Welcome!

"Don't requite Nature to be Wilderness. Thoreau said, 'In Wildness is the preservation of the World.' Distinguish, as he did, between wildness and wilderness. We hunger for the wild. The wild is everywhere; it cannot be extinguished. The wild centers every seed, enters every garden. Wilderness is myth and gone, and the wild is everywhere. Wilderness is distant; wildness local. Wildness is the urge of life to be--the grass blade in the parking lot, the peregrine in the tower, weeds pioneering a landfill, the patch of brush where kids make forts."
- John Caddy



Johnny Cash- "Five Feet High and Rising"

Course Description:

The American landscape wilderness has long played a role in America literature. This course will explore how writers bother reflect and construct the wilderness in their texts. Students will encounter readings by a diverse group of writers including Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Annie Dillard.

This course will not only require analysis of American environmental literature--it will also push students to use those same analytical skill to examine their own ideas about environment, landscape, and home. Students will working in written, oral, visual, and electronic mediums to synthesize their understanding of "place" in a mulit-modal way. Work will include two formal essays, a visual photo project, a research project/presentation, and regular journal/ blogging.

Texts:

American Earth, edited by Bill McKibben
Blood Dazzler, by Patricia Smith
Student Guide, ISU Foundation Courses
The Brief Penguin Handbook