COURSE DESIGN AND CURRICULUM
Watch this space for the forthcoming material:
+ Complete List of Faculty
+ Syllabus
+ Final Required Reading List for Course Accreditation
+ Recommended Reading List for non-accreditation participants
+ List of Supporting Materials
Course Design
The course will consist of a series of lectures on the topics and themes as described in the curriculum, reading list, and online supplementary materials, as well as field-study visits and excursions (hiking and site specific excursions) for 10-20 participants.
Our integrated studies approach aims to enrich a transdisciplinary understanding of Icelandic culture-nature environments by engaging with conceptual, historical, and lived experiences of place. Through field studies and lectures by leading Icelandic and international scholars, place-based observations and site visits, exploring various visualization methods and literary research, examining historical records in relation to changes in landscape and climate, exchanging and building on environmental science and humanities knowledge, engaging with local communities, and discussing different multi-pillar perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of transformative issues at local, regional and global scales.
The course will engage a range of questions concerning the human dimensions of environmental change and the effects of such change on environments and societies grounded in interdisciplinary orientation to case-based study. In particular, the course foregrounds questions of long-term societal resilience and cultural responses in the face of climate change, competition and societal conflict over natural resources, effects of early globalization and anthropogenic transformation of landscapes and ecosystems at multiple times scales.
The course will involve multiple excursions and lectures in the field and integrates perspectives, theories, case studies and methodologies from the following disciplines: Environmental Humanities; Literary Ecocriticism; Cultural Creativity; Environmental and Climate History; Environmental Archaeology and Anthropology; Historical Ecology; Ecosystem Ecology; Population Ecology, Limnology, Natural Resource Use Management, Tourism, and Manuscript Studies.
Course Evaluation / Requirements for a Diploma
The Icelandic Field Stations course can be taken with or without credits. The course is equivalent to 7,5 ECTS for those seeking a diploma. The certificate will contain a thorough description of contents, reading material, lectures and excursions. The course focuses on key aspects of the environmental humanities, especially ecocritical approaches to understanding the environment through Icelandic literature from the 18th century through to the present.
- The overall student workload estimated is approximately 200 hours. The anticipated workload breaks down as follows:
- Readings and assignments before arrival in Iceland: 60-80 hours;
- Sessions in class (lectures and discussions): c. 30 hours;
- Field trips often with lectures included, 40 hours;
- Preparation of term paper after finishing the sessions on location 60-80 hours; due within 4 weeks of the end of the course.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completing the course, the student is expected to be able to:
- in an interdisciplinary manner to identify the different approaches of the humanities and social- and natural sciences, such as ecology, climatology, environmental history and archaeology in order to analyze environmental aspects of culture/nature relationships in Arctic and Nordic contexts.
- address questions on long-term connections between societal, cultural and environmental changes, and understand how rural communities and natural ecosystems have adapted to multiple disturbances and climatic change.
- identify cultural and scientific evidence of anthropogenic change to landscape and environment.
- understand the role of traditional ecological knowledge, and agricultural- and cultural history in a modern rural society.
- understand the importance of biodiversity, and ecological diversity on sustainable resource use management in complex systems over long timescales.
- recognize the different forms of cultural heritage, and their manifestation in the landscape
- identify key aspects of ecocritical approaches to literature from the period ca. 1700-the present.
- identify the environmental significance of literary texts and genres, in particular as carriers of environmental memory and change in the context of regional cultural changes.
- assess the importance of cultural heritage for the interpretation of human-nature interactions.
- discuss the various issues concerning the protection and utilization of cultural heritage.
Language
All lectures and coursework will be in English