Storied Landscapes: 21st-Century Nature Writing — Spring 2018

What stories do our landscapes tell us? And how have those places themselves been transformed as a consequence of climate change, digital spaces, and biotechnology? This is why it’s so important, while acknowledging a long tradition of writing about nature, to think and write about our world right now. How we experience the environment owes a lot to inherited narratives. Writing about reconfigured ecologies—all their terrors and beauties—helps us to inhabit storied landscapes. Students in this course will join the work of 21st-century nature writing. Working in teams, they’ll map out local places through archival research, fieldwork, and reflective writing. They’ll expand the toolbox of nature writing via digital tools and articulate their own visions of storied landscapes to a wider audience.