Ephemera

On the syllabus for the course I have listed the general learning objectives for this cross-listed course in Environmental and American Studies:

• critical thinking and problem solving skills
•  communication skills
• skills associated with moral and character development
• an understanding of the ethical implications of environmental issues
•  understanding historical and contemporary American cultures
• responding resourcefully to texts
•  integrating forms of scholarship from more than one discipline in writing).

The learning outcomes on the syllabus are written as things that you will be expected to demonstrate in your class participation and in your thinking and writing:

• To articulate the interrelations of natural and social-cultural systems, and the ways in which human agency can both degrade and sustain the environment
•  To examine national and international issues through artistic, philosophical, cultural, scientific, technological, economic, social and political perspectives;
•  To approach a particular idea, problem, task or goal from multiple perspectives and ask sophisticated questions.

Week 14
Reading groups:

• Richard Louv Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder (2005) Emily W., Claire, Elizabeth, Rachel ;
• Mark Bekoff Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence (2014); Bryan, Meaghan, Michelle; 
• E. O. Wilson. The Meaning of Human Existence (2014) Shauna, Karen, Jessica

Questions from Bryan, Meaghan, and Michelle for discussion of Mark Bekoff, Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence (2014)

• Why do we ignore the suffering we cause to animals?
• Why do we consider ourselves to be the most exceptional animal?
• How do you feel about that mentality- that we treat animals as pests?
• Do we put too much faith in the accuracy of the media in terms of our representation of nonhuman animals?
• How does the treatment of non-human animals on set and in the media in general affect our mindset and our relationship towards them?
• Why is it important that we teach children how to be compassionate and ensure they are not unwilded? How do we do so?

Week 11
Questions to Consider (Of course, some of these questions will be more compelling for you than others. Focus on what are for you the compelling questions. Remember that good questions don’t always lead to answers but rather to better questions.)

What is environmentalism?

What is environmental writing?

What is the relationship between environmental writing and the social movement of environmentalism?

What can we learn by studying environmental concern in the twentieth century through forms of journalism, advertising, music, popular culture?

How do I understand myself and my relationship to the more-than-human world—to natural and built environments, to places like cities, forests, ponds, oceans, animals, gardens, wilderness areas, parks?

What personal and social investments and institutional structures sustain the symmetry between ecological entitlement and economic status? How might people begin to question these massive and enduring asymmetries?

How are our ideas about nature embedded in larger social and cultural attitudes about ourselves and others?

What are the relations between sustainability, diversity and equity?

In what ways can we think together the concerns of ecology, economics, democracy?

How do multiple voices share equal status (in an unequal society) define the future?

On what terms might the people of the world share a common future?

In what ways are we able to use language to clarify our relationship to the earth?

How might books shape how we think about ourselves, other people, and the world around us?

How do we learn to read and make use of nonfiction (essays, memoir), poetry, and fiction?

How do we define and value a literary tradition of writers dedicated to exploring the human and more-than-human world?

What is the relationship between thought and action? Between words and the world?

How do we learn to use literature (and art) as a personal, community, and cultural resource?

“How do we encourage and develop an ethic that goes beyond intrahuman obligations and includes nonhuman nature?” –Gary Snyder, “A Village Council of All Beings”

Where do we start to resolve the dichotomy of the civilized and the wild?” -Gary Snyder, “The Etiquette of Freedom”

Week Seven

Books

The books you have mentioned thus far to me include the following:

Aldous Huxley. Brave New World (1932)

Jack Kerouac. The Dharma Bums (1958)

John McPhee. Encounters with the Archdruid (1971) or The Control of Nature (1989).

Ollie Zehner, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism (2012)

Bill Mckibben, Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist (2014)

For my first-year writing class I have made a list of books that might be helpful for you in our brainstorming for Part Three of the course. The books, written by different kinds of people—enthusiastic amateurs, educators and academics, students, artists, farmers, professional scientists from around the world–explore natural history (of trees, moss, weeds, corn), human history (how and what we eat, population growth, agriculture, urban planning), and the sciences, (ecology, genetics and systematics, physics, evolutionary biology). Some of the books on the list advocate for social or political change. Others invite us to change how we see the world by bringing to our attention the complexities of physical processes—from the biology of digestion to the evolutionary process of life. These are real books—engaging, interesting, provocative, challenging—of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, essays, manifestos, philosophy, description, humor, and critical analysis.

Week Five Follow up Notes

Thank you for your thoughtful engagement with the book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Our conversation has been dancing in my mind since we broke for the evening.

One result is a brief essay “Reading Wendell Berry” that I posted on the blog. Please read it as you continue thinking and writing about the Unsettling of America. You will also find on the course blog a post called “The Language of Environmentalism.” This post will be useful as we continue to talk about language and discourse. It is helpful, in this regard, to engage with the question of naming and how naming determines identity and value, for this set of issues will flare in the novel we are now looking toward, Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms. We talked about these issues in class thanks to Karen’s identification of the word “redskin” in the first pages of Unsettling. Karen explains in her journal precisely what happens and what Berry describes: “The foreigners with their sovereign attitudes made them redskins” (my emphasis). As I explained in class, this introductory chapter tells the story (the history) we first elaborated with the help of Barry Lopez. Berry describes the process through which peoples in North America (well, throughout the Americas) were “dispossessed and driven out, or subverted and exploited where they were. . . . Time after time, in place after place, [the conquerers] have fragmented and demolished traditional communities” (4).

Berry goes further, as we talked about in class. He is showing an equally powerful dispossession through naming as people with distinct identities and cultures are described by imposing terms. The case describes is the use of the term “redskin” to name (and also to place into a system of value) a people (in this case American Indians or Indigenous persons). The conclusion is that the trope of skin color (as Berry knows there is no biological basis for collapsing the color of skin with socially determined categories of race) becomes a part of the colonial discourse that persists as what Berry calls “marginal” persons (or established) are similarly displaced and therefore devalued. This devaluation (and as Emily pointed out in an analogous cultural and linguistic logic, the use of terms negro, colored, and black) is pernicious and operative in cultural discourse. Spend some time with the 19th century paintings and portraits of George Catlin, to take one example, or the writings of 17th and 18th century Europeans on the continent. Or consider the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Redskins—or even, as many have pointed out, the trope too easily used in general terms by well-meaning and environmentally conscious people, what the historian Shepherd Kresch calls “the ecological Indian.” Let us be grateful for someone such as Berry describing this unsettling and determinative and constituitive linguistic / conceptual process of culture. In important ways, as we will see, Solar Storms elaborates this violent process of dispossession, displacement, and fragmentation that becomes embedded and in fact normative in the exploitative mind. “Modern civilization,” as Berry says, has been built largely on this forgetfulness” (100).

I have also posted on the course blog

• an outline as primer of Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution
• a link to E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life
• and a description of a talk by Lisa Brooks, our first annual Sally Joyce lecture in American Indian Studies on November 4th. I hope that you will be able to attend as her work is very much a part of the conversation we are having.

More on the novel Solar Storms will be forthcoming. Happy reading, happy writing, happy weekend.

Week Four Notes and Materials

Snyder on collaboration, the self, and the truth of impermanence:

“ First of all, when I say [the book-length poem Mountains and Rivers Without End] is collaborative I’m thinking of two different kinds of collaboration. One is the collaboration with various living persons and dead comrades from the past. The insights and voices of those from whom I have learned, or, actually, those with whom I have engaged in the imagination—in some sense they are some of the contributing voices. In particular, of course, there’s a collaboration of sorts with my teachers—my living, actual teachers both in painting and calligraphy and also in poetry and poetics. And in other realms as well: working in the engine room on the Sappa Creek under the first engineer, learning how to be a caregiver to machinery. So those all become part of a collaboration if one is able to free oneself from the notion that art is self-expression to begin with—or, like, ‘which self’? So, when I mention ‘which self,’ that brings us back to the other aspect of collaboration, which is the collaboration of your various selves in producing a poem, or producing a work of art. . . . [W]e are not just a single self—we are a number of selves, some of which come forward more than others—but an array of possible faces, possible angles, possible takes on the world. . . . The acknowledgement [is] that we reflect a number of selves, all of which, of course, are illusory anyway, and which resolve into a non-self—which is another way of speaking of the totally collaborative quality of any individual entity, namely that we are an intersection of influences in the present and in the past, from the present and from the past, that is a moving target. That’s the non-self.”

“[I]f you give up any thought of clinging to the ideas of the self and of permanence, then you’ve found your place. Then you are centered. And so there’s a metaphorical center, which is. . .a metaphorical place, which is nowhere, but also everywhere, or it’s right where you are. . . . [To] grasp the common-sense truth of impermanence is to realize your physical limitations. Each of us, in our brief life, can only be in one place at a time, and no matter how much we might move about, it’s finally not many places. We are born some-specific-where and die somewhere, and in truth live in specific places all our life. So this is, as Dōgen says, where practice begins. Knowing one’s limits, to explore the sphere given us (this mind/body, this neighborhood, this valley and ridge) well. Then, to grasp the somewhat less common-sense truth of no self is to realize that the boundaries between inside and outside, yourself and the surroundings, is permeable, and that the air and water of this neighborhood, this valley, is an inextricable part of your being.”

-Eric Todd Smith. Unpublished interview conducted at Kitkitdizze, May 22, 1998. Qtd. in Smith, Reading Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End. Boise: Boise State UP, 2000. 14–15, 45–46.

Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry (You Tube)
Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry (Part 1)
Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry (Part 2)
Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry (Part 3)
Gary Snyder on Ecology and Poetry (Part 4)

Turtle Island
Mother Earth: Her Whales
New York Times July 13 1972

Before you Click Publish

Be interesting: Your idea(s) matter. Make sure there is a reason that an informed reader would want to read your writing. Take a reader somewhere: begin but do not end with the commonplace. Move from the commonplace to the surprising, the simple to the complex, the familiar to the unfamiliar, the obvious to the less obvious

Be thoughtful Think. Then think again. To make sentences that are smart, engaging, exiting to read you will need to move from first to second and third thoughts. The work of writing is to use words effectively to engage other minds

Make Connections Experiment with embedding your thinking in thought: in most of your writing you will be quoting from the writing of the books we are reading; learn how to make use of hyperlinks on Word Press; organize blocks of text using paragraphs but also using bullet lists; use italics (or parenthetical comments) and bold face type, when appropriate

Be Concise Say what you have to say. Blog posts are relatively short. But effective blog posts do more with less. Every word and phrase and sentence matters. Many engaging blog posts have a three-part structure: a subject (a subject, usually familiar, indicating what the post is about), a turn (can be a “yet” or a “however” or a “but,” and an angle (your stance, what you have to say, the move you make in your thinking that makes what you have to say matter

Cultivate a Point of View Who are you? Where are you? What are you doing/ What are you thinking or feeling? What makes you interesting, worth talking with, or listening to? Have a look at how a former exchange student of mine from France, Amelie, cultivated her voice on her blog: The French Post: A French Girl Writing in English.)

Refine Tone Conversational, strong, sharp, inviting are terms we use to describe effective writing: but what exactly do these terms mean? Is there humor? Why not cut the stuffy, “formal” tone. Loosen up the composition. But watch out for too informal as it can turn around and nip you quick

Format: You are welcome to try different formats for your posts. But final posts should include reflection/analysis/interpretation. For example, note key points or passages that you noticed in your reading and spend more time with it, dig in, probe it, try to understand it better, raise questions, suggest answers

Be professional You are publishing your writing. For this reason alone, your prose should be revised, revised, revised. Then (and only then) do you edit. It takes a lot of work to get things exactly right. I’m watching very closely, too

Beginnings First sentences matter. Pay attention to how other writers begin. Try personal anecdotes, a “catchy sentence,” a quotation, a reference to another college class, an intellectual context, or a field of study

Titles Clever, catchy, eye drawing, informative, suggestive, substantive. Titles most often are the last thing you revise before you post. Most good titles are suggestions of better titles

Details Is the writing error free? If you have issues with spelling (one of my issues as a writer, as it happens) you need to build into your writing process a run through focused just on spelling. Are titles of books in italics and chapters, articles (and poems) in quotation marks? Are poems cited by line breaks or are dashes used to indicate line breaks? (“I went into the Maverick Bar / In Farmington, New Mexico.”) Do I have questions about format? Have I asked someone what I need to do?

Week Two Notes and Materials

Ramachandra Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History (2000) The timeline below is provisional and overlaps are a part of the more complex social and cultural history that constitutes human experiences and ideas. Texts can be useful markers but they are in no way definitive

First wave: response to the onset of industrialization (1860s-) Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, William Burroughs, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt

John Muir, Our National Parks “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

Wilderness Act (1964) Sec. 2. (a) In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System to be composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as “wilderness areas”, and these shall be administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness. .

Second wave: perception of global environmental crisis and scientific conservation (1940-) Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson

Clean Air Act (1970): SEC. 101. (a) The Congress finds— (1) that the predominant part of the Nation’s population is located in its rapidly expanding metropolitan and other urban areas, which generally cross the boundary lines of local jurisdictions and often extend into two or more States; (2) that the growth in the amount and complexity of air pollution brought about by urbanization, industrial development, and the increasing use of motor vehicles, has resulted in mounting dangers to the public health and welfare, including injury to agricultural crops and livestock, damage to and the deterioration of property, and hazards to air and ground transportation; (3) that air pollution prevention (that is, the reduction or elimination, through any measures, of the amount of pollutants produced or created at the source) and air pollution control at its source is the primary responsibility of States and local government

Clean Water Act (1972) SEC. 101 [33 U.S.C. 1251] Declaration of Goals and Policy (a) The objective of this Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters. In order to achieve this objective it is hereby declared that, consistent with the provisions of this Act– (1) it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985; (2) it is the national goal that wherever attainable, an interim goal of water quality which provides for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife and provides for recreation in and on the water be achieved by July 1, 1983; (3) it is the national policy that the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts be prohibited; (4) it is the national policy that Federal financial assistance be provided to construct publicly owned waste treatment works; (5) it is the national policy that areawide waste treatment management planning processes be developed and implemented to assure adequate control of sources of pollutants in each State; (6) it is the national policy that a major research and demonstration effort be made to develop technology necessary to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters, waters of the contiguous zone, and the oceans; and (7) it is the national policy that programs for the control of nonpoint sources of pollution be developed and implemented in an expeditious manner so as to enable the goals of this Act to be met through the control of both point and nonpoint sources of pollution.

Third wave: Social and Environmental Justice (1970s-) Terry Tempest Williams, Linda Hogan, Wendell Berry

Scientific conservation, back-to-the-land, wilderness thinking to social ecology

“The main reason for Earth First! is to create a broader spectrum within the environmental community… there was a need for a radical wing to the environmental movement. Somebody has to say what needs to be said.” — Dave Foreman, co-founder

“Monkeywrenching is nonviolent resistance to the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness. It is never directed against human beings or other forms of life. It is aimed at inanimate machines and tools that are destroying life. Care is always taken to minimize any possible threat to people, including to the monkeywrenchers themselves.” from “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching,” available via Earth First! Journal

“The growth of the exploiters’ revolution on this continent has been accompanied by the growth of the idea that work is beneath human dignity, particularly any form of hand work. We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from.” Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“‘The ones coming in through the Tortilla Curtain down there, those are the ones that are killing us. They’re peasants, my friend. No education, no resources, no skills – all they’ve got to offer is a strong back, and the irony is we need fewer and fewer strong backs every day because we’ve got robotics and computers and farm machinery that can do the labor of a hundred men at a fraction of the cost.'” (Jack Jardine, to Delaney in the Supermarket, 101) T. C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain

“Climate change can be mitigated only through a commitment—an ethical, political and imaginative commitment—to safeguarding people and other life forms that are remote from us in time and space. Such a commitment requires that we deeply value life thirty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand years from now. Countering slow violence requires reimagining responsibility over longer time frames.” From an interview with Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. 

What personal and social investments and institutional structures sustain the symmetry between ecological entitlement and economic status?

How might people begin to question these massive and enduring asymmetries?

How are our ideas about nature embedded in larger social and cultural attitudes about ourselves and others?

What are the relations between sustainability, diversity and equity?

In what ways can we think together the concerns of ecology, economics, democracy?

How do multiple voices share equal status (in an unequal society) define the future?

On what terms might the people of the world share a common future?