Framing
Framing
Critical Encounters
“…a college-wide initiative intended to synchronize conversations between the school and the community, in an ongoing dialogue, around a central, socially and culturally relevant issue, each academic year.”
Critical Encounters: Human|Nature will examine the relationships and tensions between humankind and the natural world and will consider how factors such as the culture, wealth, geography, and history of societies have influenced humanity’s stewardship, exploitation, understanding, and artistic representations of the natural environment. It will investigate how past actions have resulted in local and global environmental crises and weigh potential solutions.
Human|Nature will survey how societies either choose to collectively protect their shared resources or retreat from cooperation and the impact these decisions have had on humanity and human rights. Human|Nature will also gauge the impact of the natural world on human development by considering how nature has shaped the shared human experience as well as exploring the degree to which individual values, qualities, and desires are either naturally imbued or socially nurtured.
Potential Lines of Inquiry
“…a college-wide initiative intended to synchronize conversations between the school and the community, in an ongoing dialogue, around a central, socially and culturally relevant issue, each academic year.”
Critical Encounters: Human|Nature will examine the relationships and tensions between humankind and the natural world and will consider how factors such as the culture, wealth, geography, and history of societies have influenced humanity’s stewardship, exploitation, understanding, and artistic representations of the natural environment. It will investigate how past actions have resulted in local and global environmental crises and weigh potential solutions.
Human|Nature will survey how societies either choose to collectively protect their shared resources or retreat from cooperation and the impact these decisions have had on humanity and human rights. Human|Nature will also gauge the impact of the natural world on human development by considering how nature has shaped the shared human experience as well as exploring the degree to which individual values, qualities, and desires are either naturally imbued or socially nurtured.
Potential Lines of Inquiry
- How do we prepare the 21st century learner to exist in a changing global environment?
- How has the natural world influenced/informed design and how will it continue? What are the new trends?
- How do history, culture, and place impact the definition of “nature” and how does this definition change through time?
- How does marketing create the values, consumer demand, and consumer resistance found in highly material societies?
- How do references to “human nature” drive actors and actions?
- What are the logic, promises, and pitfalls of allowing the market to devise solutions to problems that are often market driven? For instance, can we apply market logic, such as “cap and trade” to reduce greenhouse emissions, to solve environmental crises? Does it simply delay the reckoning?
- How do you preserve global resources when there are incentives to take? How does one share yet achieve security in a world of limited, natural resources?
- How does the destruction of nature and loss of biodiversity impact the health and well being of people?
- What are the impacts of war on the natural world? How do conflicts over natural resources lead to war? What are the alternatives?
- What are some solutions to emerging global and local environmental threats and what can individuals do to reduce their impact on the planet?
- How accessible are environmentally friendly solutions/behaviors to different cultural and economic communities?
- How do emerging technologies change the relationship between people and between people and nature?
- Are clean air, clean water, and open lands human rights?
- What are the impacts of land boundaries and geography on the relationship between the natural world and us?
- What are the resource and land costs of suburbanization and how can urban planning and cities help solve environmental challenges?
- How do rising fossil fuel costs impact human economic development and what are the implications for the natural world? How do energy alternatives and behavior changes impact this equation?
- What are the environmental and aesthetic costs of globalization (e.g. the global food economy)?
- What role have religious/spiritual traditions and texts served in determining people’s relationship with the natural world?
- What roles do artistic representations of the natural world play in societies and how do they impact those societies?
- How did the American frontier and Manifest Destiny help shape contemporary American relationships with nature?