Academics

From the Library to the Field: the Academic Mission of Outer Coast

“The step from the library to the field is enormous, often traumatic, and requires a complete re-schooling which only the tradition-bearers can provide.” – Richard Dauenhauer

The Academic Pillar is the center of Outer Coast. The other pillars and our engagement with the wider community radiate out from our academic commitments. Those commitments are, in turn, much broader than what is conventionally understood to be “academic” at other colleges.

We aspire to build an institution that encompasses both the library and the field. We seek to bridge Western and Indigenous approaches to knowledge and to create a place where different modes of thinking can meet each other eye-to-eye, with mutual respect. Teaching in both the library and the field means making an unshakable commitment to place: to Lingít Aaní, the home of the Tlingit people, its ecology, its biology, its culture, and, crucially, its Indigenous language, which gives voice to the values, people, and land around us. We are an educational institution that aspires to serve and welcome the wider communities to which we belong.

Outer Coast is grateful to our partners, University of Alaska Southeast and Alaska Pacific University. In 2024, we launched our two-year undergraduate program accredited in partnership with the University of Alaska Southeast. We also offer a summer seminar in conjunction with Alaska Pacific University.

The Curriculum

Two anchors of the Outer Coast curriculum are Indigenous Studies and place-based science. These are complemented by classes on a wide range of topics. Our permanent faculty is joined each semester by visiting researchers and passionate teachers who come to us from across the country.  

Indigenous Studies at Outer Coast includes learning the Tlingit language; reading oral literature from Native Alaska and beyond; studying questions about community and nature from philosophy and anthropology; performing service to the local community; and practicing written, oral, and craft-based expression.

Our place-based science curriculum includes rotating courses on the tidal ecology of Alaska, fungi and forest ecosystems, and the role of humans in food webs, among much else. 

Other courses immerse students in topics across the disciplines: from the practice of traditional skin-tanning to the close-reading of Greek tragedy and contemporary poetry, from the economics of rural Alaska to the philosophy of games, from the cultural history of dreaming to the politics of Alaska Native Corporations.

Our hope is that students come to Outer Coast to receive an education in a deep tradition, one connected to the land, to history, to ideas of reciprocity and community, to direct work with others, and to longstanding, ever-changing modes of inquiry, whether those be empirical and scientific, or philosophical and spiritual. Our hope is that students come away with a renewed sense of their own traditions and lineages—those they have inherited and those they have chosen. We want students to see those traditions and lineages as a source of strength, and as a means to effect meaningful change in the places they come from and in the places they are going to.

Past Courses

Fishing Term (August 2025)

Introduction to College (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

Students will learn and apply practical strategies for success in college while engaging with theories and histories of holistic education. Overarching topics will include the core intellectual, pedagogical, and spiritual values of Alaska Native cultures; histories and theories of education; and case-studies of holistic schools and educational programs. Each class will also focus on a different everyday academic and life-oriented skill: studying and note-taking; test-taking strategies; finding and using university resources; goal-setting and personal responsibility; interaction in the college environment; time-management and goal-setting; self-expectations and self-care; writing and public speaking. Students will reflect on their own metacognitive processes and engage essential research on learning from a diverse range of contexts and communities.

Food Sovereignty and the Science of Subsistence (Maggie Spivey-Faulkner, Garrett Faulkner, and Reyn Hutten)

Students will engage with the foundational questions of how we nourish ourselves, and why we go about it in the ways we do. This course will feature lecture and in-class discussion on food networks, food production paradigms (subsistence hunting and gathering, agriculture, trade and barter, etc.), and the history of the present global food system, as well as alternative experiments. It will most centrally feature direct food gathering work on the land, as students explore the bounty of Baranof Island and learn how to respectfully and sustainably harvest and preserve such resources as berries, salmon, medicinal plants, and shellfish.

Fall 2025

Indigenous Studies I: Tlingit Language and Culture (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

This course will provide an introduction to the study of the Tlingit language (Lingít yoo x̱ʼatángi) and Tlingit culture and history (Lingít ḵusteeyí). It will straddle the formal study of language along with literary and philosophical investigation of the lifeworld on Lingít Aaní. Meeting four days per week, the course will include two sessions of intensive language instruction per week (vocabulary, phrases, basic grammar) and two sessions of cultural and literary study, in which students will study the history of Southeast Alaska, Tlingit social structure, cosmology, oratory, history and oral literature. Language learning will be gradually woven into cultural learning: vocabulary learned in class will pair with stories, etc. to build a holistic picture of Tlingit thought and its special relationship to the land around us. Special emphasis will be placed on the stories and traditions of Sheetʼká. Evaluation will include language exams, storytelling performances, papers, and creative projects.

Introduction to Mycology (Caroline Daws)

In the temperate rainforests of Southeast Alaska, spruce and hemlock tower over a rich understory of devilʼs club and berry bushes. Beneath the surface lies just as much, or even more, life—much of it belonging to the kingdom Fungi. Though most often spotted as mushrooms dotting the forest floor, fungi are active year-round as dense mats of mycelia—many miles of threads in a single handful of soil. These fine networks are the machinery of renewal in the forest, building connections of energy, nutrients, and organisms across trophic levels. The relationships between fungi and plants (as well as with humans and other creatures) are as old as time, and in this course we will follow their mycelial threads through the forest and into the past and future to understand how they tie ecosystems together.

This field course offers an immersive introduction to the fascinating world of mycology, exploring the diverse roles that fungi play in natural ecosystems. Students will study the identification, ecology, and evolutionary biology of fungi in their natural habitats, with a focus on field-based observations and hands-on experience. Throughout the course, we will investigate fungal diversity, symbiotic relationships, and the critical ecological functions fungi perform, from decomposition to mutualism with plants and animals. Special attention will be given to the importance of fungi in forest ecosystems, their uses in human culture, and their potential applications in areas such as medicine, agriculture, and environmental sustainability. By the end of this course, students will have developed the skills needed to identify common fungi in the field, understand their ecological and evolutionary significance, and communicate their findings through scientific writing and presentations.

In Fall 2025, this course will also contribute data to my research project investigating how fungi are involved in the transformation of marine derived nutrients like nitrogen from salmon carcasses following their spawning migration upstream into the forest. Students will help to assess the colonization of Sitka Spruce roots by beneficial mycorrhizal fungi using microscopes. As part of this course, students can expect to be out in the forest collecting specimens or at the Sitka Sound Science Center teaching lab for class one day per week. This course will be helpful for students interested in research internships on this project in summer 2026.

Art Lab I+II (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard)

Art Lab consists of a two-semester course sequence across the academic year (2 credits per semester). It responds to the themes of the other courses Outer Coast students are concurrently taking, and bridges them with the study of making in both the “Western” studio sense and the Indigenous and folk practices of our community. Students will be exposed to a series of artistic styles (photography, collage, carving, beading, painting, formline design, sculpture) through guest artists, and will be asked to draw on the materials they are studying in their other first year courses (Indigenous Studies, writing seminars, Tlingit Language and Culture, Ecological Communities of Sitka) as subject matter and as sources of style and approach. The goal is to build a fusion between the place-based Outer Coast curriculum, each studentʼs personal expression and background, and the various disciplines and methods of artistic creation.

Art Lab III (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard)

This is the third course in the Outer Coast art lab sequence. While the first two are required, this is an optional upper-level continuation. It allows students to deepen their experience of given artistic traditions based on the interests of both the class and the instructor. Each semester that it is offered the course will have a particular focus that reflects some of the emphasis of Outer Coast: for instance, Indigenous Northwest Coast arts; photojournalism and collage; contemporary art and its relationship to the sciences.

Advanced Lingít (Matthew Spellberg)

A course intended to allow Outer Coast students to continue their intertwined study of Lingít yoo x̱ʼatángi (Tlingit language) and Lingít Ḵusteeyí (Tlingit Culture) while living on Lingít Aaní (Tlingit Land) in the second year of the OC undergraduate program. Topics will build on the course material introduced in the year-long first-year Indigenous Studies curriculum. The course will introduce new grammatical concepts and language vocabulary; in addition, the class will offer deeper engagement with select cultural topics, including (but not limited to) oral tradition, oratory, ceremony, history, visual art, or song and dance. This course can be repeated for credit.

Journalism (Garrett Faulkner)

This course examines the history and practice of periodical print journalism in the American paradigm. Using a variety of contemporary and historical critical lenses, we will study how “the news,” as we understand it, came to take shape and how it was institutionalized. Additionally, we will investigate the ways the apparatus of journalism has adapted to new technology – radio, television, the Internet – and has shaped American political life and discourse over the years. We will also look at the advent of “New Journalism,” its literary conceits and aspirations, and its preparation of consumers for the digital and social media age. Students will collaborate closely with the editorial staff of the Daily Sitka Sentinel to practice their hand at several common journalistic forms, learn effective and ethical reporting, and better understand how we might exist as members of the Sitka community.

Fiction Writing Workshop: Stories and How We Tell Them (Garrett Faulkner)

This studio workshop course places students in a close-knit seminar setting, exploring how short-form creative works often have an unexpectedly outsized impact on readers. In addition to familiarizing students with the mechanics of narrative, we will also examine how stories may be imbued with a sense of place, history, and culture, and the potential challenges this presents for both authors and audiences. As we proceed through the term, students will also be tasked to practice their hand at producing formal narrative work of their own, culminating in a “micro-novel” – or equivalent form – which they will submit as a final project. Also offered in Spring 2026.

Service Internship I+II (Lucas Opgenorth)

Integral to the Outer Coast curriculum is an ethos of service that calls us to work with the many communities around us. In this two-semester, three-credit-per semester internship course, students will undertake intensive work with several organizations in Sitka, including the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, Sitka Homeless Coalition, and the Sitka Sound Science Center, among others. Work will involve a rotation of placements with these organizations, so that students will gain exposure and build skills relevant to each organization’s field and mission, and the opportunity to reflect on these experiences with peers and supervising faculty. To punctuate each semester the entire cohort will serve as the principal volunteers for a number of collective projects, including 2024 Sharing Our Knowledge Conference and 2025 Learners Teaching Learners Tlingit Language Conference at Outer Coast College, and regular maintenance of the Outer Coast Food Sovereignty program (gardening, food gathering, food preservation). Over the course of each semester, students will complete at least 150 hours of service work, as well as have regular meetings with faculty advisors and service mentors.

Spring 2026

Indigenous Studies II: Ideas, Frameworks, Bridges Between Cultures (Maggie Spivey-Faulkner and Matthew Spellberg)

This course will engage the relationships between cultures, and between ideas of culture and ideas of nature. How do humans navigate the interaction between society and physical environment? How does a society arise in a given environment and respond to the challenges it presents? How do differing ideas about nature, culture, community, and society shape our conceptions of indigeneity and colonialism? We will examine radically different answers to such questions from cultures and traditions around the world, and test them in relation to the deep intertwining of Tlingit culture and the landscape of Southeast Alaska. Readings will include: oral tradition from across North America; anthropology; political philosophy during and after European colonial expansion; contemporary Indigenous theory and speculative fiction. In addition, as this course emphasizes the importance of the local and of language, students will continue their study of the Tlingit language begun in the previous semester. Concepts in language study will be paired with theoretical topics (i.e. the Tlingit vocabulary around animism and breath, movement and the land, space and time, past and future, etc.).

Tribal Governments in Alaska (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard)

In this course, students will explore the fundamental history of Federal Indian Law as it relates to Alaska Native tribes. They will learn about competing Native entities in the state, and the sometimes difficult relationship between Alaska Native tribal governments and the State of Alaska, as well as the current issues surrounding these troubles. 

Indigenous Technology & Indigenous Futurism (Jordan Kennedy and Maggie Spivey-Faulkner)

Leverages Indigenous technologies to teach Western engineering concepts, bridging cultural and educational divides. Students will explore Indigenous practices including, but not limited to, agriculture, animal husbandry, and warfare to understand key Western engineering and scientific principles. Although the subject matter is Indigenous, the educational approach remains firmly rooted in Western engineering paradigms.

Science Writing (Caroline Daws)

An introduction to the development of scientific literacy and writing skills across various natural science disciplines. Students will engage with scientific content across genres, including natural history, journalism, policy, advocacy, science fiction, and primary literature. Throughout the course, students will build a deep understanding of scientific language and learn to effectively communicate complex scientific concepts to diverse audiences, including the public, policymakers, and fellow scientists. As emerging science writers, students will complete projects that bridge disciplines and cultures, refining their skills in interpreting and conveying scientific information across various contexts.

Models in Science (Jordan Kennedy and Caroline Daws)

Exploration of the dynamic world of scientific modeling, focusing on the creation and application of models across various natural science disciplines. Students will delve into mathematical frameworks that simplify complex phenomena to provide predictions and demonstrate proof of concept in scenarios that are challenging to test directly. Through hands-on experience and real-world data, students will learn to build, evaluate, and apply models, gaining critical insights into their assumptions, biases, and limitations. This course will equip students with the mathematical literacy, critical thinking, and analytical tools necessary to navigate the complexities of modeling and its broader impacts across scientific disciplines. May be repeated for credit. 

Folk Music of North America (Garrett Faulkner)

It is indisputable that the vernacular music tradition of North America – what folklorist Alan Lomax called “the deep river of song” – constitutes a rich, unique ecosystem exerting an outsized influence on modern world music. Outer Coast’s Folk Music course will tackle three principal questions: How are we to understand this vast body of musical traditions against the backdrop of history, sociology, and aesthetics? To what extent are notions of folk music traditions “constructed” by popular discourse and market imperatives, and whom does it include and exclude? Finally, what constitutes a “living tradition” in music today?

Drawing from digitized archives and live demonstrations, we will survey a curated sampling of musical traditions and the major players involved with them. We will also discuss how these lineages have interfaced with and influenced (and often influenced by) commercial music. In addition to brief assessments throughout term and ongoing in-class participation, students will be responsible for a large-scale final project to be submitted at the end of term.

Fishing Term (August 2024)

Introduction to College (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

Students will learn and apply practical strategies for success in college while engaging with theories and histories of holistic education. Overarching topics will include the core intellectual, pedagogical, and spiritual values of Alaska Native cultures; histories and theories of education; and case-studies of holistic schools and educational programs. Each class will also focus on a different everyday academic and life-oriented skill: studying and note-taking; test-taking strategies; finding and using university resources; goal-setting and personal responsibility; interaction in the college environment; time-management and goal-setting; self-expectations and self-care; writing and public speaking. Students will reflect on their own metacognitive processes and engage essential research on learning from a diverse range of contexts and communities.

Food Sovereignty and the Science of Subsistence (Maggie Spivey-Faulkner, Adam Haar Horowitz, and Garrett Faulkner)

Students will engage with the foundational questions of how we nourish ourselves, and why we go about it in the ways we do. This course will feature lecture and in-class discussion on food networks, food production paradigms (subsistence hunting and gathering, agriculture, trade and barter, etc.), and the history of the present global food system, as well as alternative experiments. It will most centrally feature direct food gathering work on the land, as students explore the bounty of Baranof Island and learn how to respectfully and sustainably harvest and preserve such resources as berries, salmon, medicinal plants, and shellfish.

Fall 2024

Indigenous Studies I: Tlingit Language and Culture (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

This course will provide an introduction to the study of the Tlingit language (Lingít yoo x̱ʼatángi) and Tlingit culture and history (Lingít ḵusteeyí). It will straddle the formal study of language along with literary and philosophical investigation of the lifeworld on Lingít Aaní. Meeting four days per week, the course will include two sessions of intensive language instruction per week (vocabulary, phrases, basic grammar) and two sessions of cultural and literary study, in which students will study the history of Southeast Alaska, Tlingit social structure, cosmology, oratory, history and oral literature. Language learning will be gradually woven into cultural learning: vocabulary learned in class will pair with stories, etc. to build a holistic picture of Tlingit thought and its special relationship to the land around us. Special emphasis will be placed on the stories and traditions of Sheetʼká. Evaluation will include language exams, storytelling performances, papers, and creative projects.

Indigenous Science (Maggie Spivey-Faulkner)

Critical observation of the world is a fundamental part of Native North American cultures. In this course, we investigate Native American scientific epistemologies in spacetime, ecology, mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, and forestry. Due to the fragmented nature of evidence remnant from settler colonialism, we are forced to take a multi-national view of Native American science, using case studies from multiple regions, peoples, and Native Nations. We pay special attention to evaluating phenomena of the world through indigenous, emic paradigms of thought and will require the student to demonstrate mastery of this material through the completion of problem sets.

Community Ecology and the Ecosystems of Sitka (Caroline Daws)

The fundamental goal of this course is for students to become scientists of place. They will learn the tools of ecological research by exploring the local ecosystems of Sitka. Students will develop skills for quantifying and comparing how communities of organisms rely on and respond to each other and their environment. They will develop and test hypotheses about species interaction, as well as learn to read and interpret scientific literature. By incorporating this scientific literacy and understanding with personal experiences and community knowledge, students can be better prepared to tackle big questions about the environment with empathy and discernment in the face of complexity.

Art Lab I+II (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard)

Art Lab consists of a two-semester course sequence across the academic year (2 credits per semester). It responds to the themes of the other courses Outer Coast students are concurrently taking, and bridges them with the study of making in both the “Western” studio sense and the Indigenous and folk practices of our community. Students will be exposed to a series of artistic styles (photography, collage, carving, beading, painting, formline design, sculpture) through guest artists, and will be asked to draw on the materials they are studying in their other first year courses (Indigenous Studies, writing seminars, Tlingit Language and Culture, Ecological Communities of Sitka) as subject matter and as sources of style and approach. The goal is to build a fusion between the place-based Outer Coast curriculum, each studentʼs personal expression and background, and the various disciplines and methods of artistic creation.

Journalism (Garrett Faulkner)

This course examines the history and practice of periodical print journalism in the American paradigm. Using a variety of contemporary and historical critical lenses, we will study how “the news,” as we understand it, came to take shape, how it was institutionalized, and who was included and excluded. Additionally, we will investigate the ways the apparatus of journalism has adapted to new technology – radio, television, the Internet – and has shaped American political life and discourse over the years. We will also look at the advent of “New Journalism,” its literary conceits and aspirations, and its preparation of consumers for the digital and social media age. This is no mere history lesson, however. In this course we will practice our hand at several common journalistic forms, learn effective and ethical reporting, and better understand how we might exist as members of the Sitka community.

Service Internship I+II (Lucas Opgenorth and Caroline Daws)

Integral to the Outer Coast curriculum is an ethos of service that calls us to work with the many communities around us. In this two-semester, three-credit-per semester internship course, students will undertake intensive work with several organizations in Sitka, including the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, Sitka Homeless Coalition, and the Sitka Sound Science Center, among others. Work will involve a rotation of placements with these organizations, so that students will gain exposure and build skills relevant to each organization’s field and mission, and the opportunity to reflect on these experiences with peers and supervising faculty. To punctuate each semester the entire cohort will serve as the principal volunteers for a number of collective projects, including 2024 Sharing Our Knowledge Conference and 2025 Learners Teaching Learners Tlingit Language Conference at Outer Coast College, and regular maintenance of the Outer Coast Food Sovereignty program (gardening, food gathering, food preservation). Over the course of each semester, students will complete at least 150 hours of service work, as well as have regular meetings with faculty advisors and service mentors.

Spring 2025

Indigenous Studies II: Ideas, Frameworks, Bridges Between Cultures (Maggie Spivey-Faulkner and Matthew Spellberg)

This course will engage the relationships between cultures, and between ideas of culture and ideas of nature. How do humans navigate the interaction between society and physical environment? How does a society arise in a given environment and respond to the challenges it presents? How do differing ideas about nature, culture, community, and society shape our conceptions of indigeneity and colonialism? We will examine radically different answers to such questions from cultures and traditions around the world, and test them in relation to the deep intertwining of Tlingit culture and the landscape of Southeast Alaska. Readings will include: oral tradition from across North America; anthropology; political philosophy during and after European colonial expansion; contemporary Indigenous theory and speculative fiction. In addition, as this course emphasizes the importance of the local and of language, students will continue their study of the Tlingit language begun in the previous semester. Concepts in language study will be paired with theoretical topics (i.e. the Tlingit vocabulary around animism and breath, movement and the land, space and time, past and future, etc.).

Tribal Governments in Alaska (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard)

In this course, students will explore the fundamental history of Federal Indian Law as it relates to Alaska Native tribes. They will learn about competing Native entities in the state, and the sometimes difficult relationship between Alaska Native tribal governments and the State of Alaska, as well as the current issues surrounding these troubles. 

Indian Country in the American Imagination (Maggie Spivey-Faulkner)

18th and 19th Century Western conceptions of Native American cultures form the foundations of modern Native American life in the United States. In this course, we will examine the laws and opinions that comprise early Federal Indian Law and extract the axioms on Native American cultures embedded within them. Those axioms will then be critically examined against our current understandings of Native American cultures via anthropological data and interpretation. The resulting societal fallout from the gap between American imaginations of Native Americans and the Native lived reality will be evaluated. This course heavily draws from literature written by Native American authors.

Seaweeds and Sapiens (Caroline Daws)

This course will introduce the coastal marine ecosystem through a holistic approach, using the relationships between macroalgae and people as a throughline to explore our understanding of this environment. In this course, students will study the overlap among seaweed biology & ecology, the importance of this resource to coastal people past & present, and the future of our relationship with the marine environment. A spring semester run of the course will allow for multiple hands-on opportunities: field and lab techniques to explore algal diversity, physiology, and identification; traditional harvest and processing techniques of different species for consumption (e.g., black seaweed, herring-roe-on-kelp, etc.); collection of algae for herbarium or artistic pressings; visiting seaweed farm start-ups in the area; low tide exploration and snorkeling in the kelp canopy. We will engage a diversity of local experts in seaweed harvesting and processing, mariculture and ecology as guest speakers.

Country Gone to Town: The Urban-Rural Divide in North America (Garrett Faulkner)

How does where we live inform our lived experience? And how does this play out in the tiny universes of narrative and verse? In this seminar course, we will consider the ways environment, culture, and history combine to form a sense of place, even a sense of authorhood. To what extent does technology, access – to opportunity, education, infrastructure – and shared history affect this calculus? Focusing primarily on North American literature from Modernism onward, we will examine representations of the cityscape, countryside, and spaces in between, exploring themes of the self and of community identification (and alienation), plus all the ways these map onto the contemporary politics of race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class. Occasionally, we will also look at specimens of other narrative forms, including film and balladry.

Fall, 2023

Indigenous Studies: Language and Story in Sitka and Beyond (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

This course is an introduction to place, culture and language. Committed to the idea that to study Indigenous culture means to study where you are, we begin with a focus on Sheetʼká, Sitka, its stories and people, and move outward in concentric circles: the larger world of Lingít Aaní, and then the peoples and places of Native Alaska. We also cross history, from ancient narratives of creation and migration, to present-day political and cultural achievements and struggles. A continuous thread will be weekly study of the Tlingit language (Lingít yoo x̱ʼatángi). We will also consider stories that tell you “who you are, no matter who you are” (the Dauenhauers). Students will explore the Axe Handle Academy, a project for grounding individuals in a culture, place, and discourse that balances tradition and agency.

Fungi of the Forest: Connectedness, Adaptation, and Global Change (Caroline Daws)

In the temperate rainforests of Southeast Alaska, spruce and hemlock tower over a rich understory of devil’s club and berry bushes. However, beneath the surface lies just as much, or even more, life. Much of this diversity belongs to the kingdom Fungi. Fungi are the hidden control panel of the forest. Though most often spotted as mushrooms dotting the forest floor, fungi are active year-round as dense mats of mycelia — many miles of mycelia can be found in a single handful of soil. These fine fungal threads are the machinery of renewal in the forest, building fundamental connections of energy, nutrients, and organisms across trophic levels. The relationships between fungi and plants (as well as with humans and other creatures) are as old as time, and in this course we will follow their mycelial threads through the forest and into the past and future to understand how they tie ecosystems together through the movement of energy and nutrients. Along the way, they may help us to answer questions about how we are all connected, their and our own origin stories, and where we might be headed in a period of great global change.

Community Ecology and Ecosystems of Sitka (Caroline Daws)

Perfectly poised between mountains and the sea, the ecological communities of Sitka are composed of organisms whose distributions and interactions reveal a deep story of this landscape. The study of ecology, a word derived from the Greek word oikos meaning ‘house, home, and family’, helps us make sense of the environments we encounter. A central component of ecology is exploring the rich web of connections between organisms, each other, us, and their environments – an ecological ‘household’. As residents or guests of these ecosystems, we can build a deeper sense of place through an ecological perspective.

Spring, 2024

In session.

How to Have a Life (Joel Schlosser and Lizzie Krontiris)

What’s the difference between making a living and having a life? Today the two seem entirely  confused, observes Unangan Community Leader Ilarion Merculieff. “We teach our children how to  make a living; we don’t teach them how to live.” This course investigates the meaning of life and  when it might require solitude, community, engagement with nature, political action, and the  creation of other worlds. Thinking with classic and contemporary texts, we will also experiment with  different forms of reading and writing that avoid just getting it done and reflect instead on how to  value the time spent doing it. In dialogue with Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers, this course  will also investigate the importance of the non-human world for having a life; non-productive  activities such as delight and play as essential for such a life; and how we might imagine and pursue  more ecological and just ways of living together. Texts include Seneca, Ross Gay, Robin Wall  Kimmerer, Theodor Adorno, Adrienne Maree Brown, and Alaska Native stories. 

Fall, 2022

Indigenous Studies: Language and Story in Sitka and Beyond (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

This course is an introduction to place, culture and language. Committed to the idea that to study Indigenous culture means to study where you are, we begin with a focus on Sheetʼká, Sitka, its stories and people, and move outward in concentric circles: the larger world of Lingít Aaní, and then the peoples and places of Native Alaska. We also cross history, from ancient narratives of creation and migration, to present-day political and cultural achievements and struggles. A continuous thread will be weekly study of the Tlingit language (Lingít yoo x̱ʼatángi). We will also consider stories that tell you “who you are, no matter who you are” (the Dauenhauers). Students will explore the Axe Handle Academy, a project for grounding individuals in a culture, place, and discourse that balances tradition and agency.

Queer Kinship (Jocelyn Saidenberg)

In this course we will read ancient and modern literary and theoretical texts to consider how queer kinships and non-normative forms of relationships are rendered, recognized, and redefined. We will explore how contemporary works revision “tragic” consequences that befall characters who deviate from kinship norms. We will consider how queer re-writings of canonical texts generate new forms of kinship and under what conditions those forms become recognizable and livable. Ancient texts will include: Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Antigone, and Euripides’s The Bacchae. Contemporary texts will include: Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, John Keene’s “Gloss,” and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Theoretical works from the fields of anthropology, feminism, and queer theory will include texts by Judith Butler, José Muñoz, Gail Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, among others.

Poetry as Wor(l)d Building (Jocelyn Saidenberg)

This introductory poetry class is open to all students interested in reading and writing poetry regardless of experience. Our purpose will be to take up poetic challenges in order to create literature of our own making, in conjunction with the study of contemporary poetry. The course title is meant to be read in two ways—Poetry as Word Building and Poetry as World Building—in order to index two related themes: the material qualities of language and poetry’s capacity to create its own environments, its own cultures. The overlay of the two—Wor(l)d Building—is meant to underscore their interconnectedness: the dynamic relationship between the materials we use when composing poems and what we want to render in and with them. For instance, if we were to experiment by composing a poem with found language as our material, the words would, in some form, bring with them their original purpose and/or context (history, culture, character). One possible consequence would be that our poems could animate a conversation between the different uses of the same language, for example, by subverting the original intent of the words, or revealing unintended humor or divergent meanings, or making the familiar seem strange by transplanting it into a new context, to name just a few possibilities.

Spring, 2023

Indigenous Studies: Nature and Culture (Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard and Matthew Spellberg)

This course will tackle competing ideas about culture and nature from around the world. How do humans navigate the relationship between their society and their physical environment? How does a society arise in a given environment and how does it collapse? What happens when someone leaves the human community and tries to live alone in the world? How do ideas about nature and culture shape our conceptions of indigeneity and colonialism? 

In this course we combine academic study of these questions with direct, lived exploration of what it means to embrace the culture that evolved in a given ecosystem while in that ecosystem. This course will feature weekly study of the Tlingit language, and of the ways it is tied to the landscape and experience of a particular place (Sitka, Lingít Aaní). In addition, students will work with Tlingit tradition bearer Yeidikookʼáa Dionne Brady-Howard to practice traditional food harvesting, dancing, and craft-making, as well as help with preparation for Kiks.ádi Clan gatherings and Indigenous events in Sitka.

Art in Science, Science in Art (Adam Haar Horowitz)

This course will explore the overlaps and gaps between the practices of artmaking and experimental science, with a particular emphasis on the brain sciences. The brain sciences are ultimately interested in understanding experience. How can we ever really model another human experience, and how can we hope to share our own? While the brain sciences ask these questions at the level of biological mechanism, the arts ask parallel questions at the level of mind. How can we express our experience, meet each other more fully? Both the arts and the sciences center image-making in their practices, rely on observation and experimentation, and often raid each others’ toolkits. Where are their meeting points, and as we work to understand ourselves and one another how can we meld art and science to live more introspectively and empathetically? This course will use the history of interdisciplinary art/science work focused on creating and capturing experience to explore the gap between precisely measuring and truly understanding our minds. Together we will explore social art practice based in science (Black Power Naps), activist art work using Fake News tools for good (Yes Men), installation art which imitates and inverts the scientific method (Carsten Höller), artificial intelligences created and set free (Ian Cheng, Theo Jansen) and more. Inspired by their practices, we will work together to build art/science pieces that help us understand and share our own internal worlds, bridging day and night experience.

Experience in Sleep, Wake, and World (Adam Haar Horowitz)

In this course, we will explore how the brain and cognitive sciences have come to understand consciousness, i.e. awareness, across the 24 hours of wake and sleep. How does a self arise in the mind? Where in the brain, body or wider world is consciousness? How can science help us see ourselves and our experience more clearly? How can it instead obscure us to ourselves? We will use recent developments in the scientific study of sleep and dreams as a point of departure to ask questions about consciousness more broadly. We will explore novel techniques which can change how we dream, and thus enable experiments on the contribution of dreaming experience to the many functions of sleep. We will grapple with a scientific culture that understands the mind as entirely material (i.e. biological psychiatry) and then explore its counterpart, the current shift towards more communal and cognitive models for the mind and mental health. We will experience activities that alter the body and environment to change our minds, gaining firsthand knowledge of new theories of extended, environmental and embodied cognition. We will design experiments, speak to consciousness researchers firsthand, and imagine ways for such science to leave the lab and impact our communities positively.

Course Spotlight: Writing About Place

On a rainy Friday on the historic Sheldon Jackson campus, a group of Outer Coast Year students imagined a very different Sitka: one with skyscrapers, seedy hotels, a string of unsolved murders, and four million Jewish refugees.

Read More

“I’ve never been in a classroom setting so interactive and discussion-oriented. I didn’t realize how much that really meant for me in terms of my education.”

Reese

(Katy, TX)

Academics in Action

Learn more about students’ academic experiences at Outer Coast.

  • A Conversation with Tukaan Dan

    Tukaan Dan grew up in Anchorage, Alaska and has attended two semesters of the Outer Coast Year in 2023. Over the course of his time in Sitka, Tukaan has become a leader in the Outer Coast community. This fall, he accepted a two-year term as the student representative on the Outer Coast Board of Trustees, […]

  • 2023 Learners Teaching Learners

    In April 2023 Outer Coast hosted its second inaugural Learners Teaching Learners Tlingit language conference, in cooperation with a treasured group of Tlingit teachers, scholars and elders from across Alaska and the Yukon known as the Nerdz Ḵu.oo. One of the centerpieces of the Outer Coast experience, the language conference is an occasion for studying, […]

  • 2022 Learners Teaching Learners: a Tlingit Language Conference at Outer Coast

    In April 2022, Outer Coast hosted the inaugural Learners Teaching Learners: A Tlingit Language Conference at Outer Coast. A study group of teachers and learners (who lovingly call themselves the Tlingit Nerdz) came to Sitka from across Southeast and the Yukon for a sunny weekend immersed in Tlingit language alongside Outer Coast students, staffulty, and […]

    • Yeey aaní káx̱ g̱unéi x̱too.aat (May we walk on your land). Outer Coast is situated on Lingít Aaní, the ancestral home of the Tlingit peoples. We strive to build a community of safe, inclusive, and integrative learning for all. Learn more.