Firstbridge courses are offered to degree seeking freshmen and registration is done via webform in pre-arrival checklist.
Professor(s)
Notes
This course takes its name from the book The Poetics of Space by the author Gaston Bachelard. Students will look at ways in which creative writing approaches space, place, and the environment. Students will explore how creative writers over the last hundred years have engaged with the cities they live in, but our investigation is not related to the urban. Through a close attention to ecopoetics and environmental art, we will also be looking at the work of contemporary artists who use the environment as both message and medium, creating art works that, through their direct engagement with the land, bring much needed attention to the grave dangers of an ecological crisis.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will comprehend how information is produced and valued in order to discover, evaluate, use, and create information and knowledge effectively and ethically. In FirstBridge, students will demonstrate the conversational nature of scholarship, and recognize their potential role and responsibilities as contributors to that conversation. For each discipline taught in FirstBridge, students will identify reference works, journals, databases and/or major works in history, in order to start effective research in the field. (FB LO1)
- Students will acquire the study skills, time management, and interpersonal skills needed to meet the demands of university-level academic work at a Liberal Arts College individually or as a team. Students will value the multiple meanings of place through experiential learning at AUP and beyond in the Parisian or global context. (FB LO2)
- To understand different ways in which writers and artists have address their immediate environment and environmental concerns.
- To conduct, on their own and collaboratively, research that connects artists and writers introduced in class to global movements, local artists, and universal problems related to environment and urbanism.
- To create creative and critical work that draws inspiration from different environments, including the city of Paris, and to be able to articulate their intentions and inspirations.
- Students will enhance their intercultural understanding of languages, cultures and the histories of local societies, and the global issues to which these relate. (CCI LO1)
- Students will engage with artistic or creative objects (eg visual art, theatrical works, film) in different media and from a range of cultural traditions. (CCI LO2)
- Students will demonstrate awareness of ethical considerations relating to specific societal problems, values or practices (whether historical or contemporary, global or local) and learn to articulate possible solutions to prominent challenges facing societies and institutions today so as to become an engaged actor across various levels of our interconnected world. (CCI LO4)
Syllabus
Book List
| Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN Number |
|---|---|---|---|
Invisible Cities | Italio Calvino | VINTAGE | 9780099429838 |
The Poetics of Space | Gaston Bachelard | 9780143107521 |
Schedule
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Wednesday | 13:45 | 16:40 | G-L21 |