Over the past year, Natalie Forssman and Astrida have been convening informal one-hour sessions where faculty from a wide range of Departments at UBCO share assignments, exercises and other pedagogies that they have used in their classrooms that invite students to engage “place” in a wider variety of ways: as colonized, as surprising, as laden with poetics, as always changing, as ecological, and so much more.
This past term, sessions were led by Daniel Keyes, Denise Kenney, and (just to prove your initials do not need to be DK in order to participate): Michael V. Smith!
We kicked off in February with Dan’s offering of two classroom activities he often incorporates into his cultural studies classes: “Affective campus mapping” and “Decolonizing Campus Walking Tour.” This unleashed a fantastic conversation on the potential of mapping pedagogies. Where, for example, would you locate the best place on campus to have a nap? Or a good cry? We also learned a lot about the backstories of many of our campus building namesakes, and their dodgy ties to dodgy enterprises…
Denise picked up the ball in March with “Metaphor, Site, and Intervening in Public Space.” Using performance methods, Denise got us sock-footed in the studio to practice destabilizing and loosening what we think places–and the objects that inhabit them–might be.
April featured Michael’s “Walk-Talks: Making Site-Specific Audio Walks.” Featuring queer objects, video poems, neighbourhood gothic, and other creative surprises, Michael’s offering reminded us of the power of creative methods to reveal that a place can be more than you expected. Places, moreover, are always changing, always political, and always part of bigger stories.
The success of this series is owed to its mix of low-stakes participation (the presenter does not need to prepare much and everyone else just shows up!), its appeal across two faculties and at least five departments, and the informal nature of the conversation: questions, ideas, clarifications, discussion, laughing, eating, and whatever else we have time for. While our explicit goal is to activate more diverse engagement with place in classroom settings, a big added bonus has been an unexpected opportunity to meet new colleagues in a casual, sometimes silly but also useful setting! (Next year we promise more snacks!)
If you are interested in learning more about this series (or presenting in it!) please contact Natalie at natalie.forssman@ubc.ca or Astrida at astrida.neimanis@ubc.ca. More to come in 2024/5!
The FEELed lab 