2019 - Mankind And The Moon

Dr. Boyle will use the historical event of the moon landing as a backdrop for exploring the relationship between science and the humanities. He will explore the nature of science and humanities, arguing that the two are better understood as overlapping parts of an integrated endeavor than as distinct intellectual discourses.

This past May, seventeen Belmont students and faculty traveled to the Cascade Mountains in Oregon to explore issues of food, faith, and the environment as a part of a short-term study away program. From a remote location at the Oregon Extension just outside of Ashland, OR, the group arrived at the beginning of a new moon cycle with a full moon visible toward the end of the trip. In order to study the impact of moonlight on the natural environment, one student in Dr. Overall’s Modern Rhetoric of the Environment course recorded three different soundscapes for three different phases of the moon. In the field of sonic rhetorics, soundscapes are presented as persuasive texts that help audiences to hear the world in distinct and new ways. This presentation seeks to further explore the genre of the soundscape and explain the environmental context of the Oregon Extension before playing the Oregon moonscapes and presenting the findings.