You must work with at least three published texts, including one secondary source that offers critical insight into the work of one of the writers you plan to consider (see below for Supplementary Readings for Essay 3).
You must work with at least one text from our common readings and at least two texts that you read on your own (see Exercises 3.1 & 3.2).
You must develop an idea that unifies your entire essay. A topic is not sufficient; you must present an argument/thesis. This is not a book review.
You must use MLA in-text citation style, and you must include a works cited list with all of the requisite publication information (in the draft as well as in the final version).
You should expect to rework and expand your essay between the first draft and the final version, but the first version should cover the full range of material described above.
The first version should be at least 1400 words long. The second version will, in all likelihood, be longer.
Your third essay will require that you explore the relationship between one of the works listed below and one or more of the assigned works. You will also be asked to draw upon secondary sources.
Supplementary Readings for Essay 3
Birds:
Quammen, David. Chapters 71–77. In The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. Reprint edition. Scribner, 1997. ISBN: 9780684827124.
Alagona, Peter S. “Biography of a ‘Feathered Pig’: The California Condor Conservation Controversy.” (PDF) Journal of the History of Biology 37, no. 3 (2004): 557–583.
Cultivating Nature:
Pollan, Michael. “Playing God in the Garden.” The New York Times Magazine. October 25, 1998.
———. “Weeds Are Us.” The New York Times Magazine. November 5, 1989.
———. “The Idea of a Garden.” In Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. Reprint edition. Grove Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780802140111. [Preview with Google Books]
Burdick, Alan. “Coming of Age in the Anthropocene.” OnEarth. September 27, 2010.
Kingsolver, Barbara, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Reprint edition. Harper Perennial, 2008. ISNB: 9780060852566. [Preview with Google Books]
Carpenter, Novella. Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. Penguin Books, 2010. ISBN: 9780143117285.
(On the creation of an urban farm in central Oakland. Short book—you may draw on several chapters rather than the entire book.)
Mitchell, John Hanson. Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile. Counterpoint, 1997. ISBN: 9780201149371. [Preview with Google Books]
(On the history of the land around Mitchell’s Massachusetts farm and about Mitchell’s own farming enterprise.)
Spirn, Anne Whiston. “Constructing Nature: The Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. Edited by William Cronon. W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. ISNB: 9780393315110. [Preview with Google Books]
(On recognizing the constructed nature of Olmsted’s parks.)
Reconstructing Nature:
McPhee, John. “Atchafalaya.” The New Yorker. February 23, 1987.
(On the Army Corps of Engineers’ struggle to control the Mississippi.)
Reisner, Marc. “A Semidesert with a Desert Heart.” In Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. 2nd edition. Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN: 9780140178241. [Preview with Google Books]
(On the attempt to re-engineer the desert Southwest of the USA.)
Williams, Terry Tempest. “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.” In American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Edited by Bill McKibben. Library of America, 2008. ISBN: 9781598530209.
Wolves:
Lopez, Barry Holstun. “An American Pogrom” and/or “Epilogue: On the Raising of Wolves and a New Ethology.” In Of Wolves and Men. Photographed by John Baugess. Revised edition. Scribner, 1979. ISBN: 9780684163222. [Preview with Google Books]
(About the history of the US effort to eradicate wolves & Lopez’s own doomed effort to raise two orphaned wolves.)
