Experiential Learning in Environmental History: Diversity from Margin to Center

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

**As a field preoccupied with histories of place, environmental history is particularly ripe for the incorporation of experiential learning. This pedagogical strategy can show up in (or out of) the classroom in a variety of ways including field trips, site visits, non-traditional assessments, volunteer projects, or even weekslong expeditions. These corresponding panels titled “Experiential Learning” explore different themes in experiential learning in environmental history, the pedagogical philosophy behind such programming, and unpack creative solutions to hurdles and boundaries we’ve encountered when trying to implement this kind of teaching.**

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers, activists, and scientists are increasingly articulating the important connections between issues of systemic inequality and environmental change. With forced quarantines leading to reductions in pollution, scholars have argued that the environment “bounced back,” offering an unprecedented opportunity to see how humans were shaping natural and built environments during a moment of unprecedented climate activism. At the same time political volatility erupted as anti-racist and anti-police protest movements took to the streets to campaign for their right to live freely in public space. The context provoked deep reflection on the intersections between power and space - our human experience and the environment. Yet, now as the dust is settling, do we see systemic changes linking diversity and the environment in educational pedagogy?

Our panel offers several case studies into ways in which faculty are engaging diverse student backgrounds in environmental history. In the words of feminist theorist and Black scholar bell hooks, our panel uses experiential learning as a lens to bring students “from margin to center” (1984). Taken together, the panel offers a different perspective on the CFP’s call for studies of extractivism and speculation by illuminating a variety of ways in which diverse classrooms are challenging histories of colonialism through experiential learning as placemaking.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• The Black and Indigenous High School Summer Institute: Digging for Greater Social Justice - Mack Scott, Brown University

• Urban Environmental Histories of Gender and Sexuality in Asia - Kera Lovell, University of Utah Asia Campus

• Akiikaa: Land-Based Learning and Indigenous Health - Angela Mashford-Pringle, University of Toronto

• Outdoor Campuses in Higher Education: Stakeholders, Sustainability, and Sequestered Land - Juan-Miguel Arias, Colorado College

Chair

• Kera Lovell, University of Utah Asia Campus