Classic Nature Literature & Climate Change

This assignment allows you to read a classic nature writer and consider how his or her work is valuable in its own right and might or might not now be relevant to our understanding of nature and the issue of climate change.

After reading, you and your partner will work closely together to write a wikipage about your writer posted on the Our Place in Nature Wiki.  Your page needs to include:

1. The author and book or works you are describing.

2.  An image of the cover of the book or of the text and a link to where the reading can be found or purchased.

3.  An overall description of the writing (at least 300 words).

4.  A description of how you see the relevance of this writer to the present day, including the topic of climate change. (atleast 200 words total).

5.  A set of 5-10 study / discussion questions that would be helpful to students reading the book or material.

This wiki is a public document.  Use your best writing skills, and proofread carefully!  Any text that is not your own writing must be linked back to its source, otherwise you are guilty of plagiarism.

Choose From:

1.  Romantic Poetry: “Expostulation and Reply,” “The Tables Turned,” “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “Tintern Abbey,” “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,” “The World is Too Much With Us,” "My Heart Leaps up When I Behold," "It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free," “Written in London, September, 1802,” "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by Wordsworth

“The Eolian Harp,” “This Lime Tree Bower My Prison,” “Frost at Midnight,” “The Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge

“Ode to a Nightingale,” “To Autumn,” by Keats

“Mont Blanc,” “Ode to the West Wind,” “To a Skylark,” by Shelly

2. The Pioneers by Cooper (1823)

3.  Essays: “Walking” (1862) (http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking1.html), “Civil Disobedience” (1849) (http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html) and “Life Without Principle” (1863) (http://thoreau.eserver.org/lifewout.html) by Thoreau (http://thoreau.eserver.org/lifewout.html)

4. Walden, (http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html) Thoreau (http://thoreau.eserver.org/)

5. The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck (1939)

6. The Sand County Almanac, Leopold, Aldo Leopold (1949)

7. Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey (1968)

8. Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey (1975)

9.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard,  (1974)

10. Turtle Island, Gary Snyder (1974)

11.  Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez (1986)

12.  Solar Storms, Linda Hogan (1997)

13.  Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (1997)

Created by: allen.webb@wmich.edu
Revised Date: 1/16