American Nature Writing: Environment, Culture, Values
ENST 111 / ENGL 101 Fall 2015
American Nature Writing: Environment, Culture, Values
Required Texts:
American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Ed. Bill McKibben, Library of America
Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism: Toward Urbanatural Roosting, Ashton Nichols, Palgrave Macmillan
Walden, or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau, G. W. Zouck
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Ballantine/Random House
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey, Touchstone/Simon Shuster
The End of Nature, Bill McKibben, Anchor Doubleday
Course Aims and Learning Goals:
What does American nature writing have to do with the environment, culture, and values? A great deal. What does great literature have to do with nonfictional observation of the natural world? A surprising amount. Our course will survey writings by a wide range of authors: young and old, male and female, northern and southern, black and white. We will set this range of works in dialogue with major environmental questions of the past two centuries: wilderness and species preservation, appreciation of wild nature, pollution. The course will also be a study of language, of literary styles, and most of all the link between literature and “environment, culture, and values.”
Our texts will be literary and scientific. Our contexts will be environmental, ethical, and ecological. We will work to answer a series of questions about the relationship between the natural world and human beings who have defined and affected that world since 1800. Are humans just a part of the natural environment? Are we distinct from nature? Is nature beautiful and benign (sunsets, daffodils, puffins) or ugly and destructive (hurricanes, AIDS, death)? How and why should we preserve nature? Why is climate change considered the major challenge facing the modern world?
We will understand how literary texts reflect the context of the times in which they were produced and also the times in which they have been received by readers. Our guides will include novelists, essayists, and ourselves. We will examine the current importance (as well as the controversial aspects) of evolutionary ideas, and we will emphasize the role played by literature in the development of our own environmental assumptions and values.
See Useful Websites for American Nature Writing:
http://blogs.dickinson.edu/syllabus/2014/01/09/american-nature-writing-environment-culture-values/
Urbanatural Roosting Web Portal
Required Work:
Students will be required to read carefully and come to class prepared to discuss all assigned work. Reading quizzes and in-class writing will contribute to discussions. Discussion will form an important part of your evaluation in this course. More than two (2) unexcused absences will be grounds for lowering your grade. You must complete all required work in order to pass this class.
Grading will be based on the following scale:
Class participation————-10% (includes group work)
Long essay (authors/works)–30%
Final exam ———————- 40% Total = 100%
The short essay (4-5 pp.) will ask you to analyze a single text. The longer essay (9-10 pp.) will ask you to connect at least one work to the culture in which it was produced. The final exam will be cumulative. I am available during office hours and by appointment to discuss the course, our readings, your writing, or your grade.
Academic Honesty
The Dickinson plagiarism policy will be strictly enforced. This class adheres to the College’s Community Standards, which clearly state: “Students are expected to do their own work. Work submitted in fulfillment of academic assignments and provided on examinations is expected to be original by the student submitting it.” Please review the Community Standards document for more information.
Accommodating Students with Disabilities
Dickinson College makes reasonable academic accommodations for students with documented disabilities. Students requesting accommodations must make their request and provide appropriate documentation to Disability Services in Biddle House. Because classes change every semester, eligible students must obtain a new accommodation letter from Director Marni Jones every semester and review this letter with their professors so the accommodations can be implemented. The Director of Disability Services is available by appointment to answer questions and discuss any implementation issues you may have. Disability Services proctoring is managed by Susan Frommer at 717-254-8107 or proctoring@dickinson.edu. Address general inquiries to Stephanie Anderberg at 717-245-1734 or e-mail disabilityservices@dickinson.edu.
Professor Ashton Nichols: K 192 Class meetings: 1:30 – 2:45 p.m. M TH
Office Hours: 10:15 a.m. -1:30 p.m. T TH & by appt. Classroom: TOME 115
Readings for American Nature Writing
August 31 M American Nature Writing–our syllabus as a text (+Web)
September 3 TH American Earth, xvii-xx, xxi-1, and Thoreau Journal’s 1-8
7 M Walden, Thoreau Introductions, 5-10, 11-21 and 22-98
10 TH Gillen D’Arcy Wood in Class, handout + video
[Gillen Darcy Wood YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI9tS4_nl7A]
10th Thursday, 7:00 p.m. D’Arcy Wood Lecture (Required) Stern Great Room
14 M Walden 99-188
17 TH Walden 189-284
21 M Walden 285-end Writing About Literature: Assign Essay #1
24 TH George Catlin, Lydia Sigourney, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Table Rock 37-61
28 M Walt Whitman George Perkins Marsh, P. T. Barnum 62-83
October 1 TH John Muir, W. H. H. Murray, Frederick Law Olmstead 84-125
5 M John Burroughs, Gifford Pinchot 145-180—Mark Ruffalo & Ramsay Adams to class [YouTube: 1) Mark Ruffalo speaks out against fracking PBS & 2) Mark Ruffalo Speech at Dickinson College 2015 Commencement, & 3) Ruffalo Dickinson Interview] Be ready with questions after Mark and Ramsay’s presentation.
8 TH N. Darling, Don Marquis 224-238 (pictures) Workshop Essay #1 due in class
12 M Sand County Almanac Introduction-136
13th Tuesday, 5:00 p.m. Egbert Leigh Lecture
15 TH Sand County Almanac 137 (“Thinking Like a Mountain”)-end Assign Essay #2
19 M FALL PAUSE
22 TH Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, Russell Baker 359-380 + Darwin (Outline Below)
26 M Lynn White, Paul Erlich, Garrett Hardin 405-412, 435-450
29 TH Philip Dick, 451-453, Blade Runner Trailer “She’s a Replicant” Film Clip
November 2 M Desert Solitaire Introduction-150
5 TH Desert Solitaire 151-end
9 M 473-479, 489-492 + Big Yellow Taxi Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)
12 TH Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard 505-549
16 M N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko 570-590, Linda Hogan 809-14
19 TH Alice Walker 659-671, Cesar Chavez 690-696
23 M Urbanatural Roosting xiii-xxiii, 3-101
26 TH THANKSGIVING
30 M Urbanatural Roosting 101-212
December 3 TH The End of Nature xiii-xxiv + 1-78 [YouTube: Bill McKibben at Dickinson & Global Warming; Do the Math with Bill McKibben; David Letterman talks with Bill McKibben. 08/31/10
7 M The End of Nature 82-end
10 TH (Final set of pictures, 736-737) Exam Review–Essay #2 due in class
December 17, Thursday, 2:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. FINAL EXAM IN CLASSROOM
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Terms to Consider
TEXT: n.1. main body of matter in a manuscript, book, newspaper, distinguished from notes, appendixes, headings, illustrations. 2. the actual, original words of an author or speaker. 3. any of the various forms in which a writing exists. [ME, ML text(us) wording, L: structure (of an utterance), texture.]
CONTEXT: n. 1. parts of written or spoken statement that precede or follow a word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect. 2. circumstances that surround a particular event, situation, etc. [late ME, L context(us) joining together].
LITERATURE: n. 1. writing regarded as having permanent worth through its intrinsic excellence. 2. The entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc. 3. the writings dealing with a particular subject: the literature of ornithology
Nature and Humans: Questions to Consider
1) Are human beings just the mere result of random evolutionary processes over time? Is that all they are?
2)“Be fruitful and multiply.”–Is that a good idea? Is that a waste?
3) Is AIDS natural? Is spinal bifida? Is death? Is nature “good”?
4) Does evolution necessarily conflict with the religious teachings of Christianity? Can the two viewpoints–religious and scientific–be reconciled?
5) Nature doesn’t care less about you or me? Or does it?
Darwin and Darwinism:
–”You can’t wash the slugs out of your lettuce without disrespect to your ancestors.”–Ruskin
—“The growth of a large business is merely survival of the fittest.” –John D. Rockefeller
What were the scientific implications of Darwin’s theory?
I. The principle of natural selection determines the survival of species.
II. Species have not existed forever in their present form: Galapagos endemism. A. Each life form on earth is undergoing continual change. B. These changes result from chance mutations.
III. The earth and life on earth have existed for an inconceivably long time. (Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1830)
IV. A record of the earlier stages of evolution can be found in fossils and in the anatomy of living creatures. Chambers, Vestiges of Creation, 1844)
What were the wider implications of the theory?
- Natural laws
- Laws of nature subject to change because material conditions governing laws change.
1.) cooperation: symbiosis or parasitism?
2.) competition: the fittest?
- There are no “ideals” in nature or natural form.
1.) what is “right” is what succeeds over time.
2.) evolutionary success: shark, horseshoe crab, cockroach
3.) evolutionary failure: dinosaur, human brain (?)
- Theology–“It is just as noble a conception of the deity to believe he created primal forms capable of self-development.” –Canon Charles Kingsley
- Man is no longer viewed as unique
1.) end-product of creation?
2.) human’s “mental moral and spiritual qualities evolved by precisely the same processes that gave the eagle its claws and the tapeworm its hooks”
- Doubts about the Biblical account of human origins and fate emerge.
1.) 4004 B.C. vs. billions of years
2.) Adam and Eve vs. The Descent of Man
3.) creation as a continuous and self-modifying process
4.) destruction as likewise ongoing and accidental.
III. Social Darwinism
A.) All sciences are historical
1.) science always subject to revision (non-Euclidean geometry)
2.) no laws, only theories (quantum physics)
3.) science is “true” based on best possible evidence
4.) science is never about faith; it is only about knowledge
B.) Social order is a “struggle for existence.”
1.) revolutionary change: Marxist ideology
2.) laissez-faire capitalism
3.) do the ends always justify the means?
C.) Evolutionary psychology
1.) human neural processes evolved by the same means as all organic life.
2.) the human mind is thus the dynamic result of constant evolutionary change.
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