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Watershed Walking: Experiential Tools for Connecting People, Place and Water
Open Educational Resources
  • Jennifer L. Kitson, Rowan University
Description

This learning module presents a variety of ways to consider the role of walking as environmental methodology in courses with existing fieldwork components. Walking is a mobile practice and form of dwelling. The footprint is a powerful metaphor and narrative device expressing the lived scale and pace of the human body, including the accumulation of incremental personal stories into public histories (“one step at a time,” “one foot in front of the other”). Footprints also form the basis for human conceptions of empathy (“being in someone else’s shoes,” “following in someone’s footsteps”) and place-based environmental impacts (ecological footprint, hydroregion), both of which are integral to public discourse in a pluralistic society. A series of readings and walking-based activities will engage the human body and imagination through walking within the watershed (the land area into which rain falls and streams drain) in exploring connections between people, place and water.

Publication Date
6-13-2018
Subject
Walking; Watersheds
Document Type
Curricular Materials
Disciplines
DOI
10.31986/issn.2689-0690_rdw.oer.1005
Comments

This learning module was developed as part of a 2017-2018 NEH Human Connections grant to Rowan University faculty titled Cultivating the Environmental Humanities.

This content is copyright 2018 by the author and must be properly attributed (see Recommended Citation). Contact the author for reuse permission.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Citation Information
Jennifer L. Kitson. "Watershed Walking: Experiential Tools for Connecting People, Place and Water" (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jennifer-kitson/8/