In a small group, lecture theatre, and one-to-one, learning interactions with students are a touchstone of my teaching and research. I teach courses to animate liberal education and critical thinking. Students gain skills for research, literature review, archival methods, writing, and presentation.
My graduate seminar course PERLS 504 (also PERLS 404 and DS 499) investigates the environmental history of nature, parks, and travel at the crossroads with cultural studies. These seminars are open to students from across the University of Alberta. I teach PERLS 204, an undergraduate course in the Canadian history of leisure, sport, and health, as well RLS 400 a senior undergraduate course on philosophies of leisure. Sustainability is a critical theme throughout my courses.
PERLS 504/ PERLS 404/ DS 499
The History of Nature, Parks, and Travel (Winter Term 2018)
This seminar investigates environmental history at the crossroads of cultural studies regarding nature, parks, and travel. Canada is the main focus along with international tangents. What is “nature” and how have cultural concepts and experiences of nature changed through the 19th and 20th centuries? We can read nature, parks, and travel as a form of cultural memory. Nature and parks can be understood as artifacts created by people. How did the sublime, romanticism, and antimodernism draw many urbanites and travellers outdoors? What did it mean to be an outdoorsman in the "Arctic wilderness" or “a lady traveler” in the Rockies? Why were parks and gardens designed as "green lungs" of the city? What was the City Beautiful movement? How did children play outside? Experiences of nature, parks, and travel were shaped by class, gender, ancestry, religion, sexuality, age, and language. They also factored into nationalism, imperialism, capitalism, and colonialism. The origins and development of nature conservation, parks, and tourism in Canada offer insights to earlier times and present outlooks.
In this seminar, we investigate knowledge at the crossroads of environmental history and cultural studies. We explore ideas of leisure, mountains, wilderness, recreation, conservation, health, and the body through time. We will read about nature proponents, travelers, and adventurers -- along with the many campers, climbers, children, wanderers, tourists, guides, and locals obscured by time -- in search of the cultural experience of nature, parks, and travel. Course content varies by year and diverse student research interests are encouraged through readings and individualized research project work. Local field trips and curatorial tours with knowledge specialists are featured. Students also enter into direct dialogue with guest researchers in seminar discussions.
Students are welcome to join our seminar group in January 2018. Prospective students are invited to contact the professor to discuss their reading and research interests for the upcoming term. Students outside my faculty are welcome to contact me to gain registration access. Senior undergraduates can be accommodated in PERLS 404 or DS 499 for an enriching seminar and research experience; please email the instructor.
PERLS 204
Canadian History of Leisure, Sport, and Health
This course offers historical perspectives on leisure, sport, and health in Canada from the mid-19th century to the late-20th century. Students in all degree programs of the Faculty can benefit by learning about the multi-faceted history of Canadian leisure and sport. Leisure and sport are broadly construed in this course to encompass a wide variety of cultural practices such as physical activity, exercise, dance, physical education, amateur and professional sports, outdoor pursuits, recreation, tourism, clubs, leisure/sport organizations, health education, holidays, travel, games, play, music, competition, movement, parks, playgrounds, toys, volunteerism, hooliganism, festivals, arts, entertainment, and spectacle. An open, broad-based, and integrated approach lays groundwork for a shared knowledge foundation to understand physical cultures and leisure. Graduates of this Faculty can benefit from integrating a well-rounded historical understanding of these diverse elements that cross boundaries in professional and cultural practice. What can we learn about people, the past, and how we understand history? Course work will emphasize developing a historical knowledge base on a broad spectrum of leisure and sport, and fostering scholarship through critical thinking, debate, reading, research, and effective written and verbal communication skills.
RLS 400
Philosophies of Leisure
This year RLS 400 will survey selected thinkers who have commented on the meaning of leisure to life, the individual, collectivities, and civil society. From classic concepts articulated by Plato and Aristotle, to Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and Martin Heidegger, to more recent commentaries by Mark Kingwell, Carl Honoré, Cecile Andrews, Linda Duxbury, Juliet Schor, Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, and Richard Louv, we will consider what meanings leisure might have in “a good life,” “better living,” and “civil society,” and how they are constructed and critiqued philosophically. Content will be grounded largely in western philosophies, with attention to selected ideological, religious, and cultural systems of thought.
Is there virtue in leisure? What is the role of leisure related to joy, love, labour, exploitation, consumption, community, nature, and ideas of better life? Is there a crisis of overwork in Canada and the United States that is eroding quality of life and many of the social values that rely on leisure time? How do we understand time? What is gained and lost in political economies that sanction overwork and underrate leisure? What are happiness, beauty, and justice? Philosophical issues arise when we consider the structure of labour and leisure in contemporary society. How do liberalism, individualism, collectivities, and modernity figure in western leisure? Are concepts of leisure an elitist preoccupation? Does leisure require exploitation of humans and the environment? Is it sustainable? Ethical concerns arise related to leisure and leisure industries. Concepts of leisure are culturally and historically contingent, not unitary or static. Contemporary and historical examples can be found to suggest alternative conceptualizations of leisure in the pursuit of a well-lived life. Various cultural practices, social movements, or trends may suggest different concepts and philosophies of leisure. How are they contested? What is the role of the recreation practitioner? We aim to bring philosophical insights to understanding and rethinking patterns of culture, caring for people, resolving work-life balance issues, valuing the environment, building cities and communities, changing public policy, seeking justice, and invigorating civil society based on practices of and contemplations about leisure in a diverse pluralistic modern world. How might concepts of personhood, citizenship, and the public good figure in this picture or do they matter?
Course work will emphasize developing the foundations of philosophical knowledge and understanding related to leisure and recreation. Students will be challenged to develop their own philosophies of leisure and cultural critiques of happiness, “the good life,” better living, justice, and civil society. They will also be encouraged to contemplate and engage ethics related to work and leisure, and to consider the politics of leisure and leisure studies. Moving between principles and practice will be a means of learning and philosophical contemplation, with attention to the situation of leisure and recreation professionals. We will also study philosophy as a means of enhancing reasoning, self reflection, critical thinking, debate, reading, research, and effective written and verbal communication. Course content varies yearly.
Directed Studies 400/500
Children in Nature and Outdoor Life
Thinking about playing outside? Thematic surveys of history and literature related to children in nature and outdoor life can be tailored to individual research interests. Themes to explore have included: children's camps, outdoor play, fresh air movements, Boy Scouts, playgrounds, health and hygiene, animals, antimodernity, suburbs, environmental education, sustainability, and children's rights. From Woodcraft Indians to Last Child in the Woods, how has nature been understood as a geography of childhood and play--and how were these terms produced?