ENG 401: ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING - University of Kentucky

ENG 205: ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING Instructor: Erik Reece

Office: 1327 P.O.T Phone: 257-6971

Office Hours: T, Th: 2-3 e-mail: ereec0@uky.edu

TEXT: American Earth, edited by Bill McKibben

OVERVIEW: As a genre, we might think of environmental writing as a sequel to nature writing. Its fundamental subject is our human interactions with the natural world. But whereas nature writing is largely pastoral and appreciative, environmental writing starts from the assumption that there is a tension between human activity and the natural world. As Bill McKibben writes in the introduction to, American Earth, environmental writing "takes as it subject the collision between people and the rest of the world, and asks searching questions about this collision: Is it necessary? What are its effects? Might there be a better way?"

The tradition of environmental writing is stronger in the United States than in any country in the world, yet over the last fifty years, Americans have done more to endanger the natural world than the citizens of any other country. Why? What accounts for this disconnect? We will examine that question, among many others, to see how American environmental writers have used writing to call Americans' attention to the effects of a culture and an economy based squarely upon unsustainable fossil fuels.

This is a course in nonfiction, one grounded in the natural sciences. As such, we will begin with certain assumptions, certain facts: climate change is happening, 60% of the world's "ecosystem services" are being degraded by human activity, we are currently witnessing (or ignoring) the earth's sixth great mass extinction, and much of our air, water and soil is toxic. Furthermore, on a local level, the city of Lexington has the country's largest, per capita, carbon footprint. What these facts tell us, as environmental writers, is that we have a lot of work to do via the written word. The great American writer/forester Aldo Leopold once said that people will not destroy what they love, so we should use writing to make people care enough about natural landscapes that they will work to preserve them. In this course, we will examine and pursue rhetorical strategies to do just that.

BREAKDOWN: We will explore various forms of environmental writing, from personal narrative to literary journalism to advocacy. We will also make group presentations that address the causes and potential solutions to Lexington's carbon footprint problem.

The personal narrative essay will take up, as its subject matter, a mandatory, overnight field trip to UK's Robinson Forest. All students must participate in this field trip.

Students will be required to write a 250-word (minimum) response to the essays assigned in American Earth. The responses can be wide-ranging: you can respond to the writer's style; you can relate your experiences to the writer's; you can comment on various

themes, ideas or conflicts that the writer dramatizes. The one rule for the journal is that each entry should be thoughtful. Each student will be expected to bring the journal to every class and occasionally read aloud from it. There will also be in-class writing prompts and short field trips around campus that will trigger journal entries. Active class participation is mandatory.

Essay One: Personal Narrative (15%) Essay Two: Literary Journalism (20%) Essay Three: Advocacy/The Op-Ed (15%) Reading Journal: (25%) Group Presentations: (15%) Class Participation: (10%)

SCHEDULE:

JANUARY

1/14: Introduction to the class

1/16: read "Introduction" by Bill McKibben

1/21: read "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" by Lynn White, Jr.; "Place" by W.S. Merwin and "The End of Nature" by Bill McKibben

1/23: read "Journals" by Henry David Thoreau and "Rural Hours" by Susan Fenimore Cooper

1/26: read "Walden" by Thoreau

1/28: read "Man and Nature" by George Perkins Marsh

1/30: read "A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf" and "My First Summer in the Sierra" by John Muir; read "About Trees" by J. Sterling Morton

FEBRUARY

2/2: read "Man and the Earth" by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and "The Art of Seeing Things" by John Burroughs

2/4: read "Letter from the Dust Bowl" by Caroline Henderson, "Carmel Point" by Robinson Jeffers and "Orion Rises on the Dunes" by Henry Beston

2/6: read "This Land is Your Land" by Woodie Guthrie and "Living the Good Life" by Helen and Scott Nearing

2/9: read "Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold

2/11: read "How Flowers Changed the World" by Loren Eisley 2/13: read "The Deand and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs 2/16: read "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson 2/18: read "TheWilderness Actof 1964" by Howard Zahniser and "Remarks" by Lyndon B. Johnson 2/20: read "Polemic: Industrial Tourism and National Parks" by Edward Abbey 2/23: ESSAY ONE DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS; 2/25: read "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin 2/27: read "Spaceship Earth" by R. Buckminster Fuller and "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth" by Kenneth E. Boulding MARCH 3/2: read "Mills College Valedictory Address" by Stephanie Mills and "The Third Planet: Operating Instructions" by David Brower 3/4: read "Encounters with the Archdruid" by John McPhee and "Only One Earth" by Friends of the Earth 3/6: read "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" and "Preserving Wildness" by Wendell Berry 3/9: read "Fecundity" by Annie Dillard 3/11: read "The World Biggest Membrane" by Lewis Thomas 3/13: read "A First American Views His Land" by N. Scott Momaday and "A Short History of America" by R. Crumb SPRING BREAK 3/23: read "Love Canal: My Story" by Louis Marie Gibbs 3/25: "Everything Is a Human Being" by Alice Walker 3/27: "Berhardsdorp" by E.O. Wilson 3/30: "Outside the Solar Village" by Wes Jackson

APRIL

4/1: "Wrath of Grapes Boycott Speech" by Cesar Chavez

4/3: "Refuge" by Terry Tempest Williams

4/6: "The Ninemile Wolves" by Rick Bass

4/8: "The Dubious Rewards of Consumption" by Alan Durning and "A Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

4/10: "Dwellings" by Linda Hogan and "Speech" by Al Gore

4/13: ESSAY TWO DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS

4/15: "The Flora and Fauna of Las Vegas" by Ellen Meloy

4/17: "Planet of Weeds" by David Quammen

4/20: "The Legacy of Luna" by Julia Butterfly Hill

4/22: "Having Faith" by Sandra Steingraber

4/24: "Knowing Our Place" by Barbara Kingsolver

4/27: "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

4/29: "Blessed Unrest" by Paul Hawken

MAY

5/1: "The Thoreau Problem" by Rebecca Solnit

Course Policies

Attendance and Participation: Since discussion will be an integral part of the course, you must be prepared for class, on time, and offer productive discussion based on the assigned readings. Students who miss more than 10% of the class will have their final grade reduced by one letter. Students who miss more than 20% of the class must withdraw from the course.

Late Assignments: All essays are due at the beginning of class on the day specified by the schedule. Late essays will be accepted, but will be reduced one letter grade for each day they are late.

Electronic devices: All electronic devices must be turned off at the beginning of class. Any student seen using an electronic device during class will have his or her class participation grade reduced to zero.

Plagiarism. Part II of Student Rights and Responsibilities (6.3.1; online at ) states that all academic work, written or otherwise, submitted by students to their instructors or other academic supervisors, is expected to be the result of their own thought, research, or self? expression. Plagiarism includes reproducing someone else's work, whether it be published article, chapter of a book, a paper from a friend or some file, or another source, including the Internet. Plagiarism also includes the practice of employing or allowing another person to alter or revise the work which a student submits as his/her own, whoever that other person may be. Plagiarism also includes using someone else's work during an oral presentation without properly citing that work in the form of an oral footnote.

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