English 375
American Literature and the Environment
Environmental Exploration Project
This is a staged series of ten experiential writing exercises in
environmental perception to supplement and to apply the reading, as well as to
enrich our discussions. In effect, this exercise, when completed, takes you
through the steps of writing a work of environmental literature such as Walden, though on a much smaller scale.
Each weekly essay will be graded on a 0-4 basis: “4” being reserved for
exceptionally perceptive work; “3” being for solid good-faith fulfillment of
the assignment (the great majority of cases, I would expect); “2” for adequate
or almost-adequate work; “1” for negligent work (a most unlikely outcome if you
don't cut corners); and “0” for missed assignments. The ten installments of the Environmental
Exploration Project (“EEP”) are worth 35% of your final grade. You will need to earn at least five “4”
grades in order to receive the highest distinction.
Bring two copies of your EEP to class each week one is assigned (see
below and the course schedule). One copy
of your essay will be anonymously peer reviewed in class and returned
immediately. The second copy will be
evaluated by me and returned the following week with a numerical score and some
commentary as noted above. If you would
like more feedback, or comments on a specific point, please let me know.
During the last class of the semester, after you’ve completed ten EEP
essays, you will give a brief presentation about your project (probably 10-20
minutes, depending on the size of the class). This is intended to focus your
attention on the overall project a week or more ahead of the final deadline,
and to give you a chance to assess the reaction of an audience to your larger,
conceptual framework. You may also learn
something by seeing how others have organized their projects before you make
the final adjustments to your own. This
presentation is worth 10% of your final grade, and it will be evaluated on a
1-10 scale (i.e., an “A” = 10%, a “C”=6%).
By 5PM, Friday, May 4, you will submit a 15-page paper (or the
negotiable equivalent in multimedia work) based on your essays, which you will
have revised into coherent, finished project.
This submission is worth 20% of your final grade, and it will be
evaluated on a letter-grade basis (i.e., an “A”=19-20%, a “B”=17-18%, a
“C”=16-17%, and so on).
Here's what the first part of the project involves. After you complete most of the reading for
the second week of class (Outside Lies
Magic and Invisible Frontier),
you should select an outdoor place (or some negotiable alternative, such
as an industrial interior—email me when in doubt) within reasonably easy
walking or driving distance that will become your place for the whole
semester, a place you believe you would feel safe and comfortable returning to
at least once a week. You may already
know the place quite well, or you may, in the spirit of the exploration, go looking
for a place that is completely unfamiliar—and possibly alien to your normal
experience. I suggest going for several
long walks or short road trips while you are selecting a location, looking for
elements that strike you as interesting and capable of sustaining an extended
meditation. Though the place need not be
a place devoid of human presence, it should be a spot that allows you to come
into relation with the nonhuman as well as the human-built environment.
In any case, revisit "your" place as often as you can during
the semester, preferably at different times of day and in different weather,
and plan to spend at least 20 minutes there when you do. On the basis of your
visits, you should write a series of essays of, in most cases, no more than two
double-spaced typed page (500 words or so, though up to 1,000 would be OK if
you are inspired one week) on the topics described below.
[Please note, a
draft of the first installment is due in one week. Be prepared to identify your place at next
week’s meeting at which we will talk about your choices. It can only help your project if you want to
supplement your writing with photos, drawings, video footage, artifacts, or
even a Web page for the whole project. A
modest digital camera might be very useful for this project as an aid to memory
and a means of recording the location, documenting its changes over time, and
compiling a portfolio of images for your presentation and final paper. Visual images and physical artifacts are
helpful in many ways, but bear in mind the primary focus of this course is
writing.]
ASSIGNMENTS:
1. (Drafted on January 24,
revised and submitted on January 31) Choose a site, or, if the first one
doesn’t seem right after our class discussion January 24, select another site
that seems more appropriate. In your essay, describe some of the sites you
considered and why you ultimately settled on this one. What makes your place
remarkable or capable of sustaining the interest of a reader who might not
share your academic obligations? What do
you expect to learn from it? What
special interests or capabilities are you bringing to it? Is there something about you that draws you
to the site? Why should someone else
care about it? This first EEP will
probably be longer than average since you have two weeks to work on it, and
there is a good deal to think through.
Consider—but don’t write about—the topics below, and whether your site
will lend itself to them.
2. (Due February 7) Probably you have chosen your place in part because it seems
inviting or exciting, or at least an intriguing habitat—one that might also
have an interesting human history.
Reflect on how your feelings and intellectual notions about it (what you
wrote about last week) might have led you to "construct" it
selectively, so that you see it quite differently from the way another person
might. Can you imagine that someone else might find it disquieting or
upsetting—someone from another culture perhaps? Are there any harsh or grating
aspects that you are tempted to screen out or euphemize in order to have as
harmonious an experience as possible? How has your writing thus far reflected
or resisted the well-worn paths of environmental writing. While thinking about this question, read the
essay, “Sick of Nature” <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/08/01/sick_of_nature/>.
3. (Due February 21) Is there anything in your site that almost seems like a companion
or an anchor to the site as a whole?
Pick a single, specific natural object element that you have come to
notice at your spot and describe it, both objectively and subjectively, in
detail, making sure to indicate how it is that your notice of it has grown or
deepened, if at all. The attentiveness with which Thoreau and other writers
come to see certain spots might be partial models, although your object can be
quite unobtrusive and unpoetic, as the spirit
moves. Don't feel that you have to confine
yourself to a single mood; for example, if you are inclined to rapture feel
free to lighten up with a bit of humor and self-mockery (ala Mark Twain). Consider doing some research on the object,
if this is possible. For example, you
might look up the facts about, say, the Blue Spruce in a field guide to trees,
and I have placed the Audubon Field Guide
to Trees on reserve in Van Wylen Library for this
purpose. I don’t want to insist on trees
too much (you could, after all, choose to write about a splotch of mold on a
tombstone or a species of toad that frequents your site), but I also want to
encourage you to check out Thomas Pakenham’s book, Meetings with Remarkable Trees
(or his Remarkable Trees of the World), which I have also placed on reserve for you. Spend at least 15 minutes with his
books—you’ll be amazed, I think. How might a single object, selected from your
place, become the basis for a more sustained thematic study like Pakenham’s? NOTE:
Two exercises are due this week: complete #4 as well as #3 for February
21.
4. (Due February 21) Your previous essays probably emphasized the visual, since
that is the primary sense involved in environmental perception for most
people. In any case, this time around
make a conscious attempt to get more "primordial" and respond with
some of your other senses: hearing, smell, touch, taste. Can you describe your
place as a more multi-sensory environment than you have so far? Use your natural abilities as far as you can
(possibly making synaesthetic connections—i.e., how
hearing and touch are connected, taste and smell, etc.), and then see if you
can devise any means to be systematic and precise in the use of these
perceptions? Are there subtle
differences in the textures of bark or concrete? What are the layers of sound that are
perceptible to your ears? Are these
different if you record them and play them back at different volumes or analyze
them graphically using computer software?
Don’t feel you have to get too high-tech; these are just suggestions and
encouragements for you to draw on techniques that you might know about but not
normally use for an English paper.
5. (Due February 28) Spend at least
40 minutes perusing the following books on reserve at Van Wylen
Library: Alburtus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Peter Mauries’ Cabinets of
Curiosities, Stephen Quinn’s Windows
on Nature, and Nancy Pick’s Rarest of
the Rare. (If you liked the video on
the
6. (Due March 7) Take
another person to your place and write about how the experience is affected by
the change from solitude to companionship. Also, try to be specific about the
variability of your perceptions: how does gender, culture, class, race, etc.,
construct what you perceive, if at all?
Have a conversation about this with your companion. (If you aren't careful, you may find yourself
tempted to produce a blandly generic essay about solitude and friendship that
doesn’t have much to do with the specifics of place. That’s not the point.) Try, once again, to see how your “place” was
a construct when you found it, and how it has become an even more elaborate
construct, something that has meaning because you brought it with you and
applied it through narrative. Try to get
your companion to give meaning to the place by describing what he or she finds
interesting, appealing, or troubling, about it.
Do you have much in common? On
what points do you differ? Why?
7. (Due March 14) Reflect on
how your place might have become degraded or at least changed as the result of
unintended consequences arising from how it has been used (abused) focusing
particularly on ways that might at first escape notice. Is there material evidence of this
degradation? How might the site have
been used better? Is there any
indication of future development visible?
You might want to investigate how the site zoned at the county records
office? If it is at Hope, does the
college have any building or landscaping plans for the site? What has already happened nearby? What do you think the future holds for your
site? You might want to give some
attention to the infrastructure present in or near your site: water management,
the power grid, communications systems, roads and paths, rail lines, bridges
and tunnels, waste management, manufacturing, residential use, planned
recreation use, and so on. To aid you
with this kind of investigation, I have placed Brian Hayes’ Infrastructure: A
Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape on reserve at Van Wylen. It’s a superb
book that you should review with sections on such matters as “The Industrial
Ecology of Utility Poles.” John Stilgoe and the authors of Invisible Frontier would love it, and I hope you will spend at
least 15 minutes with it whether you plan to use it or not.
8. (Due March 28) Examine
the vicinity of your location more broadly.
Walk away from it in widening circles (or as close to
that as you can manage in a rectilinear fashion). Take note of how your place is situated
within the web of other places, natural and built. How does it relate to these places? How is it distinct from them? Why does your place exist at all as a
separate location? Locate your place on
a detailed map (try Mapquest.com and Google Earth, or, better yet, locate
historical or topographical maps of the area in the library or in the county
records office—always an impressive bit of “extra mileage”). How do the maps you’ve found inform your
understanding of your place and its larger context? Again, Hayes’ Infrastructure (on reserve) might help you to understand how your site
is situated within, say, the power grid.
9. (Due April 4) It should already be clear that your place (like Thoreau’s
Walden) is not a constant. It changes in accordance with the various cycles of
human and "natural" time, not to mention your own cycles of mood.
Consider the shift from summer to fall and winter, but also consider the
historical dimension. How might your place have looked and felt differently one
or more generations ago? Feel free to pick your own historical moment, but try
to locate some factual records of the place (old photos at the Historical
Society, books about
10. (Due April 11) Does your place represent a certain type or “genre” of
place? Is your place similar to other
places in the area, and other locations with which you
are familiar or can learn about? For
example, if you are sitting in a public park, how does your park compare with
others in the area, or other parks you have visited or researched? How does your place within the park (e.g., a
bench near a veteran’s memorial) compare with similar places in other
parks? Was your place selected, in part,
because of a preconceived narrative about how a visitor should experience the
place? What is your vision of the
“ideal” form of your place? How does
your place fall short? Does that make
you want to do anything? If so, what? Consider
whether you have been co-opted by a design, or a cultural momentum, not of your
own choosing? How does this design,
which you see as your own, reflect longstanding patterns in American
culture? (In other words, I am partly
asking whether anything we’ve studied might relate to your place and project
and whether you might make some macro level, concluding generalizations about
the project.)
(Due April 25) On this evening you will present your EEP to
the class. The presentation should be
short (10-20 minutes, depending on the number of students in our seminar), and
it should be engaging, possibly including audio-visual element, artifacts, and
so on. Be sure to test any a/v materials
before the class begins. The class will
give you anonymous written support and suggestions for your final
submission.
(Due May 4, 5PM) FINAL PROJECT: Use your awakened
environmental imagination to revise all of your previous writing into a flowing
15-page final paper, which may be shortened up to five pages by the inclusion
of supplementary materials: photographs, video, audio recordings, Websites,
(interactive) maps, and physical artifacts.
If you choose to include material objects, everything should be packaged
in such a way that I can safely transport, evaluate, and possibly display it
(with your permission). So, the minimum
is 10 pages of writing, but this option requires you to go the extra mile in
putting together something that justifies the shortening, that does not seem
superfluous. If you include paratextual
elements, they should have some important relation to the text and be mentioned
in it. I hope that makes sense. Ask me
if it doesn’t. I’m looking forward, as I
always do, to some astonishingly brilliant work.