Landscape and Imagination

In this course we will explore how individuals and communities imbue landscapes with meaning. We will study Western Apache place-names, poems by Percy Shelley and William Wordsworth, and French Occitan revivalist song. Through these case studies we will examine the central role of landscapes in constructing oral history, conceptualizations of nature informed by historical events such as industrialization, and the re-imagining of geographic spaces in efforts to revitalize local languages on the verge of extinction. We will read excerpts from Keith Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places and Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory. Students will write weekly response essays and one final paper.



Sarah Trouslard is an ethnomusicologist and musician. Her scholarship focuses on music and postcolonial regionalism in southern France.