Summer 2023 is on!

We will be offering the class once again in 2023. I'll be posting more detail later, but for now, please save the dates, and browse all the previous entries for some insight into what we will be doing.

The class is offered Monday July 17 through Friday July 28, every day except the weekend. It is scheduled 9am to noon. Allow about 20-30 extra minutes for travel to and from designated parking, to be announced later.

Topics

Geography is a discipline that is all about connections and about the many facets that make places what they are. For this New Bedford course, we are working with various local experts to explore many of its facets. Major topics include:

• Indigenous land and people: Wampanoag
• Whaling heritage and whaleboat rowing
• African-American heritage
• Portuguese heritage
• Manufacturing 
• New Bedford as a Gateway City
• Redevelopment of old mills
• Modern fisheries
• Renewable energy: maritime wind; climate resilience 
• Public housing
• Politics and civic engagement
• and of course: FOOD! 

As we confirm partner participation, I will add links to most of these topics.

It is my intention to help students think creatively about all of the other places they know as a result of looking at this one from many perspectives.

54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry mural on William Street. Image: NPS

Gateway City Jingle

Not only does this course have a great location, a van, and many interesting partners, it has a catchy tune!

Please share with potential students -- graduate or undergraduate. This could be a perfect experience for in-service teachers needing credits or for area students home for the summer. Our credits transfer easily to most other institutions.

https://bridgew.edu/summer

Food Tour!

"You really got to look at New Bedford with different eyes. The New Bedford you're telling me about is not the New Bedford I'm seeing."

This excerpt from the article cited below is a great summary of how I think about New New Bedford -- and other gateway cities in Massachusetts. They are, generally speaking, not what people think they are! This course in general -- and the food tour in particular -- aim to help people see the city in a lot of new ways. This is as important for people who have never been to the city as it is for people who have never lived anywhere else!

The summer course as a whole is all about partnerships -- students will encounter a different facet of the city every day, all with the help of local experts. Those experts will include one of the city's newest companies: New Bedford Food Tours. 

Pam Shwartz and wife Sara Gonzalez look on as Leilani Gocalves
serves them breakfast at Izzy's Restaurant on Spring Street.
Photo: New Bedford's legendary Peter Pereira  

As local journalist Seth Chitwood explains in a recent profile of the owners, There Is Something for Everyone Here. Co-founder Pamela Shwartz reached out to me to discuss collaboration; the course will include a special brunch version of the company's tours.

I know some great places to eat in New Bedford -- they know even more. Visit NB Food Tours for a taste of what is to come!

See the main course entry for details of the August 2022 class.

Summer 2022: New Bedford Field Course

In geography, I like to say, the real world is a big part of what we do. This course will be a great example!

In the geography classroom -- and even in the Zoom classroom -- I like helping students make connections that will help them understand that world in new ways. But nothing compares to being out in that world with students, whether it is walking inside a (mildly) active volcano, in a dugout canoe on the Caribbean coast or riding in a van to Cape Cod. 

I have brought that joy of exploration to Discovering Brockton, a first-year seminar that has introduced a lot of students to geographic thinking. Because that course is available only to first-year students, I have been looking for a way to bring a similar experience to a wider audience. 

Working Waterfront

Thus was the summer course New Bedford: Maritime City born! We will spend ten mornings learning about this fascinating city through walking tours, windshield surveys (what geographers call driving around while talking about a place), conversations with local experts, time on the water, food, and of course coffee! 

Details

This course meets every week day during the first two weeks of August, 2022. Students can park at the New Bedford Airport, where we will start each day at 8:30 a.m. sharp with a van ride from the airport through a different part of the city. 

Bring a travel mug if you want coffee for the ride -- I will make some for the class every morning. The morning will be spent on some combination of the activities described above. We will return to the airport at 12:30, with light reading or writing assignments for the next day. 

This course is available for graduate credit; additional scholarly work will be planned with each graduate student in accordance with their academic and professional goals. In-service teacher may elect to develop lesson plans, for example. 

Tuition and all fees: $1,289.75 See BSU Summer for registration and payment details.

GEOG 296 / GEOG 520 New Bedford: Maritime City

A schedule of activities will be described in a separate post as the summer progresses. Meanwhile, earlier posts to this blog include geographic insights about New Bedford that I have been accumulating since we first proposed this course a few years ago. Browse prior posts to get a sense of the city as I tend to think about it.

Maritime CIty: Big Energy

See the Low Tide, High Wind post on my main Environmental Geography blog for news that will be part of this course: New Bedford has become the staging area for the biggest wind-energy project in the USA!

Image: National Fisherman

Online Field Course

Summer 2021: Explore New Bedford in an online field course. What is that? Good question.

July 5 to August 6  || Mon-Wed-Thur || 10am to noon via Zoom

In the Fall 2020 semester, I had to convert my honors first-year seminar Discovering Brockton to a fully online experience, even though weekly visits to the city had been key to its success. The success of the online version of the Brockton course has encouraged me to reconceive New Bedford: Maritime City as an online field course.

The star of the course will be the city itself, which we will explore over a five-week period using several tools, including windshield and sidewalk surveys, Zoom meetings with special guest speakers representing many facets of the community members, and existing collections of audio, video, and photographic media.

The class will be fully online and partly synchronous, meaning that we expect to be online concurrently from 10am to noon each Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday during the second summer session of 2021 (July 5 through August 6), with the balance of learning time being at each student's convenience.

The course will be listed at BSU Summer as GEOG 296 and GEOG 520 -- available for both undergraduate and graduate credit. It will be open both to BSU students and to those wishing to transfer credits elsewhere.

Course instructor (pink hat) on New Bedford's working
 waterfront with some whaleboating friends.