date last updated: 29 December 2002
People, Place, and Story
Type of Course:
Online with beginning and ending residencies at Vermont College
Credits: 3 Graduate, Undergraduate,
or CEU
Course Number: INTS-575-O
Track: Spirit of Place
Faculty: Leslie Van Gelder,
Ph.D. (click for a
brief biography)
Time: Fall
2003
Residencies: Opening Residency
5-6 October 2002,
Closing Residency 11-12 January 2003, at
Vermont College,
Union Institute and University, Montpelier (click for further information on
this site)
Registration Dates: Registration deadline
2 September 2002
Course
Dates:
5 October 2002-12
January 2003
Costs: At the 2002-2003 rates, Graduate or Undergraduate Credit
tuition $1010.00, CEU tuition $910.00.
Learners are also responsible for their travel, room, and board for
Residencies, reading materials, internet and computer expenses
Prerequisites: Undergraduate degree for pursuing Graduate
Credits
Course Description:
When places are actively sensed, the physical landscape becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving imagination, and where the latter may lead is anybody’s guess.
Keith Basso,
from Wisdom Sits in Places
The sense of place is often so infused into people’s lives that we do not always have the vocabulary to tease out the ways in which our relationship with place impacts us. This course will look at the ways in which place affects our biological makeup, language, social and psychological development. It explores the ways in which cultures who value place create structures of meaning through story, and so considers anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff and communication’s theorist Walter Fisher’s hypothesis that humans are Homo narrans, the storying species by asking what impact might embracing the role of the storying species have on the nature of the world?
Course Objectives and Outcomes:
Before the course begins, participants will do the required readings and submit a three to five page paper described below to the instructor by email attachment. Throughout the course, participants will work on an individual project for presentation during the last three weeks. The course begins and ends with residency weekends in Vermont where learners will shape their individual research questions and form a trusting community with whom they will share their work.
The online portion of the course will follow a weekly calendar with the following structure:
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Weekly readings will be posted each Friday for the following week. Total weekly reading will be between 20 and 60 pages and will be available electronically. Participants are expected to read and be prepared to comment.
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Discussions on the readings will take place from 8 am (East Coast USA time) Tuesday to 5 pm Friday. The discussions will not be simultaneous but all participants are expected to participate weekly and to have posted by 5 pm Wednesday.
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Cyber-office hours will be held on Thursdays. This is a good opportunity to ask questions about individual research projects. While learners don’t have to ‘stop by’ on Thursdays (questions can be emailed during the week), all of the week’s one-on-one emails will be answered by Thursday night.
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On Fridays, participants will post a reflection piece on how the reading and weekly discussion has related to their own personal question. Other participants will be encouraged (but not required!) to comment on reflections. Individual comments from the instructor will be sent privately.
During the first 7 weeks of the course, readings will prompt the discussions. During the last three weeks, learners’ projects will become the weekly focus. All projects will be due at the end of the sixth week, and will be posted during the span of the last three weeks of the course. The object of these presentations is to share with the learning community the ideas that learners are shaping through their individual interests in the subject. Projects can take the form of formal papers, creative works, web sites, power points, video clips, or any form of media which can be shown via the internet, but must be of an appropriate level work.
Assessment:
To receive Graduate or Undergraduate Credit for the course, a learner must complete the pre-course readings, attend the beginning and ending residencies, read the weekly readings, participate in the weekly discussions, weekly write a reflection, submit preliminary and post-course reflection papers, and present a final project. There are no letter grades for this course, only satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Graduate Credit requires a higher standard of work than does Undergraduate Credit. The relative weights that the elements of the course contribute to the final assessment are as follows: Preliminary paper 10%, Residencies 20%, Weekly readings, discussions, and reflections 30%, Final project 30%, and Post-course paper 10%.
To receive Continuing Education Units for the course, learners must complete the pre-course and weekly readings, and participate in the weekly discussions. They may also attend the beginning and ending residencies and present a final project, but should not submit papers or reflection pieces to the instructor. There are no CEU letter grades for this course, only satisfactory or unsatisfactory. The relative weights that the elements of the course contribute to the final assessment are as follows: Weekly readings and discussions 100%.
Credit learners may request narrative evaluations for transcripts or learning plans/agreements.
Syllabus (subject to change):
Week 1: What is Place? What is Story? Why do they matter?
In this first week, we look to define the key terminology of the course. Learners will use the work of Shepard, Awiakta, Van Gelder, and Abram to determine the key elements of the words place and story.
Texts: Marilou Awiakta, Paul Shepard, David Abram, Leslie Van Gelder
Week 2: Physics and Story
Perspective on the “nature” of the world and its interacting elements affects worldview, language, and philosophy. Place-oriented cultures view the makeup of the world in much the same way as quantum physicists of the Copenhagen interpretation explain. We look at the intersections between indigenous science and quantum physics in explaining language and ways of being in the world.
Texts: Marilou Awiakta, Calvin Luther Martin, F. David Peat, David Bohm, Benjamin Lee Whorf
Week 3: What’s in a Name? The Power of Language and Place
Language shapes our perception of reality and our ability to report on our experiences. Language and the ability to story may be the most essential element to defining our humanity. In this week’s readings we look at the work of contemporary linguistic theory with the work of Terrence Deacon, and then see its application in the work of Abram, Gruchow, and Momaday who speak expressly to the power of names.
Texts: David Abram, Keith Basso, Terrence Deacon, Paul Gruchow, N. Scott Momaday
Week 4: The Biology of Story and the Geography of Childhood
The stories we tell speak to our biological heritage and our understanding of creativity and the creative process. In this week’s study, we look at the role of biology in shaping our comic and tragic tradition, our archetypal stories, and our development of the ability to story through mapping. We’ll work with the writings of animal behaviorists, psychologists, and nature writers to see the interrelationship between story, our natural evolution, and the wonder of childhood.
Texts: Joseph Meeker, Paul Shepard, Edith Cobb, Stephen Trimble, Bruno Bettleheim, Leslie Van Gelder
Week 5: Homo Narrans: Are We the Storied Species?
Does storying define our humanity? Were earlier species of Homo not the same as us because they did not have the capacity to story? Has that been the root of what has made Homo sapiens so successful? In this week’s readings we look at the work of Meyerhoff, Fisher and Niles who speak to the concept of Homo narrans, and then look into the work of neurobiology, and paleontology to see if our brain chemistry and biological history support the premise of humans as the storying species. If we are, what are the implications of accepting the power of that role?
Texts: Barbara Meyerhoff, Walter Fisher, John Niles, Ian Tattersall, Michael Gazzaniger, David Lewis-Williams
Week 6: Place, Story, and Time
To understand the interconnected woven nature of place, story, and person, we must investigate the role of time in all three elements. In this week’s readings we look at a variety of images of time, from the Taoist picture painted by Shlain to the Lakota creation story. Physicist F. David Peat gives us an overview of current time theories and we see the intersections of his theory with the work on re-placing memory and home in Barry Lopez and Paul Gruchow.
Texts: Barry Lopez, Paul Gruchow, Leonard Shlain, D. M. Dooling, F. David Peat
Week 7: Extremes: Homelessness, Nationalism, Ruins, and Disney
While place is a powerful lens through which we can view the world, we also must look at the extreme examples of ways in which the power of place and story are used to promote other agendas. In this week’s readings we see the work of George Simmel on the ruin, Jacobs and Kuntsler on contemporary urban planning and its connection to story. International expert on nationalism, Dr. Harry Anastasiou will visit with us during this week as will doctoral candidate, Amanda Gardner who leads the Hoboken Homeless Shelter Writing Project. Both will offer us perspectives on the way place and story are perceived in their communities.
Texts: George Simmel, Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kuntsler, Harry Anastasiou, Amanda Gardner
Week 8: Learner presentations
Week 9: Learner presentations
Week 10: Learner presentations
Requirements: 
Prior to Opening Residency:
Learners will complete the required readings in advance of the residency weekend. Each Graduate and Undergraduate Credit learner should submit a three to five page paper by email to the instructor focusing on their sense of the nature of creativity both personally and within the context of the readings.
During the Online Course:
Learners are expected to complete the weekly readings and participate in the discussions. Each week, Graduate and Undergraduate Credit learners must complete a reflection piece by Friday. All Graduate and Undergraduate Credit learners must submit a project by the end of the sixth week of the course which will be used in the final three weeks of presentations.
Following Closing Residency:
Graduate and Undergraduate Credit learners are to complete a three to five page reflection essay, within ten days of the closing residency, discussing changes and thoughts regarding the process of the course as it relates to their own thinking about their research and lives.
Credit will only be given for learners who successfully complete all aspects of the course.
Required Texts:
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Awiakta, Marilou. Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1993.
Basso, Keith. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Gruchow, Paul. Grassroots: The Universe of Home. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1995.
Shepard, Paul. The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996.
Supplemental Texts:
Atkinson, Robert. The Gift of Stories. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1995.
Deacon, Terrence. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. W.W. Norton, 1997.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.
Kutsler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Lippard, Lucy R. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: New Press, 1995.
Lopez, Barry. Crossing Open Ground. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1988.
Martin, Calvin Luther. The Way of the Human Being. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Meeker, Joseph. The Comedy of Survival. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.
Nabhan, Gary Paul and Trimble, Stephen. The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
Peat, F. David. Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Universe. London: Fourth Estate, 1994.
Shepard, Paul. The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Washington: Island Press, 1995.
Tuan, Yi Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974.
Williams, Terry Tempest. Pieces of White Shell. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. An American Indian Model of the Universe. In Teachings from the American Earth, ed. Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock. New York: Liveright, 1975.
Woodward, Charles. Ancestral Voice: Conversations with N. Scott Momaday. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Equipment and Facilities:
This course will be led on the eCollege system through Union Institute and University. Learners are expected to have access to the internet and, installed on their computers, the latest (free) versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and an unzip program.