HONOR 3603 - Learning in the Garden

Institution:

University of Utah

Subject:

Honors College

Description:

In this course, we will explore critical concepts that inform our understanding and appreciation of cultivated green spaces, as well as the social and historical issues that have accompanied the labor of cultivation. These green spaces and garden plots are the provision grounds where we labor to feed our bodies and also our minds. They are often conceived as a respite or sanctuary from the surrounding city or as the city's farmbelt or greenbelt to serve its population. From the Garden of Eden to the plantation system of slavery to our modern day agro-industrial farms and community gardens, how have our cultural ideas of the garden shaped how food is produced for us and how we imagine growth and sustenance? What epistemologies and economies have organized the way we view plants, crops, and the people who work on farms? What kinds of issues have developed due to the way we organize life and labor on the farm? We'll also pay attention to how these perspectives interacted with a range of ideas and issues like sex and gender, race, property, life, the human or nonhuman, and more. In particular, we will chart the ways that communities have used the garden, especially to plot and provision alternative communities to colonial and capitalist systems. This is an interdisciplinary, community engaged learning course that will ask you to attend to relationships across cultural, scientific, and social approaches to green things and green spaces by both studying the garden and practicing the garden'by gardening. We will work every week in the classroom and in the campus edible gardens and closely observe the interactions that gardens and working in the garden invite us to imagine and enact. Our sources will include historical and cultural texts and objects, secondary articles and essays, and of course, the garden, the living plants, and our own work with them and each other.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.utah.edu

Phone Number:

(801) 581-7200

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

General Education

• No items found

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.