Speaking in a Sense of Place (and Play)
	On the Road with Oberlin’s Watson Fellows		Jonathan Curley of Bellingham, Washington, will travel to Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala for an independent study project titled Environment Games and Dialogue in Rural Communities. Curley has studied Spanish in a variety of settings--classes at Oberlin, a semester of study in Costa Rica, and doing volunteer work at a Latino community center in Seattle. And he says he has loved games--playing them and inventing them--since he was "a mere tot. I put out a 'zine called Plays Well with Others, full of new games and thoughts on play." He says that his Oberlin experience has given him "good intellectual tools. Antoinette Charfauros McDaniel [instructor in sociology] has been especially helpful," he says. "She's helped me learn a lot about cross-cultural dynamics, privilege, and making academics useful." Curley's other major is environmental studies. While he is in Latin America, he will combine his fluency in Spanish, his interest in games and play, and his sociological expertise to attempt to learn the games that children--and adults--enjoy in the rural communities where he will be based. He also hopes to discern the social significance of the various forms of play styles he expects to find. To further his communications skills, he will take classes in Quiché, an indigenous language of Guatemala. His background in environmental studies will also prove useful. He plans to interview the people he meets about local environmental issues--water quality, deforestation, trash disposal, and agriculture, for example--and ask them to share their perceptions of the environment. "Maybe I'll be able to see correlations between elements of games--cooperation, competition, rule making, and representations of nature--and the ways the community perceives the environment and makes environmental decisions." He hopes that by the end of his time in each community, he will be able to bring these two elements--games and the environment- together through environment-centered games, activities, and discussions with children. Curley says he believes he has a "moral responsibility" to work for social change and social justice, and he seeks a way to combine his diverse interests in ways that will make meaningful connections. He sees an analogy between the cooperative way that game rules are made (and remade) and the democratic processes of society making. But he isn't quite sure how to translate that into a job. At least, not yet. "Hopefully my Watson year will help me figure that out."
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