Mapping the Terrain: Environmental Thinking & Art Practice

University Wide
Maureen Dawley
Spring 04

This course in an overview of current environmental perspectives intended to enrich our understanding of human to non-human nature relationships and how that understanding can inform our art/creative practice. The class is structured to flow as an investigation of the imagination and approaches to nature and culture via theoretical environmental discourses, the visual, literary and performing arts, and both personal and community activism. As a multidisciplinary 'research' group, we will share our individual experiences and disciplinary knowledge as we examine and evaluate our findings in reflective and applied practice through class discussions, readings, writing, individual or group presentations/exercises and collaborative projects.
Areas of research include aesthetics, ethics, deep ecology, eco-psychology, ecofeminism, environmental history, social ecology, environmental justice, postmodern science, speciesism or any other related areas of interest. To add to a diversity of experience we will embark on field trips and occasional invited speakers will share their ecological insights and expertise. Course activities may on occasion be coordinated.

Texts:
http://www.library.cmu.edu/Research/Arts/Art/EcoReading.html