Balthazor, Ronald
TR 3 :30 PM
Park Hall 0144
American Environmental Literature: What are Trees Telling Us?
Systems-thinking is a lens that allows us to recognize interconnections, complexity, and feedback loops, which can be crucial tools for understanding texts. This course will focus on environmental literature, particularly tree-focused texts, to cultivate systems-thinking skills and will focus on systems thinking to come to a new awareness of the readings. Throughout the course, we will connect ecological subjects with the form and organization of texts, including nonfiction, memoir, novel, and poem. We will use the tools, vocabulary, and framings proposed in systems-thinking to find novel meanings and perspectives that emerge from the text when viewed as a system.
Mostly, though, we will strive to hear what the trees are telling us.
Primary Texts (you are welcome to get electronic or paper versions):
We will read a wide array of related short pieces that will be delivered electronically through the eLC.