Re-Enchanting Nature: Humanities Perspectives uses a mix of presentations, discussions, activities, and field trips to engage participants in both group and individual learning experiences. Each day’s curriculum centers on a new primary source or sources, oftentimes with accompanying critical scholarship. There is ample opportunity for critical inquiry, reflection, and sharing of plans and ideas for the classroom. We aim to form a vibrant learning community dedicated to exploring new ideas and exchanging insights. All conversations will be guided by the NEH's Principles of Civility.(link is external)
A detailed schedule follows below.
Week 1
Monday, July 11
Introduction: Disenchantment and Re-enchantment
9:00 AM - Morning Session on Bennett, Berry, et. al.
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Orientation to Carroll College and its Resources
3:00 PM - Prep Time/Individual Meetings with Project Directors
Assignment
"It All Turns on Affection"(link is external) by Wendell E. Barry
Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life, Chs. 1 & 5
Unit One: Shaped by Story
Historical, literary, and even scientific narratives play a seminal role shaping our relations to the rest of nature. Stories encode the ideas and values which we alternately use to set ourselves within or apart from nature. This unit is designed to draw out the complexity in how narratives communicate these ideas and values.
Tuesday, July 12: In the Beginning
9:00 AM - Session on historic animal representations and narratives
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Session on Meloy and narrative
3:00 PM - Prep Time/Individual Meetings with Project Directors
Assignment
Short excerpts from Beowulf & The Epic of Gilgamesh
Visual representations of the Great Chain of Being
Excerpts from Ellen Meloy’s Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
Wednesday, July 13: Oral Traditions (with guest scholars Mike Jetty and Shane Doyle)
9:00 AM - Native American Origin Stories
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Teaching the Stories: Montana’s Indian Education for All Curriculum
3:30 PM - Origin Stories in the Classroom Activity
Assignment
Selections from American Indian Myths and Legends
"From Native North American Oral Traditions to Western Literacy: Storytelling in Education" by Nathalie Piquemal
Thursday, July 14: Pictographs and Poetry (with guest scholar Melissa Kwasny)
9:00 AM - Field Trip to Hellgate Canyon
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Session on Poetry and Nature
Assignment
Pictograph by Melissa Kwasny
Friday, July 15: Privilege and Access
9:00 AM - Session on Bullard and Finney
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Continued discussion and writing reflection
2:30 PM - Pedagogy Session with Christina Torres
Assignment
Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie, Ch. 1
Excerpts from Carolyn Finney's Black Faces, White Spaces.
Week 2
Unit Two: The Many-Faceted Lens
This unit deepens our exploration of ideas and values by engaging more directly with diverse worldviews. We study the presumptions governing common conceptual frameworks for understanding human relations to the rest of nature—from viewing nature as an economic resource needing development, to seeing it as a spiritual resource needing preservation, to stressing our ecological interdependence with it—and weigh their respective intellectual and social consequences. Furthermore, in the spirit of considering the many “lenses” through which we view nature, we consider the epistemological contributions of various disciplinary approaches, asking ourselves what we can learn from law, historical memoir, literature, philosophy, anthropology, empirical science, art, and so on.
Monday, July 18: Worldviews and their construction
9:00 AM - Session on Purdy
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Session on Lopez
2:30 PM - Writing activity
Evening Viewing of documentary Butte, America
Assignment
Jedediah Purdy, "American Natures: The Shape of Conflict in Environmental Law"
Barry Lopez, "A Presentation of Whales"
Butte, America documentary film.
Tuesday, July 19: Field Trip to Butte, America ("The Richest Hill on Earth")
9:00 AM - Travel to Butte, Montana for a tour and discussion.
Lunch in the field.
5:00 PM - Arrive back in Helena.
Assignment
“The Pit” by Nathaniel Miller(link is external)
Wednesday, July 20: Worldviews and their construction II
9:00 AM - Debrief Butte trip. Session on Ansel Adams.
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Session on Adams and Hogan
Assignment
Ansel Adams, “The Artist and the Ideals of Wilderness” and “Problems of Interpretation of the Natural Scene”
Jonathan Spaulding, "Yosemite and Ansel Adams: Art, Commerce, and Western Tourism"
Linda Hogan, Dwellings
Suggested reading (optional): Scott Friskics, “The Twofold Myth of Pristine Wilderness:
Misreading the Wilderness Act in Terms of Purity.”
Thursday, July 21: Inheriting and Transforming Multiple Worldviews
9:00 AM - Travel to Lincoln, Montana for a walking tour of Blackfeet Pathways Sculpture Park.
Lunch in the field
3:00 PM - Pedagogy session with Christina Torres
Unit Three: Bringing it Together in Yellowstone National Park
Friday, July 22
9:00 AM - Execises on LeGuin and Zagzebski
12:00 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Session on Empire of Shadows
Late Afternoon - Screen an episode of Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea?
Assignment
Read Ursula Le Guin’s “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the
Journal of Therolinguistics ”
Read chapters 29-31 of George Black’s Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone"
Week 3
Monday, July 25
Travel to the West Yellowstone Studies Center and visit Yellowstone National Park
Assignment
Gareth E. John, "Yellowstone as ‘Landscape Idea’: Thomas Moran and the Pictorial Practices of
Gilded-Age Western Exploration"
John Muir, Our National Parks(link is external)
Tuesday, July 26: Ecological Survey of Yellowstone National Park
An ecological survey of Yellowstone National Park with Dr. Grant Hokit, professor of biology and environmental science at Carroll College.
Wednesday, July 27: Yellowstone and Native American Cultural Traditions
Native American cultural survey of Yellowstone National Park with Dr. Shane Doyle.
Assignment
Optional: “Bad Medicine” by Owen Wister
Thursday, July 28
A day in Yellowstone National Park. Precise agenda to be determined in consultation with participants, based on the day’s reading.
Assignment
David Quammen, “Yellowstone: Battle for the American West.” National Geographic Magazine.
Friday, July 29
Return to Carroll College for a final discussion and dinner together.