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Field of Dreams; Fields of Reality
has obvious advantages for language learning and cultural exchange,
students are on their own for a good part of the time, and the poten-
tial for illness and accidents, and the related liability, escalates.
Even with the best of planning and with intensive student oversight,
we can’t prepare for everything. Regardless of the study site, we fit
our programs into national and international settings beset by their
unique political, economic, and social problems. We also bring with us
students with their own life-stage cultural agendas. In the mid- 1990 s
this became even trickier as more and more women undertook field
programs, a phenomenon experienced throughout the country. Male
students were electing not to participate. Women felt safer traveling
this way and were particularly interested in programs with a service
component. Yet when a service focus is added to more traditional ex-
periential learning, liability concerns multiply, since student and fac-
ulty enthusiasm about wanting to “help” the “needy” sometimes loses
sight of whose needs are actually being met.
The model and focus of the programs I teach have evolved contin-
uously since 1987 , when I began teaching my first field school, the
Southwest Summer Program. In retrospect, I realize it remains a work
in progress. Labor- and contact-intensive, the Southwest Program is
a multi-week, on-the-road learning experience that forces students to
learn about not just academic course content during hours of on-site
lecture each day but also other people and themselves. The group cov-
ers 1 , 500 miles of territory and 10 , 000 years of history, with partic-
ipants camping and cooking the entire time. As always, I work with
a codirector, and in the Southwest we attempt to teach about Na-
tive American, Hispanic, and Latino cultures, while at the same time
meat eaters and hardcore vegetarians learn to coexist and to eat each
other’s foods. To survive the program, one must have an appetite for
learning, and be flexible and adaptable.
The Chiapas Project, begun in 1997 , demanded another brand of
flexibility. Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state, has one of the
richest resource bases in that country, with the highest levels of poverty,
among a population that is largely Maya Indian (J. Simonelli 1986 ).
Since 1994 , the people of the region have been actively struggling to
put an end to injustice and resource inequity, resulting in a situation
