Preface:

This place-based seminar began with an exploration of the lower, tidal Schuylkill River. We visited the River, walked along it and boated on it, and considered the following questions: How do we know and understand this place where industrial zones intersect with recreational paths, where hardened embankments are increasingly waterlogged? What kinds of information do we, who work and perhaps live in the Schuylkill watershed, have available to us? What kinds of information might we wish to have? How are legacies from the Schuylkill’s past flowing into the future? Readings and classroom activities–including mini-lectures, guest presenters, group discussions, and project-based learning–deepened our understanding of the tidal river. The readings drew from fields including environmental science, anthropology, history and the arts, philosophy and ethics, and they allowed us to scale our discussions up and out, across other spaces. Is there a “littoral [coastal] way of life” as some historians and anthropologists have argued? What other watery places and liquid histories might productively be compared and brought into dialogue with the estuarine communities of the Schuylkill? Who has a right to the Schuylkill? Does the river itself have rights?