FYS: Whose Streets? Our Streets!

Catalog description

Activist, philosopher, and farmer Wendell Berry often claims, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.” Place-based education takes seriously the need for a grounded intellect that connects theory to the land, water, and air around us in order to responsibly exercise power in the world. This class will introduce students to the many histories of New York City—its unique places and peoples, its sites of struggle and resistance—through weekly walking tours of the Five Boroughs. By focusing on the shared experience of walking, we will examine how individuals and communities contest alienation through the act of reclaiming public space, as well as the challenges of that resistance. Designed as a First-Year Seminar grounded in this interdisciplinary and situated approach, the course treats place as both subject and method, using the city itself as an entry point for exploring history, politics, culture, and community.