Engl 3050 Literature and the Environment, Spring 2020

---

[ Policies ] [ Calendar ] [ Online Readings ]

---

Online Readings
last update: January 14, 2020

Notes:

- Here are various texts and sites that will interest students in this class.

- These are not necessarily assigned readings. For week-by-week reading assignments, see "Calendar," above.

- I will update this site periodically throughout the semester. If you have any suggestions for additional links, please send me an email. -- KOD, instructor --odonnell@etsu.edu

I. Book Reviews

- "Fighting Deforestation and Capitalism: How a Woman’s Refusal to Leave a Tree Helped Preserve the Redwoods" [review of The Legacy of Luna, by Julia Butterfly Hill, 2000]. By Amanda Nicholson. Written for Engl 3050 Lit & Environment, Spring 2015.

- "Book World: Barbara Kingsolver’s novel approach in ‘Flight Behavior’." By Ron Charles. The Washington Post, October 30, 2012.

- "The Butterfly Effect: ‘Flight Behavior,’ by Barbara Kingsolver." By Dominique Browning. The New York Times, Sunday Book Review, November 9, 2012.

www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/books/review/flight-behavior-by-barbara-kingsolver.html

- "Couple Creates an Empire by Felling Trees and Anyone in Their Way" [review of Serena]. By Janet Maslin, The New York Times, October 5, 2008. www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06masl.html

- "The Heroes of This Novel Are Centuries Old and 300 Feet Tall" [review of The Overstory by Richard Powers]. By Barbara Kingsolver. New York Times Book Review, April 9, 2018. (Click here for a cached version.)

- "The Homer of the Ants" [review of Anthill: A Novel, by E. O. Wilson]. By Margaret Atwood. The New York Review of Books 57, 6 (April 8, 2010). www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/08/the-homer-of-the-ants/

- "The Man Who Thinks Trees Talk to Each Other" [review of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben]. The Guardian [Manchester UK], September 12, 2016. www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/12/peter-wohlleben-man-who-believes-trees-talk-to-each-other

- "Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower." [Review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature.] By David Graber. The Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1989. articles.latimes.com/1989-10-22/books/bk-726_1_bill-mckibben

- "The Sky is Melting" [review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature]. By Nicholas Wade. The New York Times, October 8, 1989. www.nytimes.com/1989/10/08/books/the-sky-is-melting.html

- "The Tragedy of the American Wolf, Up Close; Plus two more books we're reading this month" [review of American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee]. By Christopher Keyes. Outside Magazine Online, Oct 30, 2017. www.outsideonline.com/2255766/leader-pack

- "With Chesapeake Bay waters rising, Tangier Island’s future is sinking" [review of Chesapeake Requiem]. By Steve Ginsberg. The Washington Post, August 10, 2018. (Click here for a cached version.)

II. Recent Nonfiction

- "Chronicling the End Times on Tangier Island." Story by Mickie Meinhardt, photographs by Gunner Hughes. The Bitter Southerner, December 4, 2018.

- "The Insect Apocalypse is Here." By Brooke Jarvis. The New York Times Magazine, November 27, 2018. (Click here for a cached version.)

- "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change." By Nathaniel Rich. Photographs and Videos by George Steinmetz. The New York Times Magazine, August 1, 2018.

- "Trump administration resists global climate efforts at home and overseas." By David Nakamura and Darryl Fears. The Washington Post, December 9, 2018.

III. Poetry--Text and Performance

- Sadness and Celebration: ETSU students read poems and comment. Lit & Environment class, Kevin O'Donnell, instructor; April 2019. Youtube playlist, 10 videos.

- "Poetry and the Environment: Recent poetic approaches to the natural world and ecology [COLLECTION]". The Poetry Foundation, 2019. www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/146462/poetry-and-the-environment

- "Spring Poems: Classic and contemporary poems to celebrate the advent of spring [COLLECTION]". The Poetry Foundation, 2019. www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/137291/spring-poems

- "Listen to Poetry: Poetry Out Loud -- 'This audio guide contains distinguished actors and poets reading and speaking about poetry. Listen to these tracks to help you or your students master the art of recitation.'" 34 different performances, ranging from one to three minutes. Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, 2019. www.poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/listen-to-poetry

Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" radio spots -- three examples:

- Writer's Almanac, Feb 12, 2016. Jesse Graves, "AM Radio". Running time: 5:00. www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=7484.html

- Writer's Almanac, Apr 7, 2017. Wordsworth, "It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free". Running time: 5:00. www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=9782.html

- Writer's Almanac, Sep 17, 2017. Mary Oliver, "Morning in a New Land." Running time: 5:00. www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=10677.html

IV. Various Articles Related to Course Texts

- "Australia Shows Us the Road to Hell: The political reaction is scarier than the fires." By Paul Krugman. The New York Times, January 9, 2020.

- "How Rupert Murdoch Is Influencing Australia’s Bushfire Debate: Critics see a concerted effort to shift blame, protect conservative leaders and divert attention from climate change." By Damien Cave. The New York Times, January 8, 2020.

- "How Trump’s war on science is borrowing from the tobacco industry playbook: Calls for transparency at the EPA are a smokescreen." By David Merritt Johns and Karen Levy. The Washington Post, Dec. 13, 2019. Click here for a cached version.

- "How Climate Change Deniers Rise to the Top in Google Searches." By Hiroko Tabuchi. The New York Times, Dec. 29, 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/climate/google-search-climate-change.html

- "Meddling With Monarchs." By Margaret Renkl. The New York Times, October 5, 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/monarch-butterfly-migration-extinction.html

- "Carolina Panthers." By Dan Lazar, Director of Education, Western North Carolina Nature. 2010. www.wildwnc.org/education/naturalists-notes/carolina-panthers

- "Global Warming and Flowering Times in Thoreau's Concord: A Community Perspective." Abraham J. Miller-Rushing and Richard B. Primack. Ecology 89, 2 (February 2008): p332-341. www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/07-0068.1

- Julia Butterfly Hill profile on NBC Dateline News Magazine, Feb 14, 1999 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFRdy7o3DPE&feature=related

- "Margaret Atwood: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, 50 years on." By Margaret Atwood. The Guardian [Manchester, England]. Friday, December 7, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/07/why-rachel-carson-is-a-saint

- "Ron Rash Feature." Ten poems by Rash. Story South dot com, Summer 2002. www.storysouth.com/summer2002/rashfeaturepoems.html. Accessed January 2018.

- "Serena: The Story Behind the Book" [Ron Rash's comments on how he wrote the book, posted at the site of his literary agent; no date]. http://www.rusoffagency.com/authors/rash_r/serenat/behind_serena.htm

- "Wendell Berry pulling his personal papers from UK: Writer protesting coal's influence." By Cheryl Truman. The Lexington Herald Leader, June 23, 2010. www.kentucky.com/2010/06/23/1319383/wendell-berry-pulling-his-personal.html

V. Environmental Writing--Online Periodicals

- Grist.org. Environmental journalism.

- Orion Magazine. One of America's premier venues for nature writing and environmental policy essays.

VI. Authors Online

- Horace Kephart: Revealing an Enigma. Hunter Library Special Collections and the Mountain Heritage Center, Western Carolina University. www.wcu.edu/library/digitalcoll/kephart/

- "John Muir Writings" at Yosemite Online, an unofficial Yosemite website. www.yosemite.ca.us/john_muir_writings/

- "The John Muir Exhibit," at sierraclub.org. vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/default.aspx

- The Canons of the Colorado (first paper: Down the Green River), by John Wesley Powell, Scribner's Monthly 9, 3 (January 1875): 293-311

- The Canons of the Colorado (second paper), by John Wesley Powell, Scribner's Monthly 9, 4 (February 1875): 394-409

VII. Materials to Use in Class

- B. Kingsolver, Flight Behavior, discussion questions. At "lit lovers" web site: www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/8988-flight-behavior-kingsolver?start=3