Cultivating and celebrating a sense of place.
The Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture is recognized as a leader in "place studies," an emerging academic discipline that recognizes the importance of natural, built, social and cultural environments in the formation of individual, group and community identity. The Institute seeks to explore this sense of place through research, education, community outreach, environmental stewardship and preservation of regional heritage.
Cultivating commitments to specific places is a matter of making connections: with the people around us, with the earth under our feet, with our history and with what essayist Scott Russell Sanders calls the "ultimate ground" of our existence. The goal of the Institute is to help individuals and communities learn about their "place" and renew a commitment to preserving its physical environment and culture. In addition to its anthology projects and annual conferences, the Monadnock Institute carries out many other research and education projects.
The goal of the Institute is to help individuals and communities learn about their "place" and renew a commitment to preserving its physical environment and culture.
Activities of the Monadnock Institute
Research
The Institute conducts inquiry into a sense of place as a context for living. For example, the Institute's Place Connections Survey examined the extent to which individuals in the Monadnock Region know about, care about, get involved with and put down roots in their communities. "Rindge 2020" was a three-year community planning project that included extensive research on issues facing the Town of Rindge, a series of public forums weighing possible strategies, and the formation of task groups to carry out specific actions.
Education
The Institute offers education projects and professional development opportunities for student and teachers. In 1999, it supported a collaborative project on land, history and a sense of place at Keene High School. Each summer the Institute offers a summer enrichment program for secondary students in the Monadnock Region. And Dr. John Harris, the director of the Institute, regularly teaches an American Studies course on place, community and American culture in which undergraduates research, study and report on sites in the Monadnock Region.
Newsletter
The Monadnock Institute annually publishes a newsletter that details the activities, programs and research the Institute has engaged in over the past year.
