A three-day teaching workshop in 2021 was designed to help faculty (re)imagine how place, space, storytelling, and digital literacies work together. Nineteen faculty members and graduate students took part, representing multiple disciplines including Geography, English, History, Communication Studies, Spanish, Creative Media, Education, the NMSU Library, and Anthropology. The workshop combined training in digital production skills necessary for building StoryMaps with critical training for interpreting, analyzing, and critiquing spatial representations. It was structured to help faculty teaching in diverse disciplines develop new place-based assignments and to encourage community building within an interdisciplinary group of peers.
Workshop Description: This three-day teaching workshop is designed to help faculty (re)imagine how place, space, storytelling, and digital literacies work together. This workshop combines training in digital production skills necessary for building Story Maps with critical training for interpreting, analyzing, and critiquing spatial representations. It is structured to help faculty teaching in diverse disciplines develop new place-based assignments and to encourage community building within an interdisciplinary group of peers. As part of a larger NEH-funded project, this workshop will also introduce work by scholars and artists scheduled to visit NMSU next year. Participants can expect support for assignment integration throughout the year.
We understand issues of space and place as essential to the kinds of questions many disciplines ask. And we believe that Story Map assignments can increase student engagement with the complexities of our contemporary historical moment in New Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a place. Story Maps use cloud-based software to combine cartographic representations with text, images, and multimedia content. Among more discipline-specific benefits, working with Story Maps in the classroom offers:
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A way to ethically build on lived expertise of local students, including first-generation, multilingual, and bi-national students; supporting their retention and professionalization;
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A way to help students experience how traditional writing skills contribute to production work across media formats, reinforcing the relevance of writing to their 21st century lives;
- An opportunity to transform conversations about environmental grand challenges and break down divisions between humanities, arts, social, and natural sciences.
Format: Six virtual sessions: Morning workshop sessions (9-12 MST) focused on using Esri Story Map software and practicing technical skills useful to teaching narrative mapping. These sessions will be led by geographer Joseph Kerski, Esri’s Education Manager, and will leave participants with concrete ideas for how to scaffold Story Map assignments and provide students with technical and conceptual support.
Afternoon seminar sessions (1-3MST) featuring discussion of examples and theoretical texts that situate related practices. These sessions will be led by NMSU faculty Eric Magrane (geography) and Kerry Banazek (English). Topics covered will include geohumanities and narrative methodologies, Indigenous and feminist counter-mapping, and critical studies of media’s spatial dimensions.