ºìÐÓÖ±²¥app

Political Geography and the Power of Place

I applied to Valley and Ridge with the goal of designing a first-year seminar (FYS) about political geography and the power of place. I knew I wanted to discuss the relationship between geographic locations and issues of power, privilege, wealth, and identity as well as how governmental policies create and reinforce segregation in the United States.

As a result of attending Valley and Ridge I was inspired to lean heavily into place-based pedagogy using Dickinson’s campus and Carlisle as our laboratory. As part of the newly-designed FYS, students will visit the ºìÐÓÖ±²¥app Archives to learn about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (facilitated by Jim Gerencser and Amanda Cheromiah), the Trout Gallery to see photos of the “Tracing Slavery: Moses Williams and Kara Walker” exhibition (facilitated by Heather Flaherty), and the Cumberland County Historical Society. Students will also go on walking tours related to campus sustainability (led by Lindsey Lyons), northside Carlisle redevelopment (led by Brenda Landis), and Slavery at Dickinson (using resources created by the House Divided Project). They will also learn about local government as well as the work of Dickinson’s Center for Civic Learning and Action (led by Laura Megivern).

For their final research project, students will be introduced to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and analyze how what they have learned about Carlisle aligns, or does not align, with those goals. As part of this project, our library liaison (Ian Boucher) will teach students about PolicyMap, which is an online mapping tool accessible to non-GIS experts that allows students to visualize and analyze demographic and socioeconomic data from a geographic perspective.

Valley and Ridge gave me the confidence to design a course focused on Dickinson and Carlisle as sites of learning and to leverage the immense expertise of a variety of campus partners to facilitate learning about our community.