Description & Location

The Rural Heritage Institute at Sterling College is a four-day series of interdisciplinary academic, experiential, and instructional field-based workshops scheduled for June 11-14, 2008.

Each of the four days of the event will highlight and strengthen connections between scholarship on rural communities in northern New England and field experience with and in working communities throughout the region.

Sterling College, in partnership with The Northeast Kingdom School Development Center at Lyndon State College, is offering 2 graduate or undergraduate credits for participation in the Institute.

The Institute emphasizes a model of community learning and experiential academics shared by our host venue. Sterling College, located only 30 miles from the Canadian border in the heart of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, is an ideal place in which to explore the interwoven threads of place, culture, and community heritage.

The Institute will highlight field workshops in the surrounding rural, agricultural communities as well as a Local Foods Banquet, local music interlude, and an Open House for thirty local and regional rural heritage, land use, and agricultural organizations, which will include local foods purveyors.

At a Glance

Dates:
June 11-14, 2008

Cost & Fees:
$100 Registration
$318 Lodging & Meals*
$700 Under/graduate Credit* *Lodging, meals, and credit are optional.

Useful Links:
Registration Form (93kb PDF)
Schedule of Events
Course Syllabus

Contact Info:
Pavel Cenkl, Dean of Academics
Sterling College, PO Box 72
Craftsbury Common, VT 05827
ruralheritage@sterlingcollege.edu
802-586-7711 ext.140

Featured Speakers & Partners

• Willem Lange, VPR commentator and author:
     ~ Where Does the Wild Goose Go?
     ~ Intermittent Bliss
• John Miller, Photographer and author of:
     ~ Granite and Cedar
     ~ Deer Camp
• Kent Ryden, Director of New England & American Studies Program at USM, author:
      ~ Landscape with Figures: Nature and Culture in New England
      ~ Mapping the Invisible Landscape
• Leland Kinsey, author:
      ~ The Immigrant's Contract
• Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, author:
      ~ As Long as There are Mountains
      ~ When Spring Comes, and
      ~ The Canada Geese Quilt
• John Harris, Director of The Monadnock Institute for Place, Nature, and Culture
• The NorthWoods Stewardship Center
• The Fairbanks Museum
• The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment
• Kingdom Books
• Galaxy and Stardust Bookshops

Presentation Topics

• The Farmhouse: A Vision of Rural Heritage
• The Politics of Rural Life through Journalism
• Agrarianism in the North
• Butterworks Farm: Diversified, Integrated, Signature Farming - Solutions for the Future?
• Poetry and Place: The Agricultural Imagination
• Three Kingdom Agrarians: Garret Keizer, Howard Frank Mosher, and James Hayford
• Sense of Place and Work in Nineteenth-Century Vermont
• The North Country Project: Oral History and Community Memory
• Mapping Historical Landscapes
• Looking for the Animal in the Animal-Embodiment of National/Regional Symbols

Who Should Attend?

A broad range of practitioners, scholars, community members, undergraduate/graduate students, and teachers who are passionate about solidifying the connections between community, academic scholarship, and meaningful work in the field. By completing the RHI curriculum, participants will be able to:

Recognize and learn specific examples of the rich diversity of rural heritage in Northern New England.

Build skills necessary to bridge classroom scholarship and field experience, in both their own study and teaching experience.

Understand the interdisciplinary nature of rural heritage and the links that can be forged between cultural history, economy, history, area studies, and ecology, among others.

Develop rural-heritage focused curricula at their home institutions.