INQ-110 | Exploring “Sense of Place”

Full Title: Reading the Landscape: Exploring “Sense of Place”.

Topic Description:

We have lifelong interaction with the landscape—we conduct our daily lives in it, we seek both the familiar and the exotic in it, and it holds our memories and reveals our values—yet these relationships often go unexamined. What does it means to know a place? How can we study or “read” it? Does place shape us or do we shape it? How does place change over time? This course will focus on an inherently interdisciplinary topic, “sense of place,” using a variety of methods (verbal, physical, visual, etc.) and approaches (literature, history, geography, visual art, etc.) in an effort to comprehend a difficult but powerful subject. Our critical investigation of place/landscape may include the dynamics of insider/outsider, subjectivity/objectivity, and real/ideal—themes that are both personal and universal. By learning to read the landscape, we will better understand our place in it. Use your eyes, be curious, seek answers.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: November 2009