Students in the Environmental Humanities Field Course will develop habits, perceptions, and skills for attuning to relations between humans and the more-than-human world inspired by the arts and humanities. Depending on the specific year, the course may focus on visual arts, poetry, ethnography, creative nonfiction, sound arts, and/or filmmaking. Regardless of the specific media, the course asks students to cultivate a discipline of regular, careful “field observations” based on their relations and interactions with SITW’s community partners, both human and more-than-human. The goal of these observations—whether they take the form of written words, sculpture, sketches, digital images, or sound—is to learn new ways of seeing, feeling, listening, and engaging with our multiple entanglements with the West. Along the way, students will reflect on the ethics, politics, and aesthetics of their work, and build toward a capstone project, typically a piece of writing or art for a broader, non-academic audience. Required of and open only to students accepted to Semester in the West.
Acceptance to the Semester in the West program.