Reading Place, Reading Landscape: A Consideration of City as Text™ and Geography

The fundamental concepts employed by City as Text™ (CAT)--the established experiential learning practice in honors education-and the discipline of geography, specifically the landscape tradition within human geography, share much in common. The overlaps offer CAT practitioners additional intellectual support from a source outside of honors while the differences suggest opportunities for incorporating new material into CAT programs. While CAT and the landscape tradition share the general concepts of professional orientations grounded in place, of close attention to place, and of place as a text to be read, the landscape tradition offers specific terminology to support and build on these shared concepts: landscape as unwitting autobiography, landscape as an act of will, landscape in a continuous process of becoming, landscape as power, and object orientation vs. people orientation. Since readers of "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council" ("JNCHC") are far more likely to be familiar with CAT than with the landscape tradition, the Appendix offers an annotated list of key texts in human geography's tradition of landscape scholarship that may have immediate use and resonance for those working in CAT programs.