[Past] 60 Composing a Life: Finding One’s Place, Voice, and Direction in a World in Motion - Spring 2024
CLASS NUMBER:
780-01
INSTRUCTOR:
TIME:
Tuesdays, 3:30-6:00 PM
LOCATION:
GLS House, 2114 Campus Drive
DESCRIPTION:
An exercise in exploring one’s life story in the context of human movement through time and space led by a veteran anthropologist and documentary fieldworker. We will delve into our own cultural geographies through mapping, interviewing, reading, and writing – memoir, creative nonfiction, poetry and even visual storytelling. Our goal will be to detail where we come from and where we’re headed, not just physically, but also in our vocation, avocation, and life in general.
We will acknowledge differences of origin and future possibilities based on power dynamics. We will place our personal travel and arrival (international, domestic, philosophical, and spiritual) in the context of privilege and constraints; open borders and closed; free choice and barriers, all the while endeavoring to take stock of where we are personally in a globalized world.
Participants can expect to end up with a narrative about themselves, having engaged in looking and listening with every encounter of persons and places new and old along the way. This GLS program is filled with adventurers. Everyone has a story of movement from somewhere. A major feature of the course will be to acknowledge those stories of fellow travelers and to join in a collective journey onward to somewhere, hopefully enriching and having been enriched by those around us.
Anthropology, Literature, Sociology