FYW 150 | Into the Wild: Expanding Your Environmental Consciousness
This course was taught in an entirely remote format due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Course Description
In First Year Writing 150, students will develop their abilities to think critically, to evaluate and describe the world around them in clear and compelling prose, and to communicate their ideas in group settings — all of which are skills needed to excel in college and in any profession or trade. This is neither a course on grammar, nor a course in which students are expected to be “perfect” writers. If I’ve learned anything from my own experience as a writer, writing is a skill that takes extensive practice, and the best way to learn how to write well is to read and examine what makes a text a good piece of writing. Of course, we will also examine and practice all parts of the writing process: how to generate research topics, how to gather and organize evidence, how to write to different audiences, how to draft and revise, and how to produce finished, elegant prose. As I see it, my goal in this course is three-fold: to help students become comfortable and competent writers and critical thinkers inside and outside of the college setting, to provide students the opportunity for genuine self-discovery, and, ideally, to foster students’ passion for reading and writing.
The topic for our seminar is “Into the Wild: Expanding Your Environmental Consciousness.” The topic comes from my own research interests and my personal love of the natural world. Many of us imagine ourselves to be environmentally conscious, but are we? How willing are we to change our mindsets and behaviors to truly save the natural world from humankind? Do we value the natural world for its own sake, or do we tend to value nature only for what it can give us? What do we owe to nature? How does the way we talk and think about nature affect our treatment of it? What exactly is nature anyway? This course will explore human beings’ relationship to nature — how we think about it, how we write about it, and how we treat it — and consider the measures we each can take to prioritize the well-being of nature over our own desires.
Course Schedule
Week 1 | August 17-21 | Course Intro: Mountain Time
Aldo Leopold, “Thinking like a Mountain”
Kenneth Rexroth, selections from In the Sierra: Mountain Writings
Week 2 | August 24-28 | What is the Wild?
William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness”
Gary Snyder, selections from The Practice of the Wild
Week 3 | August 31 – September 4 | Practices of Attention
Marie Howe, “Singularity”
Mary Oliver, selections from Upstream
Robert MacFarlane, selections from Underland
Week 4 | September 7-11 | Trees
Margaret Cavendish, “Dialogue between an Oak and a Man Cutting Him Down”
Joy Harjo, “Speaking Tree”
Mary Oliver, selections from Blue Horses
Maria Popova, “Bark: An Intimate Look at the World’s Trees”
Watch Suzanne Simard’s TED Talk, “How Trees Talk to Each Other”
Week 5 | September 14-18 | Animals
Margaret Cavendish, “The Hunting of the Stag” and “The Hunting of Hare”
Michel de Montaigne, “On Cruelty”
Jeff Sebo, “All We Owe to Animals”
Listen to Ezra Klein’s “Political Animals” Podcast
Week 6 | September 21-25 | Into the Wild
Heather Heying, “Nature is Risky”
Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
William Wordsworth, selected poems
Week 7 | September 28 – October 2 | Into the Wild
Emily Dickinson, selected poems
John Muir, selections from Mountains of California
Henry David Thoreau, selections from Walden
Week 8 | October 5-9 | Rewilding
Albert Camus, “Return to Tipasa”
Seamus Heaney, “St. Kevin and the Blackbird”
Ada Limón, “The Rewilding”
Watch National Geographic’s “This is Your Brain on Nature”
Listen to Spotify Playlist | No. 15 - Rewilding
Week 9 | October 12-16 | Nature & the Human Community
Simon Armitage, “Considering the Poppy”
Barbara Kingsolver, “Small Wonder”
Walt Whitman, selections from “Song of Myself,” from Leaves of Grass
Week 10 | October 19-23 | Blue Mind
Wallace J. Nichols, selections from Blue Mind
Listen to Ezra Klein’s “Oceans Crisis” Podcast (Linked on Blackboard)
Week 11 | October 26-30 | Blue Mind
Ada Limón, “Sometimes I Think My Body Leaves a Shape in the Air”
Barbara Kingsolver, “Great Barrier”
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, selections from Oceanic
Matthew Zapruder, “Poem for Coleridge”
Week 12 | November 2-6 | Confronting an Ecological Crisis
Jane Hirshfield, “On the Fifth Day”
W.S. Merwin, “For a Coming Extinction”
Bryan Pfeiffer, “Ghosts and Tiny Treasures”
Watch Harrison Ford’s Speech at 2018 Global Climate Action Summit & Prince Ea’s spoken word performance
Week 13 | November 9-13 | Listening to Nature
Simon Armitage, selections from Stanza Stones project
Ada Limón, “The Last Thing”
W.S. Merwin, “Thanks”
Kenneth Rexroth, "Ice Shall Cover Nineveh §1”
Watch Bernie Krause, “The Voice of the Natural World”
Re-listen to Spotify Playlists No. 14 & 15