Writing about Nature and Environmental Issues

Essay 1

Exercise 1.1 (Warm-up for Essay 1)

Due Session 4

Purpose of assignment:

• To focus your attention as you read and think about a particular work.
• To help you distinguish between observed details and the ideas that emerge from those details.
• To ensure that your own ideas are rooted in specific textual evidence.

Instructions:

1. Choose one of the texts listed below; then, identify and transcribe between fifteen and twenty key passages from the work your have chosen. Be sure to note page numbers.
2. Divide your collection of quoted phrases between those that provide factual information about the bird or birds (data or direct description) and those that explore the significance of the bird.
   • Some phrases may combine both features. You may list them in both categories and underline the distinctive terms.

Be sure that you know the precise meaning of every word that you include in your list of quotes. Print out 3 copies of your exercise and bring them to class.

Draft of Essay 1

Due Session 5

Readings to consider:

[AE] = McKibben, Bill, ed. American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Library of America, 2008. ISBN: 9781598530209.

Beston, Henry. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Code. Reprint edition. Holt Paperbacks, 2003, pp. 19–25. ISBN: 9780805073683. [Preview with Google Books]

Eiseley, Loren. “The Judgment of the Birds.” In The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature. Vintage, 1959. ISBN: 9780394701578. [Preview with Google Books]

[AE] Leopold, Aldo. “Marshland Elegy.”

[AE] Carson, Rachel. Excerpt from “Silent Spring” (pp. 835–848) and “And No Birds Sing (Section 1).” See pub info below.

[AE] Turner, Jack. “The Song of the White Pelican.”

Each of these authors draws upon the symbolic resonance of a particular bird or group of birds, but the power of each work depends upon carefully observed details. In a coherent essay that develops a unifying thesis, explore the role played by the particular bird or group of birds at the center of one of these texts. Be sure to consider the relationship between the observed or documented details and the symbolic associations of the bird. This assignment is deliberately open-ended to allow you to follow the distinctive path of your own thoughts, but the resulting essay must be tightly organized and well documented.

Guidelines for draft of Essay 1

Workshop 1

In-class on Session 6

Guidelines for Workshop 1

Revision

Due Session 7

Guidelines:

• Finished essay should be 3–4 pages long (1000–1300 words, double-spaced).
• Use MLA in-text citations. Remember Works Cited list.
• Proofread your essay before submitting it.