This continuing, first-year program will build on our studies begun in Fall 2004. Focusing on the histories of expansion, colonization, and globalization in the Middle East and the American West, we examined indigenous, migrant labor, and environmental movements to understand the cultural and political-economic relations between people and their lands. Students learned to read landscapes as primary sources of information about peoples, places, and power relationships.
In the winter, we will look more at specific international case studies in the Middle East and Latin America (Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, US/Mexico border, and Brazil) to explore the connection between native peoples, migration, land, resources, geographies of separation, and struggles for self-determination. We will also examine the urban landscapes of the US, in general, and Western Washington, in particular. We will focus on urban transformation (deindustrialization, gentrification, etc.), labor issues, prisons, and the continuing struggles over land, sovereignty, as well as the post 9-11 realities affecting national and international geographies. Students will be introduced to a variety of approaches to environmental action and resistance movements that have been used to maintain livelihood, cultural practices, and identity in the face of political, economic, and technological change.
Students will write regular brief response papers to the program texts, synthesis essays, field observations, and a final collaborative research project on international or local landscape struggles. Throughout the program, students will develop skills in field observation, expository writing, interviewing and oral history, literary analysis, the terminology and methodology of the natural and social sciences, and the use of maps.
16 Credits/quarter awarded in: human and cultural geography, political economy, environmental studies, writing, cultural studies, Middle East studies and Latin American studies.
Program Reading List FOR SPRING
Holdover from Fall 2004:
Defending wild Washington: a citizen's action guide edited by Edward Whitesell (The Mountaineers Books, 2004, ISBN: 0-89886-970-6).
New for Spring 2005:
Outlaw woman: a memoir of the war years, 1960 – 1975 by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (City Lights, 2001, ISBN:0-87286-390-5).
The secret wars of Judi Bari: a car bomb, the fight for the redwoods, and the end of Earth First! by Kate Coleman (Encounter Books, 2005 ISBN: 1-893554-74-0). [also available for purchase in digital form]
You call this democracy? who benefits, who pays and who really decides by Paul Kevel (Apex Press, 2004, ISBN: 1891843265).
Hearts and hands: creating community in violent times by Luis J. Rodriguez (Seven Stories Press, 2003, ISBN: 1583225641).
Savage dreams: a journey into the landscape wars of the American West by Rebecca Solnit (University of California Press, 1994, ISBN: 0-520-22066-8).
Each one teach one: up and out of poverty: memoirs of a street activist by Ron Casanova, Stephen Blackburn (Curbstone Press, 1996, ISBN: 1880684373).
The environmental justice reader: politics, poetics, & pedagogy by Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans, Rachel Stein (University of Arizona Press, 2002, ISBN: 0816522073).
Sixteen quarter-hours of credit will be awarded for each quarter to every student who fulfills the requirements:
The following is a list of readings for the program. Please read the first book, The Colonial Present, during the Winter break, and read and collect related news stories on the current wars in those regions. We ask that you stay informed about current events in the Middle East, Latin America, and the Pacific Northwest through regular reading in a major newspaper (e.g. Seattle Times or New York Times) as well as alternative sources. Students entering the program winter quarter are required to view the video Edward Said on Orientalism (available in the TESC Library) and to read Wayne Ellwood’s The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization (New Internationalist Publications, 2001).
The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, by Dereck Gregory, Blackwell Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-5771-8090-9.
Wild Thorns, by Sahar Khalifeh. Interlink Books, 2000. ISBN 1-56656-336-4.
Middle East Report, Fall 2004, “The Iraq Impasse,” Number 232.
Dead Cities by Mike Davis, New Press, 2003. ISBN 1565848446.
Fronteras No Mas: Toward Social Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border, by Kathleen Staudt and Irasema Coronado. Palgrove MacMillan, 2002. ISBN 0-312-29547-2.
Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor, edited by Tara Herivel and Paul Wright. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-93538-5.
To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil, by Angus Lindsay Wright and Wendy Wolford. Food First, 2003. ISBN: 0935028900.
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca Solnit. Nation Books, 2004. ISBN: 1560255773.
Brazil's Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization: The Yanomami and the Kayapo, by Linda Rabben. University of Washington Press, 2004. ISBN: 0295983620.
Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America, by J. Timmons Roberts and Nikki Demetria Thanos. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0415929806.
Cultural Landscapes Winter Program Reader (available early in quarter at TESC bookstore)
Cultural Landscapes Online Reader (articles posted on program website)