arts | Business, Management & Economics | Community & Human Services | Communications, Humanities & Cultural Studies | Educational Studies | Historical Studies | Human Development | Labor Studies | Science, Math & Technology | Social Theory, Structure & Change
Liberal Study
Upper Level
Credits: 4
Term(s) Offered (Subject to Change) : Jan.
Thinking of place as a community in a geographical location or physical environment, this interdisciplinary course seeks to offer an opportunity for a place-based approach to environmental history. Explore the environmental history and ecological issues in and/or about the place you live (or some other place of interest), whether you define that place as a neighborhood, a whole village or town or city, a geographical region, or a watershed.
Collaborate with other students interested in the arts, culture, or history to learn concepts for thinking about place as a process, as a coming together of nature and culture, of the local and global, and of issues ranging from gender, class, ethnicity, and the environment to modernization, conservation, and preservation. Design and share with peers the results of your own projects about artistic expression and the place you are interested in. "Visit" one another's place online as part of a cross-place comparison. Some of the reading materials for this course have been pre-determined and are available at the bookstore. However, each student, in consultation with the instructor, will be responsible at the outset of the course for proposing a set of individualized, place-specific research topics that will comprise the bulk of their work throughout the term. (For example, a project might require acquiring a scholarly book and a popular book about your place in order to analyze and compare how they represent its landscape.)
Each student will be responsible for acquiring (borrowing or purchasing) in a timely fashion the books and materials necessary for these projects. Such materials are not available at the bookstore.
Note: This course overlaps with Exploring Place: Humanities, Exploring Place: History, and Exploring Place: Arts. No more than one of these three should be included in a degree program.
