Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Learning the World Through Place-Based Craft

Abstract

At a tiny undergraduate college in northern Vermont, USA, my students explore environmental humanities from the inside out through hands-on experiential education, following Dewey (Experience and education. 1997 reprint ed, Touchstone, New York, 1938) and an implicitly phenomenological approach. Using locally available materials, we practice handspinning, papermaking, lapidary, and other crafts. Each one is a particularity through which students learn not only about the nature of the physical material but also our evolving capabilities as humans.

Learning commences at the interface of student and materials: How does this wool feel? From there, we spiral outward through layers of transdisciplinary inquiry: How do sheep breeds differ? What kind of society domesticated sheep? How have sheep impacted Vermont’s landscape? What happened to the woolen mills? Is wool “green”? And so on. Chemistry, agriculture, economics, commerce, fashion, sustainability, etc., we literally touch all of these as our hands engage in crafts. In the immediacy of creative practice, we find a metaphor for our humanity: we are born to effect change.