Enduring Questions: Pilot Course on "Nature and Culture"

FAIN: AQ-50047-09

Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH 44106-1712)
Anne L. Helmreich (Project Director: November 2008 to June 2016)

The preparation and teaching of an undergraduate seminar on nature and culture.

The project prepares students for future decisions regarding the environment by engaging them with the past so that they can better understand how ideas and attitudes emerged today. Students will gain skills in critical thinking as well as verbal and written expression. The project focuses on how culture expresses humanity's relationship with the natural world by addressing three key themes shared by literature and art: the garden, the paired tropes of the pastoral and the georgic, and the wilderness. Each theme is explored through primary texts and related art works. Project readings and discussion, site visits to the Cleveland Museum of Art and Lakeview cemetery are augmented by guest lectures by local scholars and a nationally recognized expert, the latter sponsored through the auspices of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities.