AUTUMN QUARTER SEMINAR, 2011

PSYCHOLOGY 563

Students across the university are welcomed.  Contact instructor for an add code, if necessary.

INSTRUCTOR: Peter Kahn

Associate Professor

http://faculty.washington.edu/pkahn/

HINTS Lab Website: http://depts.washington.edu/hints

MEETING TIME: Friday, 1:30-4:20.  (4 credits). 

In this seminar, we investigate the following questions:

·         What are the evolutionary origins of the human relationship with nature?

·         How do people form environmental commitments and sensibilities, and reason about environmental issues?

·         Do animals provide a means by which children come to care about non-sentient nature?  And about other humans?

·         How does culture affect environmental commitments and sensibilities? 

·         Are there universal features in children’s relationship with nature? 

·         To what extent do we, as a species, still need direct contact with the “wild” – that which is untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice?

·         What is the significance of increasing children’s and adults’ exposure to nature through technologically mediated interactions: e.g., through watching the “Nature Channel,” or “farming” in Farmville, or “gardening” in a Telegarden, or bonding with a robotic pet?

Even partial answers to these questions have enormous significance in areas such as child rearing, education, land use and urban planning, and the design of the natural and human built environment.