WRITING NATURE is offered through the Program in Writing & Rhetoric at Stanford University. The course is designed and taught by Carolyn Ross; the primary text is Writing Nature: An Ecological Reader for Writers by Carolyn Ross (St. Martin's Press, 1995).

What place do human beings occupy in nature? To what extent do we conceive of nature as "Other," as separate from us? What does mistreatment of nature have to do with mistreatment of marginalized human groups? Inquiry into relationships among nature, culture, ecology, and social justice provide the thematic content around which writing and research topics in this course revolve.

Course readings and films serve as sources of information and provocation, and as subjects of rhetorical analysis. Within their cultural and historical contexts, we examine the evolving logic of environmental philosophies expressed through biblical and native creation stories, writings of the Transcendentalists, and twentieth century environmental texts by Aldo Leopold and others, applying them to current arguments over land use, bioethics, and environmental justice.

In writing, we move from relatively personal to more public rhetorics. With emphasis on peer review and community-based writing in this class, your readers will include members of the class community as well as members of communities beyond Stanford. In the "Leap of Faith" essay, you will express your environmental philosophy in comparison to others'. In your Community Writing Project, you will be placed with a community non-profit agency whose work relates to our course theme; you will put your research and writing to work in the community, producing a practical document for the agency that you work with. In the culminating research paper, you have the opportunity to articulate a complex argument based on intensive research into a topic of your choice, open within the broad course theme. And in your multimedia oral presentation, the rest of us will hear about your community-based work and learn how you have come to relate it to course readings and class discussions and to ideas and issues inherent in the course theme. The primary text for the class is Writing Nature: An Ecological Reader for Writers.

Assignments Calendar of Readings and Assignment Due Dates Course Text: Illustrated and Annotated Table of Contents Class Newsgroup Conference Schedule

Current Students' Work Examples of Students' Past Work Instructor Online Resources Syllabus