Independent Projects
You are to complete one independent project that is due by Tuesday, November 26.
- A one-half to one page proposal for this project is due by Tuesday, November 5.
- Independent projects entail doing some research, exploration or activity on your own. Your results ought to be reported in papers that are 5-7 typed, double-spaced pages (12-point font, standard margins) in length.
Possible projects:
- Environmental Periodicals Look carefully at a few issues of a periodical on the environment (e.g. The Amicus Journal, Audubon, E Magazine, Sierra, The Nature Conservancy, etc.) React to the content, advertisements, and the politics implied or overt. Who is the magazine aimed at? What purpose does it serve?
- Extended Reaction Paper Does one of the readings really push your buttons in some fashion? Take a little longer to consider and analyze the piece. React at greater length than the typical reaction papers let you.
- Cyber World Identify, locate, and visit an environmental issues web site. Analyze the quality of the information. What organization created the site? For what purpose? What information is available? What did you learn by visiting the site? What are the sources for the information? How current is the site? What are the biases, if any?
- Read a Book Read a popular book on the environment and review it. I have a bibliography available of some possible titles but feel free come up with your own. Some authors you might consider are: Edward Abbey, Thomas Berry, Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Jane Goodall, Sue Hubbell, Wes Jackson, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, John Muir, Gary Paul Nabhan, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward O. Wilson, Ann Zwinger. Please clear a title before with me before you read/review it.
- Personal Environmental Diary Keep a record for one week of what you notice in the natural world around you. Pay attention to the impact your consumption patterns and actions may be having on the environment. Assess your impact on and involvement with the environment. What do you like about it, what would you change?
- Be Creative Construct your own exercise. Come see me and have it approved.
A Partial and Biased Selection of Books and Readings
Abbey, Edward, Desert Solitaire
Berry, Thomas, The Dream of the Earth
Berry, Wendell, The Gift of the Good Land
Berry, Wendell, The Unsettling of America
Carson, Rachel, The Sea Around Us
Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring
Dillard, Annie, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dillard, Annie, Teaching a Stone to Talk
Eiseley, Loren, The Immense Journey
Goodall, Jane, Reason for Hope : A Spiritual Journey
Hubbell, Sue, A Country Year: Living the Questions
Jackson, Wes, Becoming Native to this Place
Kingsolver, Barbara, The Prodigal Summer
Least Heat-Moon, William, Prairyerth (A Deep Map)
Leopold, Aldo, A Sand County Almanac
Lopez, Barry, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape McKibben, Bill, The Age of Missing Information
Muir, John, My First Summer in the Sierra
Nabhan, Gary Paul, Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story
Nabhan, Gary Paul and Stephen Trimble, The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places
Olson, Sigurd, The Singing Wilderness
Orion Magazine, www.orionsociety.org
Sauer, Peter, Finding Home
Thoreau, Henry David, Walden
Watts, May, Reading the Landscape of America
Williams, Terry Tempest, Refuge: A Unnatural History of Family and Place
Wilson, Edward O., Biophilia
Zwinger, Ann, Run, River, Run: A Naturalist's Journey Down One of the Great Rivers of the American West |
