Humans in Place: Natural and Cultural History of Maine’s Coastal Islands

18 August—8 September 2010 

A special first time opportunity for students attending Eco League Colleges, this course will take place on three fascinating sites: the College of the Atlantic’s two field stations on Great Duck Island and Mt. Desert Rock, and Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy, Canada.

This intensive field-based course is an interdisciplinary examination of the changing relationship between humans and landscape in a region where people have lived continuously for several thousand years

The Gulf of Maine’s vast archipelago of islands is the setting for an intriguing range of human and animal communities. With its unique location at the intersection between cold northern currents and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the Gulf of Maine is one of richest areas of biological productivity in eastern North America.  Plentiful fisheries have supported human cultures since pre-Columbian times.  The Gulf also provides breeding habitat for more than half of all seabirds nesting in eastern North America and is a critical feeding area for the endangered Right Whale and many other marine mammals

This course affords students the exceptional chance to study historical and current relationships among human cultures, fisheries, seabirds, and marine mammals right where they have taken place.

Humans in Place: Natural and Cultural History of Maine’s Coastal Islands will be team-taught by faculty from three colleges within the Eco League.  These core faculty are: Dr. John Anderson, College of the Atlantic, Dr. Meriel Brooks, Green Mountain College, and  Dr. Tom Fleischner, Prescott College