Douglas Haynes
UW-System Fellow (2021-2022)
UW-Oshkosh; English; Sustainability Institute for Regional Transformations Affiliate Faculty; UW Milwaukee Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies Regional Faculty Associate
In an age of intersecting mental health, equity, and ecological crises, how can higher education intervene to help students address these crises? A growing body of research shows that embodied, emotionally-engaging experiences that connect students to each other and the places they inhabit improve their learning and mental health. Place-based pedagogical models also show that these kinds of experiences can empower students to confront inequities and ecological problems. This presentation begins with first-person accounts of the profound challenges today’s college students face and then profiles an innovative place-based course at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee that helps students address them. The presentation concludes with a synthesis of values, skills, and methods from this model and others that provides a foundation for broadly transforming higher education.
Douglas Haynes is a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he teaches creative nonfiction writing and the environmental humanities. His 2017 narrative nonfiction book Every Day We Live Is the Future: Surviving in a City of Disasters (U of Texas Press) is a cautionary tale of urban inequality and the climate crisis that recounts two Nicaraguan families’ quests to reinvent their lives in Managua, one of the world’s most disaster-prone cities. Douglas’s essays and journalism have appeared in Orion, Longreads, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Progressive, Witness, Boston Review, North American Review and dozens of other publications. He is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Last Word.