A Sense of Place: Capturing the Unique Qualities of the Southwest Landscape Through Reading, Writing, and Exploration Writing
Nourish your mind and spirit through writing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This course will explore the writing of New Mexican and Southwestern authors including but not limited to Rudolfo Anaya, Leslie Marmon Silko, Kristen Valdez Quade, and N. Scott Momaday, each of whom capture something unique about their place and time. We will practice our own skills of observation when we move out into the varied and distinct natural landscapes in the Sante Fe area, taking our journals to the desert, mountain, and forest landscapes that make this place so special. Each day will include time to explore the northern New Mexican landscape and journal, readings and discussions, and writing and collaboration. Bring home a series of vignettes that capture your time standing in this particular place.
“Something of our relationship to the earth is determined by the particular place we stand at a given time. If you stand still long enough to observe carefully the things around you, you will find beauty, and you will know wonder. If you see a leaf carried along on the flow of a river, you might ponder its journey. Where did it begin, and where will it end? What will be the story of its passage? You will discover a thousand ways in which the leaf is connected to the water, the banks, the near and farther distances, the sky and the sun. Your mind, your spirit will be nourished and grow. You will become one with what you see. Consider what it is to be seen.”
N. Scott Momaday, Earth Keeper p. 38
all schedules subject to changes
Course Faculty
Callie Carew-Miller
Callie Carew-Miller recently moved to Northern New Mexico after years teaching English in Prague, Czechia; Sofia, Bulgaria; and Sheffield, Massachusetts. Callie has been lucky enough to travel widely from each of these locations, but a constant through each travel leg and transition has been her use of writing to capture and make sense of each…