Re-enchanting Nature: Humanities Perspectives

FAIN: FV-250892-16

Carroll College (Helena, MT 59625-0001)
Christopher Fuller (Project Director: February 2016 to December 2019)

A three-week seminar for sixteen schoolteachers exploring the human relationship with nature  through religion, philosophy, literature, the fine arts, and cinema.

Carroll College has designed a seminar for school teachers titled “Re-Enchanting Creation: How the Humanities Help Us Understand Our Relationship with Nature.” Set against a backdrop of contemporary environmental issues, our seminar explores the human relationship with nature through religious, philosophical, literary, fine arts, and cinematic perspectives. Our curriculum responds to the current NEH initiative, The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square, by demonstrating for participants that a more full and reasoned understanding of the national discourse regarding the environment is supported when the humanities are integrated with the scientific conversation. Our seminar is an interdisciplinary survey organized around four themes: 1) exploring origins; 2) nature and commerce; 3) defining wilderness; and 4) modern tensions. The first two weeks are hosted on the Carroll College campus and the final week is hosted at Yellowstone National Park.