Ecology and Embodiment
This at Schumacher College, Dartington Trust programme explores the rich intersection of embodied practice, environmental philosophy, and ecological thinking. Literally grounded in the experience of its participants to place, this programme has the capacity to reshape our relationship to broader world, to nature, and to ourselves.
This course foregrounds the role of movement in ecological systems, from protosemiotic responses in bacteria and migration, to climate adaptation and ocean currents, to isostatic rebound and more. Students will engage in guided individual projects throughout the course, culminating in a final practical project that interweaves an embodied connection to place with a deeper understanding of the dynamic nature of the systems in which we are all already a part.
Through disciplines such as movement ecology or environmental philosophy, students will explore in lectures the role of movement across different environmental experiential scales from microscopic to climatic. Workshops and seminars will involve contrasting methods of movement and embodied practice as a way to explore inter-species storytelling, and to bridge the boundary between self, community, and the more-than-human world. Migration of humans and non-humans will be used to interrogate existing anthropocentric boundaries and critical zones for defining a socioecological approach to human/non-human interactions. A field trip to the Dartmoor National Park will allow you to understand the significance of the intersection of embodiment, environmental thought, and ecological systems in this complex and rich living landscape.
The course reflects on the complex entanglements that connect beings, environments, and landscapes as sites of multispecies coordination, at various scales across bioregions. Through concepts such as desire lines and critical zones, students are re-imagining networks from the liveliness around us, across species and beings, going past the centrality of the human subject.
Time: Monday 24 April – Friday 16 June 2023
