3.0

Average Course Rating

This is a First-Year Seminar about the literature and phenomena of walking: its great poets, its cultural and social meanings, and the practices that organize our attention to movement through space. How does walking relate to necessity and freedom, public and private space, the environment, and the rhythm of thinking itself? We’ll consider major writings and films on walking through urban and wild places, including H.D. Thoreau’s praise of “sauntering,” Walter Benjamin on the urban “fl neur” (stroller), Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems of Chicago streets, Agnès Varda’s documentary of the “gleaner” who makes her art from what others leave behind, Sunaura Taylor’s reflection on walking and disability, and W. G. Sebald’s knack for discovering history wherever he roamed. We will also learn how famous planners and urbanists shape the experience of walking from the Appalachian Trail to the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Most importantly, we’ll adopt these practices of attention to explore Johns Hopkins campus and Baltimore City's landscapes, environments, and geography. About half our sessions will meet outdoors for walks through the many neighborhoods surrounding Johns Hopkins and elsewhere in Baltimore, sometimes joined by a special guest, writer, or artist. Here, we’ll learn how to be something more than detached passers-by. Instead, we’ll become active investigators of the most ordinary parts of our reality and experience. Aside from reading and participating in our walks and discussion, brief exercises prompt you to move through the world and to craft compelling records of your experiences, observations, and curiosity.