Landscape Studies II: Indigeneity (spring 2024, pratt)

 This course was a required graduate seminar for Pratt’s Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) program. The interdisciplinary class intertwined the fields of environmental history and landscape studies. Much of the course content in “Landscape Studies II”–including a lecture on “Plants and Empire” and readings such as Wendy Makoons Geniusz’s Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings–were informed by my commitment to placing groups who have been historically marginalized at the center of the historical narrative.

For their final projects, students selected an environmental case study site in New York City, which included parks, beaches, a highway, a polluted canal, and a former garbage dump. Drawing from this archival research, students wrote a formal essay paired with an ArcGIS StoryMap: a digital tool that geolocated historical sources to the students’ assigned case study site.