Place-Based Mapping

Gavin Van Horn

**This course was designed with Southwestern’s First-year Seminar program in mind; half-semester; could be expanded into a full-semester course on mapping using GIS techniques, highlighting particular areas of environmental concern, demographics, agricultural history, etc.**

Course Description

College life can be one of extreme transience, a perceived way station between youth and “real life,” but it need not be so. A campus is embedded in a multitude of cultural and natural interchanges, which makes it an excellent living “laboratory” for students to explore what constitutes the unique characteristics of a particular place. In this course, students will create a series of layered maps that express and put them in dialogue with their local landscape. Readings in the course will provide “conversation partners” that encourage students to expand their sense of place and community.

Course Objectives

• understand and foster a sense of ecological literacy by learning to “read” the local landscape
• learn what it means to develop attachment to particular places and how this might facilitate broader environmental thinking and a sense of “ecological citizenship”
• think critically about the “storied” landscape and the many (sometimes incompatible) values that inhere to places
• highlight various ecological interdependencies, while considering the lines and layers of connection between the nonhuman and human worlds

Required Readings

Robert Thayer, Lifeplace: Bioregional Thought and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Course Reading Packet (available online through Segue)


Course Requirements

Participation (20%)
This course relies on quality student participation. Not only your presence in class but your deep engagement with the materials will make in-class discussions lively and productive. Absences are not “excused” unless they are personally cleared with me by phone or email prior to the class. I expect you to make it a commitment to attend every class, both for your own personal learning and to contribute to the community of learners in the group. As you read for each week, jot down questions and notes that can benefit our discussions.
Journal (40%)
Students will keep a journal that accompanies and explains their mapping choices. These journals should draw deeply from the course readings, showing the student’s ability to reflect and integrate the thoughts of others with their own discoveries. Question prompts for the journals will be provided.
Maps (40%)
Students will create a series of maps that address different features and relationships within our local landscape. Different maps will have different themes according to the week’s readings. The maps will be layered representations of the local landscape, and will be used to create a final integrated map. Details about materials and construction suggestions will be provided on the first day of class.

Course Schedule

Week 1 ~ Homeplaces
Week one will introduce students to the themes of and expectations for the course. We will explore, through discussion groups, what “ecological literacy” is and its importance for “reading” land, including Aldo Leopold’s reflections on “land heath.” We will also design our first map, unpacking the concept of “home” and “lifeplace.”
readings:
• Thayer, “Introduction” (pp. 1-10) and “Grounding: Finding the Physical Place” (pp. 11-31)
course packet:
• D. Orr, “Ecological Literacy” in Ecological Literacy (pp. 85-95)
• Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden
• Leopold, “Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?” in RMG (pp. 336-37)
• Burroughs, “The Art of Seeing Things”
• P. Berg, “Finding Your Own Bioregion” in Ecological Literacy, ed. by Stone and Barlow (pp. 126-132)
• S.R. Sanders, “Hometown” in A Conservationist Manifesto (pp. 107-116)
Week 2 ~ Watersheds (finding a biological “address”)
Week two will prompt students to think about the most essential of all “resources” – water. Where does water come from? How does it shape and determine the various parts of a landscape? What might it mean to map our homeplaces according to watershed “addresses” rather than by street numbers or built landmarks? We will design our second map by seeing our places through liquid lenses.
readings:
• Thayer, “Living: Awakening to a Live Region” (pp. 32-51)
course packet:
• S.R. Sanders, “The Geography of Somewhere” in A Conservationist Manifesto (pp.91-106)
Week 3 ~ Foraging (food)
Week three will address how food (and eating it) is an intimate part of any landscape. Students will visit the dining hall, drawing connections between the college and sources of food production (from field to plate), as well as the local farmer’s market. Students will choose one food item from each location and “map” its transportation journey. We will also take a hike around campus to identify “wild” plant foods and their historical uses.
readings:
course packet:
• Glassner, selections from The Gospel of Food
• Nabhan, selections from Coming Home to Eat
• Leopold, “The Farmer as Conservationist” in RMG (pp. 255-265)
• Deborah Madison, “Grace before Dinner”
• Anne Vileisis, “Martha’s Diary” in Kitchen Literacy
website help: http://geography.middlebury.edu/applications/Food_Mapping/
Week 4 ~ The Animate Earth (attending to “others”)
This week will involve thinking about the campus from the perspective of a nonhuman animal. What would a squirrel “map” look like? How about a mockingbird? Students will combine an observation exercise with a map from an/”other” perspective, considering how humans may be viewed by the animal they choose. We may also read animal tracks and speculate on events that can be discerned from them.
readings:
course packet:
• P. Shepard, “Counterplayers” in The Others
• B. Lopez, “The Language of Animals” in Wild Earth (pp. 1-6)
• A. Dillard, “Stalking” in A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
• Leopold, “January Thaw” in SCA (pp. 3-5; read in conjunction with tracking activity)
• selections from F. House, Totem Salmon
Week 5 ~ A Storied Land
A guest speaker from the local community (Georgetown) will visit with us about the history of this place (someone from the historical society; or Williamson County Museum). Students will design a map that connects specific events to the value and significance of local places. For this mapping exercise, students will also include digital pictures of places “that matter.” Students will be especially encouraged to think about how personal (and cultural) stories shape perceptions of place and its power to reciprocally influence perception.
readings:
• Thayer, “Reinhabiting: Recovering a Bioregional Culture” (pp. 52-70)
course packet:
• Keith Basso, “Stalking with Stories” in Wisdom Sits in Places (pp. 37-70)
• N. Scott Momaday, “A Man Made of Words” (http://www.naotw.biz/speech/man_made_words_n_scott_momaday)
• Barry Lopez, “Landscape and Narrative” in Vintage Lopez
• Leopold, “Marshland Elegy” in SCA (pp. 95-101); and “Natural History, the Forgotten Science” (online)
• S.R. Sanders, “Warehouse versus Wilderness” (pp. 69-87) in A Conservationist Manifesto
Week 6 ~ Sanctuary
During this week, students will map a site on campus that is a place they associate with solace, peace, and/or contemplation. Readings will discuss what the “numenon” of place might be.
readings:
• Thayer, “Fulfilling: Celebrating the Spirit of Place” (pp. 71-89)
course packet:
• Leopold, “Wilderness” (1935 version) in RMG (pp. 226-229) and “Guacamaja” in SCA (pp. 137-141)
• Sanders, “Simplicity and Sanity” (pp. 169-192) and “Stillness” (pp.193-208) in A Conservationist Manifesto
Week 7 ~ Exchanges
As a way to integrate the various maps that were designed during the course, students will create one final map that encourages them to think about interlinked systems of dependency. The best way to do this may be to trace out a local food web (using Leopold’s figure, “Lines of Dependency in a Community” in RMG [p.304]) and/or trace sources of energy for campus. The readings for this week, including Leopold’s, illustrate the networks that exist between human/nonhuman, culture/nature, urban/rural and are intended to prompt students to think about the complex relationships of dependence – in space and time – that exist in their local worlds.
readings:
• Thayer, “Trading” (pp. 107-143)
course packet:
• Leopold, “Song of the Gavilan” in SCA (pp. 149-154); “A Biotic View of the Land” in RMG (pp. 266-273); and “The Role of Wildlife in Liberal Education” in RMG (pp. 301-305)
Week 8 ~ Setting Forth
In this final week of class, students will present their maps to the rest of the class, explaining their choices, any changes of perspective that have occurred as a result of the mapping exercises, and how they now think about their local landscapes in contrast to the mental maps they may have had at the beginning of the semester. Discussion for this week will consider how our maps are connected to others’ maps, and in what ways bioregional perspectives may facilitate broader civic engagement.
readings:
• Thayer, “Learning: Spreading Local Wisdom” (pp. 231-255), and “Acting: Taking Responsibility” (pp. 256-271)