Co-taught Courses

BIOL 109: Feet to the Fire:
The Art and Science of Climate Change

This intensive, interdisciplinary course melds scientific and choreographic inquiry in pursuit of one of the most important topics facing society: climate change due to global warming. This course will include both classroom and laboratory sessions. Our laboratory will be Middletown’s landfill. The landfill, less than 2 miles from campus, dominates the landscape and flood plain of the north end of Middletown. It is a perfect laboratory within which to explore the effects of climate change on both wilderness and urban landscapes using the lenses of science and choreography. For example, the contents of the landfill afford the opportunity to explore the climatic consequences of consumerism, energy use, CO2 and methane production. With an emphasis on the body and its relationship with its environment, participants will have an opportunity to consider the multiple layers of histories, time, and memory layered within the landfill and the continuing impact of this changing environment on the body. Students will learn modern scientific and kinesthetic tools for assessing environmental conditions, ecological responses changing in time and space. The methods of scientific deduction and choreographic composition will be applied to metaphor and meaning of climate change. The experience is intended to reciprocally illuminate artistic and scientific practices in pursuit of common goals, renewed pathways of inquiry, perception, and ideas. The course will meet for 2-3 hours once per week from the beginning of the semester until spring break and then will meet all day long each week day of spring break. After spring break we will meet as a class and then individually with teams of students in preparation for a symposium on our joint science and art projects.

BIOL 306: Tropical Ecology and the Environment

Photos by Paul Horton (All Rights Reserved)

An intensive course about tropical ecology and neotropical environments co-taught in South America by Barry Chernoff, Director of the Environmental Studies Program and Professor of Biology and Cassie Meador and Matt Mahaney of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. This course built knowledge of and appreciation for the diversity of tropical organisms and physical environments as well as their interactions. As part of Feet to the Fire the course examined Tropical Ecology with an emphasis on the effects of global warming in the tropics, from the perspectives of art and science. Students obtained firsthand experience with the tropics and with doing experiments and site specific artwork in the field. Each day there were a combination of lectures and field exercises. The students gathered and analyzed data about biological, physical, and environmental issues that were covered in the lectures. The habitats they explored were both terrestrial and shallow freshwater. Furthermore, the class traveled to Kaieteur Falls and other habitats to gain experience with the spectacular environmental and biological features that Guyana offers.