Teaching the environment with collaboration: Photo essays across disciplines

ABSTRACT

Much has been written about the benefits of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity for addressing environmental issues, but how do we teach such collaboration? Here, we describe our experiences attempting to foster collaboration between undergraduate students from sociology, environmental studies, and photography. We describe and reflect on a new joint assignment between an environmental sociology course (cross listed with sociology and environmental studies) and an upper-level photography course. We describe the collaborative experiences of both the students and faculty/staff involved in its creation and realization. We conclude by identifying areas of improvement for future collaborations.

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to Emily Ryan and The Commons for providing the space and support to allow our classes to meet jointly. Thanks also to the Oread Project and the KU Center for Sustainability. Thanks also to the editors, reviewers, Nate Freiburger and Mary Kate Dennis, for reading drafts of this manuscript and offering feedback.

Notes

1. See the New Farmers collaboration at www.NewFarmersProject.com and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ0VoCzmRoE.

2. On the FSA specifically, see Curtis (1989) and Reblando (2014).

3. See also Bell (2011) and Carolan (2013).

4. In addition to the two displayed here, the following photographs were part of the exhibition: John Vachon, Farm for Sale, Jefferson County Kansas, 1938 (2005.0197); Arthur Rothstein, Skull, Badlands, South Dakota, 1936 (1983.0142); Russell Lee, Mass Meeting Called to Raise Funds to Continue WPA Road Work, San Augustine, Texas, 1939 (1985.0092); and Walker Evans, Share Croppers Family, Hale County, Alabama, 1936 (1987.0114).

5. For this iteration of the assignment, the most obvious hurdle was that of scheduling. We took on the task of trying to make an assignment for two classes AFTER the schedule had already been set. For all future iterations as well as any adaptations this will be readily avoidable.

6. Our thanks to the reviewers for helping broaden our framing of this assignment beyond simply a collaboration between sociology, photography, and the museum.