Colorado
Contexts:
Linkages across Space and Time
Leadville
in the
Rocky Mountain West
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Colorado
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SW 185: In Our Own Backyard: Social Justice in the Southwest focuses on a historic Colorado community, the town of Leadville, by examining its local, regional, and global relationships, including those to Colorado Springs and the lives of students living in Mathias Hall.
Professor Anne F. Hyde |
Associate Professor Sarah
J. Hautzinger |
Director of the Southwest Studies Program |
Chair of the Anthropology
Department |
The Colorado Contexts Project (final assignment for SW185)
Each student explores a specific social problem in Leadville, privileging the individual experiences of at least two interviewees. Web-pages based upon this research: 1) attend closely to the lived experience of interviewee accounts; 2) provide adequate context and background information, clarifying how local-to-global level forces shape the picture; and, 3) draw on theoretical concepts from the course to suggest ways to resolve or improve the problem for each setting. Some student projects make specific comparisons to the same issue in Colorado Springs.
Click on the photos below to preview each student's research project and findings.
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Vanessa Baltazar
Being a Mother |
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Kylie Birnbaum
Sustainability at Timberline |
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Brian Boyle
Leadville Small Business |
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Rachael Caster
Graduation Rates at Lake County High School |
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Simon Cataldo
Bilingualism & Resistance in Public Schools |
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Amanda Chaves
Veterans in Leadville & Colorado Springs |
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Kritika Dwivedi
Immigration and Integration |
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Jesse Fitzpatrick
Education in Leadville & Colorado Springs |
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Joslyn Gibson
Water Quality in Leadville |
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Jessica Gingold
Sex Education |
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Rachel Johnson
Violence Among Youth in Colorado High Schools |
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Colin Kelly |
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Allyson Proske
Alcoholism: Is it the Only Escape? |
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Katherine Schwartz
Religious Communities & Social Conflicts |
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Isabel Werner
An Unlikely Destination: Marketing Leadville |
The Course: SW185: In our Own Backyard: Social Justice in the Southwest
Social Justice in the Southwest focuses on a historic Colorado community, the town of Leadville, by examining its local, regional and global relationships, including those to Colorado Springs and the lives of students living in Mathias Hall.
Our approach concentrates on processes of production, distribution, and consumption, asking what has been produced in Leadville, who has produced it, how it ends up in lives like our own, and our personal choices about using those goods and services. Using historical records and anthropological field study methods, we will study how commodity production and labor processes affect Leadville residents, Colorado residents more generally, and broader regional, national, and international dynamics. Mining, skiing, and tourism will be of particular interest, as well as selective ways of remembering, packaging, and marketing the past for present purposes. To conclude the course, students will develop community research projects comparing issues in Leadville to the larger community of Colorado Springs, focusing on the question of what kinds of responsibility this knowledge brings: how do we create sustainable communities and change at the personal, communal, and political levels?
Course Materials - As part of the Living and Learning Program, SW185 brings an academic component to the Mathias community's shared experiences of residing, working, and engaging in community service and activism together. As such, the course aims to help achieve the program's overall goal of enriching integration between intellectual, social and community lives.
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Photo Credits:
http://www.coloradospringsluxuryhomes.com