Contribution short abstract:

Exploring the successes and failures of Zoom, this presentation explores the ways in which satellite campuses like the University of Utah's Asia Campus in South Korea have taken advantage of digital gathering spaces like Zoom as a way to connect students with scholars and subjects around the world.

Contribution long abstract:

Teaching environmental and spatial history abroad has had its limitations, particularly because spatial politics concepts of environmental racism, placemaking, and ecological imperialism - key to illuminating the legacies of colonialism on cities today - are not currently discussed in Korea. In addition, the language barrier for many in our class as an English-language institution in a Korean-language country creates an obstacle for experiential learning. Zoom not only provided a way for students to meet with one another during Covid but facilitated engagement with scholars, artists, site visits, and activists around the world on the relationship between identity, power, and public space. Through Zoom-centered digital classrooms, students were able to take advantage of digital tools like ChatGPT that are often discouraged in traditional classrooms.

Engaging with diverse methods and classroom engagement spaces so has allowed our campus to make up some of the ground lost to being intentionally excluded by main campuses in the West, while also creating transnational bridges that challenge the America/Korea binary that has problematically grounded our students' experiences. In this presentation, Lovell will shed light on the techniques they have used to bring discussions of spatial politics in environmental history and environmental studies to South Korea, from Zoom to board game design.