Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest: Region, Heritage, and Environment in the Rural Northeast

Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Adirondacks

Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Adirondacks erNest h. williams, patriCk d. reyNolds, aNd oNNo oerlemaNs F ew regions compare to the Adirondacks in terms of the wealth of material provided for study from many different perspectives. A logical place to start in a study of any region is its history, which for the Adirondacks may include tracing the influence of the early Iroquois through the arrival of the French and the Dutch, to the settlers who tried to wrest a living from the land, and eventually to the establishment of a state park with its complex issues of land ownership and management. An understanding of the Adirondacks is enriched by learning about the geological history of the mountains, the views of artists who illustrated their perceptions of the landscape and wildlife, the impressions of writers who told stories of the region, and issues about wilderness and its preservation. These and additional topics contribute to a very broad menu for study. A recently introduced interdisciplinary course on the Adirondacks at Hamilton College, entitled Forever Wild: The Cultural and Natural Histories of the Adirondack Park, attempts to merge these different threads in the search for a fuller understanding of the region. We are three faculty members, with different disciplinary specialties, who have taught this 78 • teaChiNg aNd learNiNg course several times each and who, along the way, have begun to discover solutions to the challenges of engaging students in interdisciplinary study. In this essay we present some of what we have learned in the process, with each of us focusing on what has struck us most strongly; we discuss ways of creating interdisciplinarity and provide examples of interdisciplinary connections, particularly through the use of literature. Our course is team taught, emphasizes oral and written communication , and culminates in an integrative project with a public presentation. The course is part of a sophomore seminar program intended to give students some synthesis to their studies during the first two years of college . The program has spurred the development of a number of courses, like ours, that not only are new to the curriculum but also add subjects that would not find an obvious home within traditional, departmentally based curricular structures. We have used two histories as the backbone of our course—Paul Schneider’s The Adirondacks: A History of America’s First Wilderness and Philip G. Terrie’s Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks—but many additional readings supplement these histories, on topics such as the formation of the mountains, the ecology of the Northern Forest, regional creative arts and literature, political controversies, the arrival of different ethnic groups, acid precipitation, and global warming. Because firsthand experience enhances an individual’s interest in a region, we take students for a midwinter snowshoe walk or for fall weekend trips to notable Adirondack locales, including a night at a great camp. In the first four years of offering this seminar, the instructors have included seven different faculty members representing four different departments (English, biology, chemistry, and government), teaching eighteen fully enrolled sections of approximately 220 students. Interdisciplinarity in Teaching and Learning about the Adirondacks erNest h. williams A significant curricular question for our course is where to place the boundary on investigation—what to include or exclude—because a single course can cover only so much ground. Our course emphasizes glaciation , forest succession, human settlement, resource industries, politi- teaChiNg about the adiroNdaCks • 79 cal organization and conflict, painting, and literature. At times we have included material on Iroquois culture, ethnic history, folk music, government regulations, sociological descriptions, and acid rain. We strive for integration of all materials we use because of the intellectual engagement and enhanced understanding that such a synthesis provides. An integrated approach to a large subject is not easy, of course. Surveying many topics in a short time is a challenge, illustrated by one student’s comment on the difficulty of transitioning from a discussion of Emerson’s transparent eyeball one day to the Grenville orogeny the next. That’s an abrupt change, to be sure. And there are difficulties for instructors. In the initial class one year, a student asked why he should come to a biologist or a chemist to study Emerson. Our reply was that as faculty we can read Emerson along with the students and see how the reading informs our view of the Adirondacks, although we recognize that, for a deeper...