Spring 2004 Schedule

This is a course about nature writing or ecoliterature, an ancient literary genre that has achieved new prominence among critics, teachers, writers and readers. The course balances humanities and science, art and nature, reading and writing, talking and walking.

Subject matter includes great works of environmental literature and their traditions, the geography and ecology of Cal Poly's ten thousand acres, and practical methods of observation and expression.

Texts include primary and secondary works of Ecoliterature as well as sections of the Cal Poly Land Website on the natural history of this place. You are required to purchase two books available at El Corral Bookstore: Cal Poly Land: A Field Guide and The Spirit of the Valley, by Cal Poly alumna, Baxter Troutman, a book written as an M. A. thesis in Biological Sciences.

Writing assignments include journals, copyings and imitations of primary texts, a critical analysis of nature writing and two personal ecoliterary essays, one primarily descriptive and explanatory, the other more reflective and persuasive.

The class meets on Tuesday and Thursday late afternoons during Spring Quarter. The Tuesday class takes place indoors, the Thursday class includes a walk to an appropriate site on Cal Poly Land.

The Tuesday class includes lectures about the major writers studied and their historical and cultural context, including relevant literary and scientific traditions of nature writing. It also includes analysis of the artistry that heightens enjoyment of their work and provides models for student work. Each Tuesday class will contain discussion of ethical, social, and scientific controversies touched upon in the assigned readings.

The Thursday class involves excursions by foot or van to the kinds of landscapes on the Cal Poly campus represented and responded to in the literary texts. These include grassland, creeks and ponds, and mountaintops. Like the readings, each week's excursion emphasizes a distinct topic in natural history like climate, geology, or archaeology, and a distinct ecological system or community like chapparel, marsh or oak woodland. Information about these specific places will be provided by the appropriate section of Cal Poly Land: A Field Guide and the Cal Poly Land website. In addition to talks at stopping points by the instructor and guest lecturers, students will divide into small groups and share their "readings" of landscape features with one another.