Place, Memory, and Environmental Psychology

Tues., April 7-May 12, 10-11:30 a.m.

Time: 10-11:30 a.m.

Location: Online

Cost: $70

With Fernanda Blanco Vidal, Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Psychology

How much of what we are is related to the places we have lived and experienced? What is the importance of place in our most memorable experiences? Is it possible to find any memory that is not physically situated somewhere? This course is an invitation to reflect on these and other meaningful questions about the psychological and emotional relationships between people and their environments.

Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including psychology, geography, architecture, and design, this course will introduce environmental psychology and its contribution to understanding how physical environments influence our behavior, cognition, identity, and memory.

Using place-based methodologies, we will discuss concepts such as place attachment, place identity, and cognitive maps.

We will reflect on issues of memory, meaning of home, trauma, displacement, and the power of nature in our psychological well-being.

Fernanda Blanco Vidal is a Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She holds degrees in Psychology and Sociology from the Federal University of Bahia, where she published Nostalgia, but not Sadness – Psychology, Memory and Forced Displacement. Her dissertation explores how people’s sense of place shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic. With over a decade of higher education experience in Brazil and the US, she develops place-based methodologies linking psychology, memory, and displacement.

This class will not be recorded.

Class #: 24007

Registration opens for OLLI members on Feb. 3. Non-members may register starting Feb. 9.