Cultural Landscapes: Reading UW-Eau Claire 1) Carefully read this assignment to understand the expectations and to know its different parts. This will help you see the big picture and complete it successfully. For this assignment, you will need a digital camera. I suspect that most of you have access to one -- your family, a roommate, a friend, a neighbor, somebody. Learning and Technology Services used to have cameras that you may check out for a day or two on a first come, first served basis. They are in the Old Library Building, OL 1144. 2) Read Peirce Lewis’ Axioms for Reading the Landscape and Donal Meinig's The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene. (Click on the
title to open a pdf of the article.)
3) For this assignment, you are to use Lewis and Meinig's articles to read the UWEC campus landscape. First, find a vantage point from which you can look at the UWEC campus as broadly or representatively as possible. Be close enough that you can pick up details. Then, with the digital camera, take pictures of the landscape – feel free to take them from different angles or zooms. When you get back home, download the picture onto your computer or into your H: drive folder. 4) You need to label your digital pictures. Learn how to do it on your computer with something like MS Powerpoint, MS Word or Adobe Illustrator. For each picture, give a title in which you identify it by place and with some sort of creative subtitle that captures your sense of what the place is like. Then, maybe in small type below that, type in the details of the location, the date, and your name as photographer. 5) Next, using terms and concepts provided by Lewis and Meinig, you are to analyze the landscape. Consider everything – from the striking to the mundane, the unique to the plain. Think of such things as buildings , monuments, symbols, signs, indications of activities, material goods and their architecture, condition, etc.)– all evidence of human activity. 6) You will then write a 2-3 page essay organized in which you describe and read the landscape of UWEC. So, after an introduction to your essay, identify and describe the relevent features from the landscape Pick ones that you feel tell you something about the city, its history, its population, its issues, its ethnicity, its attitude, its level of prosperity, its beliefs and so on and so on. Be sure to use examples from your pictures and refer to them in your text. Then, use Lewis and Meinig to analyze and interpret the UWEC landscape. These features on the landscape are clues to who the people in this place were, are and are becoming. What can you say about UWEC culture, values, identity, society, etc.? You will find that many of the features that you identify can mean any number of things. That’s OK – you are the one reading the landscape. Try not to get side-tracked by what you already know about the landscape features, but concentrate on what you see. Identify at least 4 meaningful landscape features, and be sure to use a mix of cultural, historical, ecological, and other clues that represent a variety of axioms. Be sure to draw from both Lewis and Meinig for support, and properly cite them. Finish by drawing conclusions. Like any good essay, you need to work toward some kind of conclusion that follows from and is supported by what you have presented and discussed. 7) Your completed essay is to be submitted through D2L as a single MS Word (or .PDF) document with yourlastnameEX3 as the file name before class begins on the day that it is due. The file is not to exceed 6 MB, so make sure your images are not larger than 1-2 MB each. Remember, the kind people at the computer helpdesk in the Old Library are waiting to help you if you are not sure of any technical issue with your photographs. Make sure your organization and formatting are neat, acceptable and appropriate before printing off your table. For example, do not forget a title and your name. Your assignment will be graded on completeness, thoughtfulness, effort, clarity, organizaton, creativity, comprehension and explicit incorporation of Lewis's and Meinig's concepts into your assignment. REFERENCES Meinig, D. W. 1979. The beholding eye: ten versions of the same scene, in D. W. Meinig, (ed.) The Interpretation of ordinary landscapes: geographical essays. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. pp. 33–48. |
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