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Interested in exploring learning experiences within particular locales, I drew pedagogical strategies from recent theoretical and ethnographic studies on “performance” and “lived religion” (Bell; Flueckiger). We approached learning as “emergent” phenomena shifting in relation to contexts. This required the class and me to perform our intellectual lifeworks flexibly, adjusting pedagogical practices to the place and our experiences of and in it. Resituating Thomas Csordas’s work on somatic attention from anthropological theory to our class work, we initially privileged sensorial insights about experiences. Later, we added structured, critical thinking using reflective contemplative pedagogies (Zajonc; O’Reilley). We raised questions about gesture as power and exchange, observational perspectives, and other limitations of our place-based exercises. Sorting through these repertoires, questions of sustainability, economics, environments, and equity regarding local practices of observation and experience led to broader questions about power and categorizing, such as is found in case studies of sprawl and race-based economics in Atlanta.

Using our portfolio entries as triggers for inquiry-driven discussions, we analyzed texts and pushed our sensorial conclusions further. We evolved a class culture that became a living system of performative life-learning history. Our emergent narratives demonstrated connectedness and tension among ideas within our community, revealing differences in identity-histories, racial and ethnic backgrounds, class status, religious, and/or ethical assumptions. Rather than assume we had arrived at “answers,” these gaps and slippages kept us honest about being a living, learning system. We had, in the words of Mary Oliver, to “keep looking.” Research as communally performed narrative balanced our textual digging and critical thinking. Our emerging story explored physical, personal, and communal constellations of knowing and understanding performed intellectually, as well as through modes of being, values, and meaning (Jackson, 183–184).

One student, the youngest in the class, crafted the following ten points to offer an initial description of the learning experience she had from a course camp-out. She came to view it as her tale of performed learning throughout the semester.

     
 

Ten Things I’ve Learned: Preconceptions Torn Apart

1. It’s harder to sleep outdoors than I thought.
2. It’s easier to pee outside than I thought.
3. You can practice “Leave No Trace,” and the quality of your meals won’t suffer for it!
4. Out in the forest, my species is outnumbered. I am a guest.
5. When you are a guest here, you go to sleep when the forest goes to sleep.
6. “If you think daylight is just daylight, then it is just daylight.” — Mary Oliver
7. 20–25 pounds may be a lot to carry on one’s back for 1.6 miles, but nothing’s impossible.
8. When you’re camping with others, everyone is family.
9. Anyone can get along with everyone; we must simply learn to accept one another’s differences.
10. If everyone’s a leader, then no one will fall behind.

 
     


 

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