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May 05, 2024
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AREL 870 - Un/Natural Space/American Landscape3 credits
Landscape, which can be understood as a community’s dwelling place, has a complex relationship with nature, disaster, and unnatural forces. Memory and identity are deeply rooted in this ‘natural’ place and are vulnerable to and marginalized by its disruptive transformation into un/natural space. Issues of race, gender, and class become divides which follow such disruptions as the landscape is memorialized, commoditized, commercialized, or destroyed. This seminar will focus on selected examples of radical landscape transformation each time that the course is taught. Among those considered are: Hurricane Sandy, mountain-top removal in Appalachia, 9/11, the 1889 Johnston flood and the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma. Of specific interest is the topography of everyday life and such questions as territory and competition, distance versus proximity, and cultural parity versus cultural superiority. Drawing on theoretical resources, the course will explore these questions and others through personal narratives, essays, and various forms of media.
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