#9: Patagonia: From Landscape to Lifestyle Brand
Instructed by Dr. Ryan Edwards at Princeton University
PREVIOUS: #10: Occultism, Postcoloniality, and Modernism
Patagonia is a country shrouded in myth and mist. It is home to fjords, glaciers, mountains, deserts, and very few people. In the United States, you’re more likely to find Wall Street bigwigs and college lacrosse players shrouded in Patagonia vests than you are to find someone who has actually visited the region of Patagonia.
How did a region famed for its natural beauty and unusual topography become more commonly associated with upscale outdoor-wear? Environmental historian Dr. Ryan Edwards and his class discuss the region’s commodification in his first year seminar at Princeton University.
Patagonia: From Landscape to Lifestyle Brand
School: Princeton University
Course: Patagonia: From Landscape to Lifestyle Brand
Instructor: Dr. Ryan Edwards
Course Description:
Patagonia is a “landscape of the imagination” that has been central to geologic theories, archaeological findings, and climate science, as well as social conflicts ranging from exile and labor protests to genocide. This course takes a historical and cultural approach to understand how Patagonia has become an iconic landscape, laden with myths and realities. We will use this region of Argentina and Chile to explore national histories, but also, broader histories of exploration, indigeneity, imperialism, and environmentalism.
Ask the Instructor: Dr. Ryan Edwards
Why did you elect to offer this course at Princeton this year?
Princeton has a robust catalog of travel courses that goes beyond the traditional format of study abroad programs. The Patagonia course is a first-year seminar in which we meet weekly during the semester, and then travel to Patagonia during spring break. It is a unique opportunity for the students as well as the instructor. This is my final semester at Princeton, so I simply could not pass up the opportunity.
Is Patagonia: From Landscape to Lifestyle Brand offered within the department in which you usually teach?
I am a visiting professor and research associate in Princeton’s Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS). The course is formally offered through the Freshman Seminars program under the Dean of the College, though it was motivated through the growing travel course options in PLAS. Both entities have been extremely supportive and financially generous to make the course happen, and hopefully, it will continue to be offered in the future.
What do you ultimately hope that your students take away from participating in Patagonia?
Patagonia is a mythic place and stylized brand. When one hears the word, “Patagonia,” some image comes to mind. Patagonia is many things to many people, and is actively framed to represent certain images. That might be glacial-topped mountains and outdoor adventure, a windswept desert of grazing sheep, indigenous social movements, or tech start-up employees wearing a corporate vest. The class explores the histories of Patagonia, ranging from natural and geological systems to political disputes, environmental movements, and corporate responsibility. Rather than explore the histories of Argentina and Chile through politics or economics, the goal is to use the symbolism that permeates Patagonia to ask questions that go beyond the region itself, but also ground the region in its own complex history.
If you could teach a course on any topic at all, what would it be?
This is a dream course for me — especially given the travel component. As someone who has spent the last 10 years studying and researching Patagonia, I am always curious to learn what people know, or think they know about Patagonia — our first exercise in class was for everyone to explain what Patagonia means to them. Few regions in the world evoke such powerful emotions for people across cultures and continents. My own work focuses on the intersection of incarceration and environmental history in southern Patagonia, which is not a common understanding of the region.
My next dream course would focus on prisonscapes, or the ways in which prisons are always linked to environmental change and resource networks that go beyond the prison walls.
NEXT: #8: (De)Tangling the Business of Black Women’s Hair
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