To top off the Wheels of Change class, Professor of English Amelia Katanski and her students traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen is said to have one of the world’s best cycling infrastructures. Although the seminar is finished, some of the students from Wheels of Change are keeping their projects in motion after visiting Copenhagen. Cycling is more than recreation and enjoyable exercise when it’s viewed through the lenses of social and environmental justice in a new first-year seminar course at Kalamazoo College.
Offered for the first time in fall through Professor of English Amelia Katanski, the class Wheels of Change worked closely with community partners, including the City of Kalamazoo, the Open Roads Bike Program and K’s own Outdoor Programs, to explore how communities can build cycling infrastructure to better support residents.
In the classroom, students examined how bicycles empowered women and people of color during the late 19th century’s so-called cycling craze. It also looked at how bicycles today are sustainable tools in limiting climate change and supporting environmental health in ways that are capable of redressing racism, and gender- and ability-based discrimination. Katanski has taught community-based first-year seminar classes for more than 15 years. But the course in fall 2020 about food and farming justice in the time of COVID was unrepeatable with the pandemic winding down. She began to brainstorm ideas for new classes.
“Cycling has always been a passion of mine, and I came across a book called Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Wheels, ” Katanski […]
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