Journey by ship through Alaska’s Inside Passage as you consider how stories have both recorded and shaped environmental change of these gorgeous landscapes. Study a variety of narratives that record struggle and survival in an ice-carved land highly sensitive to what the American conservationist John Muir called “climatic conditions.” Muir’s Travels in Alaska (1915) significantly transformed the Inside Passage, promoting resource extraction, mass tourism, and wilderness protection. Our objective is to situate Travels in a constellation of narratives and counter-narratives, and study how Native and settler storytellers, as well as scientists and anthropologists, are claiming and contesting the narratives of this region. We’ll live and study aboard The Endeavour, allowing us to retrace Muir’s maritime travels, visit extraordinary locations, observe wildlife, and experience life on a research vessel. This program is limited to 6 students and features communal living on board the ship.

Field school highlights:

• Explore with an ecocritical mindset and consider how physically being in a place enhances how you interpret stories and narratives of it.
• Engage in modern-day exploration as connect with famous explorer John Muir and his work.
• Hear from local storytellers and Native voices as you delve into ongoing struggles of the Alaskan wilderness.