Students looking for a change of pace, and 3 graduate-level credits, have an opportunity to travel throughout the American Southwest this summer.
UCF’s School of Visual Arts and Design (SVAD), along with the Office of Continuing Education, is offering a course called Ways of Seeing: The American Southwest, an Interpretation of Place. The course will be taught by Philip Peters, an associate professor with SVAD.
The course, open to all upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, is being held to help engage students in learning and developing individual creative minds. “With the way the class is structured, we’re looking at kind of the development of the American Southwest,” said Peters.
During the Summer A semester, students will travel to Nevada and the Four Corners region of the United States: Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. While here, students will stay in different hotels and travel to certain destinations including national parks, universities and museums. Upon return, the group will present their artistic work at the City Arts Factory in Downtown Orlando.
The course syllabus states that a main objective for the course is that “students will be expected to produce work in whatever creative discipline they work in that is inspired from their encounters with the places and cultures visited.” Giving students opportunities to engage with their artistic interpretations of actual environments is something that Peters is passionate about. “I’m very interested in how the arts, particularly the visual arts, interact with place [and] environments,” Peters said.
Professor Bruce Janz, Chair of the UCF Department of Philosophy, has traveled on a few of Peters’ excursions and has noticed the difference in classroom learning verse experiential learning. “Being in the field and writing about these things is very different from being in the classroom, I think. And Phil is a master at bringing together his training and ideas that are in the university with actual places; actual experiences [and] history,” Janz said.
For Peters, his intent for students who take this course is that they will gather new viewpoints. “It’s important for me to get students out of the classroom and out of their comfort zones and get them into places. Particularly places they haven’t been.” He calls it going from an ordinary to an extraordinary.
During this course, students will travel to many well-known areas, such as the Grand Canyon, Maynard Dixon Studio and the Hoover Dam, where they will be able to create their own artistic responses to these places through photography, film and art.
John Nelson, who graduated from UCF in 2003, has also followed Peters a few times on the excursions. Nelson traveled to Utah a few times. He’s also gone to Bermuda, a camping trip to Mosquito Lagoon, and helped Peters in pre-production for his trip to India. To Nelson, these courses are unique. He notes that students are raised up in a theoretical and textbook-oriented type environment whereas Peters’ philosophy behind teaching in actual environments engages students in an entirely new way. “You’re stuck behind a monitor all day long. You’re not feeling the sand between your toes, the dirt in your food, the wind in your hair. So then it’s just kind of more of an experiential learning as opposed to textbooks,” Nelson said.
While this trip is meant to be exciting and engaging, Peters cautions students that this isn’t just a sight-seeing trip. “I really want them to interpret the place and look at it— I don’t want postcards, I want an interpretation of place,” Peters said. Throughout the course, students will have assigned readings and watch movie documentaries. “It’s a lot of work to do these trips—I think you don’t get anything unless you’re willing to put something into it. So, you know, the work is worth it,” Janz said.
Students will begin their course in Orlando, where Peters has invited a series of guest lecturers to discuss photography, landscape painting, anthropology and the environmental arts. Students will leave on May 13 and travel to Las Vegas where they will begin the traveling part of the course. The entire excursion will last about 14 days and students will present their work at the gallery on June 21.
The cost of the course is $2499. The price includes: lodging, transportation during their travels, national park and museum entrance fees, guest speaker fees, the gallery show cost, as well as five group meals. Students will have to pay for their transportation to and from Las Vegas, as well as individual meals and other personal activity expenses.
Janz recommends students prepare in advance for this trip. He encourages students to know their equipment and to “have their chops down” before they go. “The students best prepared to deal with this are students who come in with their eyes open and their bility to bring all of their training to bear,” Janz said.
Students interested in this course can contact Phil Peters directly at Philip.peters@ucf.edu or
407-832-0091. Space is limited and a holding deposit is due by Feb. 15.
By: Lily Maxwell
