Seeking St. Louis: Power, Identity and Landscape

3 units

This fieldwork seminar takes the landscape of metropolitan St. Louis to be the greatest text ever written about the history of the region, but also the most inscrutable and ambiguous one. Students will learn to read this text during visits to sites such as Forest Park, Lafayette Square, New Town, Washington Park Cemetery, Big Mound Site and the West Lake Landfill. Students will analyze past efforts to shape, inhabit, occupy or possess the local landscape as they decode lingering inscriptions of power, capital, and identity. Field work will be informed by broad interdisciplinary readings, discussion, lectures and films. Ultimately, students will be able to create their own guidebook to a specific local landscape.