ENGLISH 221.201 / AMCULT 311.202 / WGS 213.201 (3 credits) - Observation
This course will introduce students to a humanities-based framework for observation. Using the landscape as our guide, we will explore the ways in which stories and narrative influence our understanding of what it means to learn from or know the world around us. Our observational skills will be honed by close reading poetry, nonfiction, and fiction written about, in, and in relationship with the natural world (with a focus on the Great Lakes region) and through a variety of exercises in nature journaling, personal reflection, and site visits to the lakes, waterways, and forests of Cheboygan County.
Together we will ask: how might observational work drawn from the humanities differ from scientific observation? How are narratives of observation inflected by race, class, and gender? What kinds of meaning can be created when objects are approached with a different set of priorities and questions? In order to explore this more fully, we will shadow Biological Station students conducting field experiments and identify questions that emerge in conversation with our course readings, discussions, and writing practices. Formal projects will use the patterns that we observe (such as tendrils, branches, mycelial networks) to structure micro essays about our learning experiences at the Biological Station.
NOTE: Offered only at the U-M Biological Station (UMBS) in northern Michigan. Students interested in enrolling can find more information and UMBS application link at https://lsa.umich.edu/umbs/students/courses.html. Enrollment in elected courses will occur if UMBS application is accepted.
This course satisfies the following OLD English major/minor requirements: Not Applicable
This course satisfies the following CURRENT English major/minor requirement: 200-level Foundations and Methods
ENGLISH 242.201 (3 credits) - Learning from the Landscape
To the well-practiced student of the landscape, tangible and visible patterns emerge which illuminate stories of a place and how it came to be. Landscape literacy helps us understand which beings live in different habitats, how beings and environmental conditions relate to each other, and even tell us about our place in time. In ‘Learning from the Landscape’, we will visit ecosystems unique to the Great Lakes region and become familiar with the iconic native plants which call these places home. We will contextualize these interpretations of our physical environments with our worldviews and consider how these lessons relate to our own communities.
More than an ecology class, this course provides a philosophical study of “place”. We will train our eyes to intentionally see the details of the landscape through drawing. We will locate ourselves within our own communities and environments. We will develop a vocabulary to articulate sensory experiences and observations of diverse ecosystems. We will share meals and partner with the Bio Station’s Indigenous neighbors, the Cheboiganing Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. We will care for the Band’s healing garden, learning how plants can form reciprocity-based communities. We will attune our ears to the calls of birds and use sound as another tool for mapping. We will practice respectful interactions with human and non-human communities, turning to the extensive history, knowledge, cosmologies, and culture embedded in the landscape. And continuously, we will contemplate our own identities as another living element of each place we study.
Our texts will include - and then expand beyond - Great Lakes authors of the past and present. Morning class will focus on reading, writing, and class discussion, while afternoons will be out in the field, turning to the landscape as our text. This interdisciplinary course will embrace journaling and writing as the constant thread to tie together a library of experiential field-based learning.
NOTE: Offered only at the U-M Biological Station (UMBS) in northern Michigan. Students interested in enrolling can find more information and UMBS application link at https://lsa.umich.edu/umbs/students/courses.html. Enrollment in elected courses will occur if UMBS application is accepted.
This course satisfies the following OLD English major/minor requirements: Not Applicable
This course satisfies the following CURRENT English major/minor requirement: 200-level Foundations and Methods, Regions (Americas, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland)
