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21W.775

Writing about Nature and Environmental Issues

3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H · Undergraduate

Focuses on traditional nature writing and the environmentalist essay. Students keep a web log as a journal. Writings are drawn from the tradition of nature writing and from contemporary forms of the environmentalist essay. Authors include Henry Thoreau, Loren Eiseley, Annie Dillard, Chet Raymo, Sue Hubbel, Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben, and Terry Tempest Williams. Limited to 18.

Spring 2017

Topics

  • Birds: Nature’s Emissaries
  • In class: Workshop on introductions
  • Farms (cont.)
  • In class: Framing an argument
  • In class: The rhetoric of argument
  • In class: The Rules of Engagement: Using sources & developing evidence
  • Wolves: Confronting wildness
  • In class: Asking good questions and finding good sources
  • In class: Exploring a new perspective and preserving your own
  • Writing: Prospectus
  • In class: Favorite passages from required or supplementary readings

Readings

Fall 2006

This course focuses on traditional nature writing and the environmentalist essay. Students will keep a Web log as a journal. Writings are drawn from the tradition of nature writing and from contemporary forms of the environmentalist essay.

Readings

  • Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas . 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521468343.
    Required
  • Duane, Daniel. Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast . New York, NY: North Point Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780865475090.
    Required
  • Wilson, Edward, and Stephen Kellert, eds. The Biophilia Hypothesis . Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995. ISBN: 9781559631471.
    Required
  • Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change . New York, NY: Bloomsbury U.S.A., 2006. ISBN: 9781596911307.
    Required
  • Sullivan, Robert. Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants . Reprint ed. New York, NY: Bloomsbury U.S.A., 2005. ISBN: 9781582344775.
    Required
  • Grizzly Man . Directed and written by Werner Herzog, 2005. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Nausicaä . Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, 1984. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Nature’s Economy
    Listed reading
  • Film: Grizzly Man
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 8-10 · READINGS AND FILMS: Caught Inside
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 13-14 · READINGS AND FILMS: Rats
    Reading assignment
  • SES #: 15-16 · READINGS AND FILMS: The Biophilia Hypothesis
    Reading assignment
  • Field Notes from a Catastrophe
    Listed reading
  • SES #: 19-21 · READINGS AND FILMS: Film: Nausicaä
    Reading assignment

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: None U (Fall) 3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H

Sources