Mr. John De Lisa
Religious Studies Department
St. Joseph Hill Academy
Staten Island, New York
Lesson 1
Related Links:
1. Collision
of India and Eurasia
2. Schematic
Structures
3. Himalayan
Geological Research Program
4. Mountain
Building
5. Seismicity
6.
The Himalayan Mountain Range
7. Himalaya
Images
As a motivational strategy to arouse and sustain students' interest in
grasping the article, I will ask the students to consider the question:
"What would happen to the hood of your father's new Lexus when you
accelerate into the garage wall when you thought you were geared in reverse?"
The article will be assigned for reading the evening prior to the first
class. The next day I will ask students to draw a starkly simplistic line
on the chalk board to represent the altered condition of the car's hood.
The irregular and jagged crests and troughs of the damaged car will furnish
an appropriate transition to a discussion Molnar's and Tapponnier's article
and will assist in their understanding of the dramatically corrugated
topography of the Himalayan region.
Having established the physical construction of the Himalayan region,
the class will then proceed to develop the conceptual picture of the amazing
diversity of the region's climate, flora, fauna, and life-styles afforded
by the dramatically contrasting terrain.
Related Links:
1. A Biography
of the Himalaya
2. Flora
and Fauna
3. Climate
Another institute resource, Himalaya: Life on the Edge of the World
by David Zurick and P. P. Karan (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1999), will brush in further detail. The students will be asked
to read chapter two of this informative book. During this period of the
unit, Professor Lewis' notes on the constructs of Niche Theory and Watershed
Perspective will be introduced into the class lecture. (Basically, Niche
Theory claims that life forms evolve according to the opportunities availed
by the determining environmental factors present within the various pockets
of the diverse landscape, while the Watershed Perspective teaches that
one of the most influential elements of the Himalayan region is the glacial
melt which, starting at high altitudes, broadens successively into rivers
creating a band of altering life-styles and ecosystems.)
The objective, of course, of this phase of the unit, has been the demonstration
of the youth, dynamics, and volatility of this mountainous area. The primordial
collision of the land mass which is now India with the then subcontinent
of Eurasia has initiated geological activity which is still operative.
India still pushes north at the rate of approximately five centimeters
yearly with the result that the Himalaya Mountains continue to rise annually
at a rate of one centimeter. Consequently, "this profoundly disarranged
region" (Molnar and Tapponnier) is prone to suffer earthquakes on
a major scale. (In 1556 an earthquake devastated Sian, then China's capital
city, killing 830,000 people. [Molnar and Tipponnier]). Now that the class
is rooted firmly in the active and, at times, perilous terrain of the
Himalayan region, I would like to elevate the discourse to a universally
existential level. I will now propose to the class the question: "In
what ways can it be said that you, yourself, live in the 'Himalayas'?"
By this I hope to elicit from the class their recognition of the uncertain
nature of human existence and the metaphysical precariousness underpinning
the present moment whether one lives in the Himalayas or on Staten Island.
This site was created by Mr. John De Lisa at the NEH Summer Institute "Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region," held at the College of the Holy Cross, Summer 2004