Third-Year Experience

Kristin Wolf

In this section, we will explore the layers of an ecosystem from bedrock geology to the impacts of land use policy and cultural perspectives. Using methods from the environmental and ecological sciences, we will study the rocks, soils, water, biological communities, and ecosystem functions and eventually broaden our perspective to understand the human systems (economic, political, and cultural) that shape and reflect the local landscape. The course will offer a holistic perspective on the environment from the large-scale changes of geologic time to the recent impacts of humans, as we build foundational skills in observation, conducting fieldwork, collecting data, technical writing, and learning about the natural world through first-hand experience. Join us for hands-on outdoor fieldwork and thought-provoking class discussions as we examine, experience, and enjoy the landscape we seek to know.

Steve Wehmeyer

Ghosts, Djinn, Spirit Possession, Sorcery, Miracles...Scholars in the Social and Behavioral sciences have—for generations—been fascinated by, and have struggled with their encounters and explorations of supernatural belief and practice in traditional cultures the world over. How do Anthropologists, Sociologists, and Ethnographers explore, explain, and negotiate these beliefs and practices associated with the other-than-ordinary? And how do they effectively and critically engage with beliefs and worldviews other than their own, while maintaining scholarly integrity? In this course, *you'll* learn at first hand the methods of ethnographic fieldwork and field based research, while also exploring the ways scholars in a variety of disciplines have navigated these strange waters. Are you ready to take a trip to the Upside Down?

Steve Wehmeyer

Ghosts, Djinn, Spirit Possession, Sorcery, Miracles...Scholars in the Social and Behavioral sciences have—for generations—been fascinated by, and have struggled with their encounters and explorations of supernatural belief and practice in traditional cultures the world over. How do Anthropologists, Sociologists, and Ethnographers explore, explain, and negotiate these beliefs and practices associated with the other-than-ordinary? And how do they effectively and critically engage with beliefs and worldviews other than their own, while maintaining scholarly integrity? In this course, *you'll* learn at first hand the methods of ethnographic fieldwork and field based research, while also exploring the ways scholars in a variety of disciplines have navigated these strange waters. Are you ready to take a trip to the Upside Down?

Steve Wehmeyer

Ghosts, Djinn, Spirit Possession, Sorcery, Miracles...Scholars in the Social and Behavioral sciences have—for generations—been fascinated by, and have struggled with their encounters and explorations of supernatural belief and practice in traditional cultures the world over. How do Anthropologists, Sociologists, and Ethnographers explore, explain, and negotiate these beliefs and practices associated with the other-than-ordinary? And how do they effectively and critically engage with beliefs and worldviews other than their own, while maintaining scholarly integrity? In this course, *you'll* learn at first hand the methods of ethnographic fieldwork and field based research, while also exploring the ways scholars in a variety of disciplines have navigated these strange waters. Are you ready to take a trip to the Upside Down?

Marianne Bhonslay

First impressions often dictate the way we initially engage with anyone or anything. Yet an outward appearance rarely reveals an interior reality. How do we progress beyond a façade and gain an insightful, knowledgeable, and meaningful appreciation of the stories resonating within? The field research for this course takes us into local neighborhoods where we seek first impressions of various buildings and community blocks, then devote the semester to gain an authentic, credible, unprejudiced, and discerning vantage of selected structures or streets. Starting with the exterior, the outward appearance, your exploration will unearth complex and vibrant interior lives and histories. Coalescing the research methodology of historians with the interpersonal skills of primary-sourced journalism, evidenced-based narratives will evolve portraying the cultural, social, and personal biographies residing beyond a façade. Engaging with the scientific process of delving into property databases, land records, public policies, architectural design plans, and historical preservation archives, along with first-hand reporting, micro stories within macro environments will be chronicled. We will likewise consider the ways in which this research and writing process enhances the opportunity to look beyond initial perceptions of our fellow citizens, locally and globally, and embrace the lives residing within.

Teage O'Connor

The catalog of interactions with wildlife for those of us living in cities might not seem all that magical at first blush: a fleeting glimpse of a skunk trundling across the road, a ring-billed gull (kaakw) stealing a bagel from the sidewalk, a raccoon (asban) rummaging through our trash. But these brief, wild moments are also incredible windows into the rich lives of our secretive neighbors. Here, we will learn how to identify common urban birds and mammals, sharpen our observation skills through direct observation of wildlife, engage with basic wildlife monitoring techniques, and participate in some of the world's largest community science platforms (like eBird and iNaturalist). As we develop our own skills, we will work with local elementary school students to conduct a survey of wildlife on and surrounding their campus.

Kerry Noonan

Tattoos & body adornment, meal preparation & presentation, the decoration of spaces, and the crafting of objects—these all are considered folk art and/or material culture. This section will focus how and why people make, alter, and use objects in a variety of settings, as they make meaning through objects and aesthetic choices. Students will learn the methods and techniques of ethnographic field research, including observation, interviews, and field notes, combining these techniques with some library-focused research, to understand the vernacular arts created by folks in the Burlington area.

Kerry Noonan

Yoga? Tarot cards? Meditation? Many people today say they are "spiritual but not religious," and engage in a variety of spiritual practices. In this class, we will use ethnographic fieldwork to learn about such people in the greater Burlington area. What do such people do, and what ideas do they hold? How do these people fit into the broader landscape of American religiosity? Studying people "in the field" gives us a chance to gather information directly by interviews and observation, and analyze what we observe and learn from them, while combining this research data with prior research by scholars to gain a broader understanding. We'll work with research methods from the social sciences, applying them to local groups and practitioners.

Rowshan Nemazee

Successive crises from the global credit crunch to the coronavirus pandemic have pushed many communities to breaking point. But there are others which have coped much better through being more collaborative and resilient in dealing with the problems they face. What is it that helps communities pull together to respond effectively to socio-economic challenges? How is Vermont, particularly, the city of Burlington faring? Lessons for community-based transformations may be found in non-profits wherein a team of expert analysts and experienced practitioners identify what factors have over time proven to be most influential in enabling communities to improve their quality of life on a sustainable basis. No single condition, but rather, twelve approaches, grouped under three broad headings, can be applied to secure a wide range of improvements. The three broad headings are: transforming socioeconomic relations in communities, transforming collaborative behavior with communities, and transforming policy outcomes by communities. Our "field" will be Vermont's non-profits, our aim will be to decipher what they are accomplishing and how "just" or effective their work is/has been. Data will be collected via various field methods, namely, ethnography, participant observation, qualitative interviews, and case studies.

Rowshan Nemazee

Successive crises from the global credit crunch to the coronavirus pandemic have pushed many communities to breaking point. But there are others which have coped much better through being more collaborative and resilient in dealing with the problems they face. What is it that helps communities pull together to respond effectively to socio-economic challenges? How is Vermont, particularly, the city of Burlington faring? Lessons for community-based transformations may be found in non-profits wherein a team of expert analysts and experienced practitioners identify what factors have over time proven to be most influential in enabling communities to improve their quality of life on a sustainable basis. No single condition, but rather, twelve approaches, grouped under three broad headings, can be applied to secure a wide range of improvements. The three broad headings are: transforming socioeconomic relations in communities, transforming collaborative behavior with communities, and transforming policy outcomes by communities. Our "field" will be Vermont's non-profits, our aim will be to decipher what they are accomplishing and how "just" or effective their work is/has been. Data will be collected via various field methods, namely, ethnography, participant observation, qualitative interviews, and case studies.

Marianne Bhonslay

First impressions often dictate the way we initially engage with anyone or anything. Yet an outward appearance rarely reveals an interior reality. How do we progress beyond a façade and gain an insightful, knowledgeable, and meaningful appreciation of the stories resonating within? The field research for this course takes us into local neighborhoods where we seek first impressions of various buildings and community blocks, then devote the semester to gain an authentic, credible, unprejudiced, and discerning vantage of selected structures or streets. Starting with the exterior, the outward appearance, your exploration will unearth complex and vibrant interior lives and histories. Coalescing the research methodology of historians with the interpersonal skills of primary-sourced journalism, evidenced-based narratives will evolve portraying the cultural, social, and personal biographies residing beyond a façade. Engaging with the scientific process of delving into property databases, land records, public policies, architectural design plans, and historical preservation archives, along with first-hand reporting, micro stories within macro environments will be chronicled. We will likewise consider the ways in which this research and writing process enhances the opportunity to look beyond initial perceptions of our fellow citizens, locally and globally, and embrace the lives residing within.

Joyce Farley

Students will explore and experiment with field methods in a host of academic disciplines from yesteryear and now that have substantiated the variety of published works and added to our understanding of people, cultures, current events, history, science, etc. With that knowledge, students will create and probe new approaches that embrace the ever-changing technological terrain in qualitative research, and arts, humanities, and interdisciplinary studies.

Joyce Farley

Students will explore and experiment with field methods in a host of academic disciplines from yesteryear and now that have substantiated the variety of published works and added to our understanding of people, cultures, current events, history, science, etc. With that knowledge, students will create and probe new approaches that embrace the ever-changing technological terrain in qualitative research, and arts, humanities, and interdisciplinary studies.

Jonathan Banfill

In this section of Core 304, we will explore the history of immersive environments and their connected technologies. Beginning with the 19th-century panorama, an antecedent of today's immersive experiences, and through retro-futuristic immersive architecture like Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and environmental biospheres (such as the Montréal Biosphere, Biosphere 2 in Arizona, and the proposed Winooski Dome), we will trace the conceptual evolution to contemporary digital tools for representing place, including panoramic photography, screen installations, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). We will theorize immersive environments as vehicles for connecting distant spaces together, conveying their essence to remote audiences. A substantial facet of the course is hands-on deployment, exploring local places and histories, and creating thematic projects that use these tools to tell critical stories about local places in Burlington and beyond.

Jonathan Banfill

In this section of Core 304, we will explore the history of immersive environments and their connected technologies. Beginning with the 19th-century panorama, an antecedent of today's immersive experiences, and through retro-futuristic immersive architecture like Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and environmental biospheres (such as the Montréal Biosphere, Biosphere 2 in Arizona, and the proposed Winooski Dome), we will trace the conceptual evolution to contemporary digital tools for representing place, including panoramic photography, screen installations, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). We will theorize immersive environments as vehicles for connecting distant spaces together, conveying their essence to remote audiences. A substantial facet of the course is hands-on deployment, exploring local places and histories, and creating thematic projects that use these tools to tell critical stories about local places in Burlington and beyond.

Kristian Brevik

In this section of Core 304, we will explore the history of immersive environments and their connected technologies. Beginning with the 19th-century panorama, an antecedent of today's immersive experiences, and through retro-futuristic immersive architecture like Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and environmental biospheres (such as the Montréal Biosphere, Biosphere 2 in Arizona, and the proposed Winooski Dome), we will trace the conceptual evolution to contemporary digital tools for representing place, including panoramic photography, screen installations, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). We will theorize immersive environments as vehicles for connecting distant spaces together, conveying their essence to remote audiences. A substantial facet of the course is hands-on deployment, exploring local places and histories, and creating thematic projects that use these tools to tell critical stories about local places in Burlington and beyond.

Kristian Brevik

In this section of Core 304, we will explore the history of immersive environments and their connected technologies. Beginning with the 19th-century panorama, an antecedent of today's immersive experiences, and through retro-futuristic immersive architecture like Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and environmental biospheres (such as the Montréal Biosphere, Biosphere 2 in Arizona, and the proposed Winooski Dome), we will trace the conceptual evolution to contemporary digital tools for representing place, including panoramic photography, screen installations, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). We will theorize immersive environments as vehicles for connecting distant spaces together, conveying their essence to remote audiences. A substantial facet of the course is hands-on deployment, exploring local places and histories, and creating thematic projects that use these tools to tell critical stories about local places in Burlington and beyond.

Weiling Deng

This section takes a feminist/queer approach to understand and ethically interrogate new forms of digital surveillance technologies that subject human bodies to the punitive state power worldwide. As a key part of the digital humanities debates about the apparatuses of surveillance and their complicity in human rights abuses, the feminist/queer focus on the body and bodily movements highlights the material, affective, labor-intensive, and situated characters of contacts with computation. Also highlighted are the artistic projects that negotiate with the porous human-machine boundary. This section will bring together theoretical literature and case studies from around the globe to engage, make complicated, and decolonize technologies that may on the surface seem politically neutral. Students will gain critical insights into the intersection of feminism/queerness and technology, and put these into practice via contributions to a digital project.

Weiling Deng

This section takes a feminist/queer approach to understand and ethically interrogate new forms of digital surveillance technologies that subject human bodies to the punitive state power worldwide. As a key part of the digital humanities debates about the apparatuses of surveillance and their complicity in human rights abuses, the feminist/queer focus on the body and bodily movements highlights the material, affective, labor-intensive, and situated characters of contacts with computation. Also highlighted are the artistic projects that negotiate with the porous human-machine boundary. This section will bring together theoretical literature and case studies from around the globe to engage, make complicated, and decolonize technologies that may on the surface seem politically neutral. Students will gain critical insights into the intersection of feminism/queerness and technology, and put these into practice via contributions to a digital project.

Joyce Farley

Michael Jackson. The Beatles. Motown Record Label. Beyonce. Hip-Hop. NSync. MTV. Madonna. TGIF on ABC. Pop culture is a powerful amorphous structure-driving, motivating, and regulating what is and isn't socially acceptable; it is also the currency and language we use to communicate in various mediums with diverse groups domestically and abroad. Pop Culture from 1940-2020 in the U.S. was canonical, iconic, and molded by significant societal, racial, gender, political, and economic change and shifts in which much, if not all, the innovation was an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural effort across the arts and technology creating new categories and ushering decades of explosive growth and creativity solidifying the genre and multidimensional position. The result of this first-ever collaboration was many historical firsts and a writing of history that included qualitative, first-person, and/or reflective testimony(ies) that involved all of the arts and was easily accessible to all. This experimental survey course celebrates the genesis of pop culture post-Great Depression to the onset of the COVID pandemic influence and its dominance that includes new media and old media: TV, radio, movies, music, dance, digital evolution and platforms, news media, edutainment, and the arts (culinary, theatre, painting, sculpture, etc.) and how it will continue to alter every facet of society.

Joyce Farley

Michael Jackson. The Beatles. Motown Record Label. Beyonce. Hip-Hop. NSync. MTV. Madonna. TGIF on ABC. Pop culture is a powerful amorphous structure-driving, motivating, and regulating what is and isn't socially acceptable; it is also the currency and language we use to communicate in various mediums with diverse groups domestically and abroad. Pop Culture from 1940-2020 in the U.S. was canonical, iconic, and molded by significant societal, racial, gender, political, and economic change and shifts in which much, if not all, the innovation was an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural effort across the arts and technology creating new categories and ushering decades of explosive growth and creativity solidifying the genre and multidimensional position. The result of this first-ever collaboration was many historical firsts and a writing of history that included qualitative, first-person, and/or reflective testimony(ies) that involved all of the arts and was easily accessible to all. This experimental survey course celebrates the genesis of pop culture post-Great Depression to the onset of the COVID pandemic influence and its dominance that includes new media and old media: TV, radio, movies, music, dance, digital evolution and platforms, news media, edutainment, and the arts (culinary, theatre, painting, sculpture, etc.) and how it will continue to alter every facet of society.

Amy Howe

If the famous adage "history is written by the victors" is true, what does it mean to preserve marginalized histories, voices, material, and data? In this course, we will explore and examine the ethical and political questions of a set of digital archival databases ranging from Ukrainian art/culture digital preservation, LGBTQ independent archives, international truth and reconciliation commissions, and local historical society efforts to create digitized archives of Vermont's racial histories, among others. Students will create a portfolio that analyzes digital objects, participates in the digitizing of marginalized material, and develops statements about inclusive archival cultural preservation.

Amy Howe

If the famous adage "history is written by the victors" is true, what does it mean to preserve marginalized histories, voices, material, and data? In this course, we will explore and examine the ethical and political questions of a set of digital archival databases ranging from Ukrainian art/culture digital preservation, LGBTQ independent archives, international truth and reconciliation commissions, and local historical society efforts to create digitized archives of Vermont's racial histories, among others. Students will create a portfolio that analyzes digital objects, participates in the digitizing of marginalized material, and develops statements about inclusive archival cultural preservation.

Amy Howe

If the famous adage "history is written by the victors" is true, what does it mean to preserve marginalized histories, voices, material, and data? In this course, we will explore and examine the ethical and political questions of a set of digital archival databases ranging from Ukrainian art/culture digital preservation, LGBTQ independent archives, international truth and reconciliation commissions, and local historical society efforts to create digitized archives of Vermont's racial histories, among others. Students will create a portfolio that analyzes digital objects, participates in the digitizing of marginalized material, and develops statements about inclusive archival cultural preservation.

Bob Mayer

People everywhere play video games, but the creation and contextualization of games is concentrated in a handful of geographic, conceptual, and cultural centers. While games can be liberating and inspiring, the current landscape of video game creation mimics traditional colonial and imperial geographies of power. This class uses digital and analog methods to research, analyze, and report on the ways video games reinforce systems of oppression, and to discover ways in which we can start to dismantle those systems using the same sets of tools.

Bob Mayer

People everywhere play video games, but the creation and contextualization of games is concentrated in a handful of geographic, conceptual, and cultural centers. While games can be liberating and inspiring, the current landscape of video game creation mimics traditional colonial and imperial geographies of power. This class uses digital and analog methods to research, analyze, and report on the ways video games reinforce systems of oppression, and to discover ways in which we can start to dismantle those systems using the same sets of tools.

Emily Spett

We live in an era of data abundance, and an era of massive inequity and asymmetries when it comes to data access and availability. How are cities, communities, countries, and organizations taking advantage of data and digital technologies to improve public services and, by extension, public wellbeing? This course will act as a survey for innovations at different scales. We'll begin by thinking about what constitutes a "smart" community through academic literature and applied case studies, and then explore methodologies for developing technologies that are in service of public need and public good. Students will have the opportunity to critically investigate existing public digital technology, and propose innovations to improve upon processes.