Transformation Inspired from the Margins

Literature on international study and civic engagement acknowledges multiple conditions through which students may achieve personal and intellectual transformation. Less is written about student and faculty transformation when courses reside at intersecting disciplinary margins. Funded by the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE), two co-located, month-long, off-campus study courses situated faculty and student development within the thematic context of environmentalism in Japan. During the month available, by teaching at the margins, or in other words, beyond familiar lifestyles and areas of knowledge, we examined powerful common-sense assumptions regarding proper questions and answers about environmental challenges. Paired natural and social-science courses explored grassroots efforts to achieve environmental sustainability at the margins, in terms of socio-cultural structures, geography and place, normal life and crisis, cross-cultural and cross-language communication, and between wealthy and developing economies. This article contributes to our knowledge of transformative experiential learning by (1) documenting our processes in and products from co-designing and co-teaching these courses, and (2) reporting on learning resultant from the courses in the words of participating students and faculty, with their consent.