This book focuses on the interdisciplinary incorporation of place-based learning in faculty teaching strategies at the New York City College of Technology. Contributing authors highlight their creative use of the unique urban environment of Brooklyn, illustrating the integration of urban resources into student research projects and activities in the context of an interdisciplinary course. Beginning with a reflection on the interrelationship between learners and nature, built and virtual environments, contributors then examine the experience of students and faculty in interdisciplinary projects in architecture, the geosciences, economics, computer science, the humanities and medicine. The volume concludes with a synthesis of best practices from these projects, focused on virtual place-based learning. This scholarly book makes a valuable contribution to the literature, offering a model of creative employment of urban spaces to enhance experiential interdisciplinary learning and demonstrating the potential educator application in diverse urban institutions elsewhere.

This book explores how virtual place-based learning and research has been interpreted and incorporated into learning environments both within and across disciplinary perspectives. Contributing authors highlight the ways in which they have employed a variety of methodologies to engage students in the virtual exploration of place. In the process, they focus on the approaches they have used to bring the real world closer through virtual exploration. Chapters examine how the resources of the urban environment have been tapped to design student research projects within the context of an interdisciplinary course. In this way, authors highlight how virtual place-based learning has employed the tools of mapping and data visualization, information literacy, game design, digital storytelling, and the creation of non-fiction VR documentaries. This book makes a valuable contribution to the literature, offering a model of how the study of place can be employed in creative ways to enhance interdisciplinary learning.

This book explores the community of practice at New York City College of Technology engaged in interdisciplinary team teaching. Professors report on their high-impact practices when they combine the assets of different disciplines. Chapters feature examples of the innovative curriculum resulting from a true interdisciplinary system, including place-based learning. The book also discusses questions of validity and measuring the influence of high-impact practice within interdisciplinary co-teaching.

In this volume experienced and new college- and university-level teachers will find practical, adaptable strategies for designing or updating courses in western American literature and western studies. Teaching Western American Literature features the latest developments in western literary research and cultural studies as well as pedagogical best practices in course development. Contributors provide practical models and suggestions for courses and assignments while presenting concrete strategies for teaching works both inside and outside the canon. In addition, Brady Harrison and Randi Lynn Tanglen have assembled insights from pioneering western studies instructors with workable strategies and practical advice for translating this often complex material for classrooms from freshman writing courses to graduate seminars. Teaching Western American Literature reflects the cutting edge of western American literary study, featuring diverse approaches allied with women’s, gender, queer, environmental, disability, and Indigenous studies and providing instructors with entrée into classrooms of leading scholars in the field.

This book brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to creatively engage with place in the context of pedagogy. Beginning with an exploration of traditional place-based forms of education, such as outdoor education, travel courses, and courses on sustainability, the authors go on to expand our popular notions of place, including the classroom, the campus, our interior selves, and our digital ecosystems. This reconsideration of place-based education represents not only an engagement of prior literature on pedagogy and place, but also a re-imagining of the role that place might play in education. Authors stretch the notion of place, arguing for a holistic approach to disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, bringing into focus an array of contentious issues in philosophies and methods of teaching for multiple academic disciplines and their many intersections.

This edited volume draws together educators and scholars to engage with the difficulties and benefits of teaching place-based education in a distinctive culture-laden area in North America: the United States South. Despite problematic past visions of cultural homogeneity, the South has always been a culturally diverse region with many historical layers of inhabitation and migration, each with their own set of religious and secular relationships to the land. Through site-specific narratives, this volume offers a blueprint for new approaches to place-based pedagogy, with an emphasis on the intersection between religion and the environment. By offering broadly applicable examples of pedagogical methods and practices, this book confronts the need to develop more sustainable local communities to address globally significant challenges.

Instructors in today’s language classrooms face the challenge of preparing globally competent and socially responsible students with transcultural aptitude. As classroom content shifts toward communication, collaboration, and problem solving across cultural, racial, and linguistic boundaries, the teaching of culture is an integral part of foreign language education. This volume offers nontraditional approaches to teaching culture in a complex time when the internet and social networks have blurred geographical, social, and political borders.The authors offer practical advice about teaching culture with kinesthetics, music, improvisation, and communication technologies for different competency levels.The chapters also explore multi-literacies, project-based learning, and discussions on teaching culture through literature, media, and film.The appendices share examples of course syllabi, specific course activities, and extracurricular projects that explore culinary practices, performing arts, pop culture, geolocation, digital literacy, journalism, and civic literacy.

The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools (2011) lamented the “lack of high-quality civic education in America’s schools [that] leaves millions of citizens without the wherewithal to make sense of our system of government” (p. 4). Preus et al. (2016) cited literature to support their observation of “a decline in high-quality civic education and a low rate of civic engagement of young people” (p. 67). Shapiro and Brown (2018) asserted that “civic knowledge and public engagement is at an all-time low” (p. 1). Writing as a college senior, Flaherty (2020) urged educators to “bravely interpret ... national, local, and even school-level incidents as chances for enhanced civic education and to discuss them with students in both formal and casual settings” (p. 6). In this eighth volume in the Current Perspectives on School/University/Community Research series, we feature the work of brave educators who are engaged in schooluniversity-community collaborative educational endeavors. Authors focus on a wide range of projects oriented to civic education writ large—some that have been completed and some that are still in progress—but all authors evince the passion for civic education that underpins engagement in the democratic project.

This book brings together researchers from different fields, traditions and perspectives to examine the ways in which place and space might (be) unsettle(d). Researchers from across the humanities and social sciences have been drawn to the study of place and space since the 1970s, and the term ‘unsettled’ has been an occasional but recurring presence in this body of scholarship. Though it has been used to invoke a range of meanings, from the dangerous to the liberating, the term itself has rarely been at the centre of sustained examination. This collection highlights the idea of the unsettled in the scholarly investigation of place and space. The respective chapters offer a dialogue between a diverse and eclectic group of researchers, crossing significant disciplinary and interdisciplinary boundaries in the process. The purpose of the collection is to juxtapose a range of different approaches to, and perspectives on, the unsettling of place and space. In doing so, Interdisciplinary Unsettlings of Place and Space makes an important contribution and offers new insights into how scholarship and research into different fields and practices may help us re-envision place and space.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 depicts a dystopian society where technology, particularly in the form of mass media and censorship, plays a central role in controlling and manipulating the populace. However, the novel also explores the paradoxical relationship between technology and human connection, highlighting both its potential for liberation and its capacity for oppression. This research paper aims to analyze the multifaceted portrayal of technology in Fahrenheit 451, examining its role in fostering isolation and conformity while also exploring its subversive potential as a tool for resistance and introspection. Through a close reading of the novel's themes, characters, and narrative structure, this paper elucidates Bradbury's nuanced commentary on the complex interplay between technology, knowledge, and freedom.