The third course in a three-course sequence entitled “The Unexpected Journey: Art, Literature, and History on the Road in New Mexico” will provide students concentrated time and attention on classic, contemporary, and innovative texts of aesthetic and place philosophy as well as sustained time devoted to artistic, literary, and/or historical production. This course will include program and project orientation (Spring and early Fall 2013, as well as some summer reading), field trip debriefings while we are on the road in New Mexico, and a sustained period of study (in the literature of aesthetics), planning, and production of a substantial project centering on the literary and/or visual narrative or series of narratives they have chosen. Components of the course include: providing of faculty-assisted time to prepare for, reflect on, and process what students have seen and experienced; the reading of a variety of texts on both the aesthetics and philosophies of place; workshop time to conceptualize and develop a design for the final project; frequent consultations with the teaching faculty on the project’s development; supported studio and/or research time to bring the project to completion; and checkpoints for collaboration and critique.