Handouts, lecture notes, and additional readings will be posted below as needed.

In some cases, access to course materials will require that you enter your username and password for the course, which will be given out in class. If you forget these, just email me. In other cases, you may be asked to enter your X.500 username and password, which are your standard University Internet ID and password.

A PDF version of the syllabus may be downloaded here.

Note that this schedule is tentative and subject to change. The dates and/or locations of field trips may change, and readings may be altered or added as the semester unfolds.

Sept. 11: Sustainability, Narratives, and the Urban Environment

• The first and second chapters from Andres R. Edwards's survey of sustainability efforts around the world, The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift (New Society Publishers, 2005)
  • "Introduction: Portrait of the Sustainability Revolution" and "Chapter 1: The Birth of Sustainability"
• An exchange on the meaning and usefulness of the term "sustainability," from Conservation Biology 19.1 (Feb. 2005)
  • Julianne Lutz Newton and Eric T. Freyfogle, "Sustainability: A Dissent"
    
  • David Ehrenfeld, "Sustainability: Living with the Imperfections"
    
  • Robert Paehlke, "Sustainability as a Bridging Concept"
    
  • Christine Padoch and Robin R. Sears, "Conserving Concepts: in Praise of Sustainability"
    
  • Julianne Lutz Newton and Eric T. Freyfogle, "All About Nature"
• Jenny Price's provocative two-part essay on urban nature writing, from The Believer
  • "Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A." (Part 1)
  • "Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A." (Part 2)
• Bruce Braun's review article on urban environmental studies, from Progress in Human Geography 29.5 (2005)
  • "Environmental issues: writing a more-than-human urban geography"

Sept. 19: The "Narrative Turn" Meets the "Ethical Turn"

• Martin Kreiswirth's two overviews of the "narrative turn"
  • "Trusting the Tale: The Narrativist Turn in the Human Sciences," New Literary History 23.3 (Summer 1992)
  • "Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences," from Poetics Today 21.2 (Summer 2000)
• Roger J. H. King's article on narrative and environmental ethics, from Ethics and the Environment 4.1 (1999)
  • "Narrative, Imagination, and the Search for Intelligibility in Environmental Ethics"
• James Jakob Liszka's analysis of Leopold's narrative ethics, from Ethics and the Environment 8.2 (2003)
  • "The Narrative Ethics of Leopold's Sand County Almanac"
• A few early chapters of The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge, 2002), in which H. Porter Abbott defines narrative and surveys its borders and rhetoric
  • "Chapter 2: Defining Narrative," "Chapter 3: The Borders of Narrative," and "Chapter 4: The Rhetoric of Narrative"

Sept. 25: Narrative and Conservation Advocacy

• Helen Whybrow, ed., The Story Handbook: A Primer on Language and Storytelling for Land Conservationists (Trust for Public Land, 2003)
• William Cronon, "The Riddle of the Apostle Islands," Orion (May/June 2003)
• Sylvia Bowerbank, "Telling Stories about Places: Local Knowledge and Narratives Can Improve Decisions about the Environment," Alternatives Journal 23.1 (1997)
• Alan Holland and John O'Neill, "Yew Trees, Butterflies, Rotting Boots and Washing Lines: The Importance of Narrative," Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice, ed. Andrew Light and Avner de-Shalit (MIT Press, 2003)
• Holly Doremus, "The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse," Washington & Lee Law Review 57 (Winter 2000)

Oct. 2: Narrative and Environmental Values

• Terre Satterfield and Scott Slovic, eds., What's Nature Worth? Narrative Expressions of Environmental Values (Utah, 2004)
• Scott Slovic, "There's Something about Your Voice I Cannot Hear: Environmental Literature, Public Policy and Ecocriticism," Southerly (June 2004)
• Scott Slovic, "Love is Never Abstract: Bioregionalism, Narrative Discourse and the Value of Nature," Watershed (Spring & Summer 2005)

Oct. 9: Landscape as Narrative

• Anne Whiston Spirn, "Dwelling and Tongue: The Language of Landscape," The Language of Landscape (Yale, 1998)
• Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton, "Chapter One: Beginning," Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories (Wiley, 1998)
• Kent C. Ryden, "Tuttle Road: Landscape as Environmental Text," The Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education, ed. Melody Graulich and Paul Crumbley (Utah State, 2005)
• Kevin M. Anderson, "Marginal Nature: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Nature in the Margins of the Urban Landscape"

Oct. 16: Narrative Analysis in Environmental Studies

• History: William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," Journal of American History 78 (1992)
• Ecology: Debra Journet, "Ecological Theories as Cultural Narratives: F. E. Clements's and H. A. Gleason's 'Stories' of Community Succession," Written Communication 8.4 (Oct. 1991)
• Sociology: Alison Hope Alkon, "Place, Stories, and Consequences: Heritage Narratives and the Control of Erosion on Lake County, California, Vineyards," Organization and Environment 17.2 (2004)
• Communication Studies: James Shanahan, Lisa P. Elstring, and Katherine McComas, "Using Narratives to Think About Environmental Attitude and Behavior: An Exploratory Study," Society & Natural Resources 12 (1999)
• DUE: Mid-term Paper

Oct. 23: Sustainable Narratives: Narrating Reinhabitation

• John Tallmadge, The Cincinnati Arch: Learning from Nature in the City (Georgia, 2004)

Oct. 30: Field Trip: 1,000 Friends of Minnesota

• Voices for the City: Minnesotans Writing about the Cities and Towns They Love (1000 Friends of Minnesota, 2003)
• DUE: Final Project Proposal

Nov. 6: Local Food: Telling Stories from Farm to Table

• Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2006)

Nov. 13: Field Trip: Whole Foods vs. Local Co-op

Nov. 20: Zoos and Lawns: Performing Narrative

• Zoos
  • Eugene Hargrove, "The Role of Zoos in the Twenty-first Century," Ethics on the Ark: Zoos, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation (Smithsonian, 1995)
  • Alan Beardsworth and Alan Bryman, "The Wild Animal in Late Modernity: The Case of the Disneyization of Zoos," Tourist Studies 1.1 (2001)
  • Maria Elena Baca, "Lush Life," Star Tribune November 16, 2006
• Lawns
  • Robert Feagan and Michael Ripmeester, "Reading Private Green Space: Competing Geographic Identities at the Level of the Lawn ," Philosophy and Geography 4.1 (2001)
  • L. Anders Sandberg and Jennifer Foster, "Challenging Lawn and Order: Environmental Discourse and Lawn Care Reform in Canada," Environmental Politics 14.4 (2005)
  • Patricia Leigh Brown, "Cuttings: Redefining American Beauty, by the Yard," New York Times, July 13, 2006 (Edible Estates Web Site)
• Edens Lost and Found: How Ordinary Citizens are Restoring Our Great American Cities

Nov. 27: Field Trip: Como Neighborhood and Como Zoo

Dec. 4: Environmental Justice: Reframing Risk as Injustice

• An article by Julian Agyeman, Robert D. Bullard, and Bob Evans addressing the argument of their book, Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003)
  • "Exploring the nexus: bringing together sustainability, environmental justice and equity," Space and Polity 6.1 (2002)
• Two articles by Phaedra C. Pezzullo on "toxic tours" as cultural performances and reframing environmental justice stories
  • "Touring 'Cancer Alley,' Louisiana: Performances of Community and Memory for Environmental Justice," Text and Performance Quarterly 23.3 (July 2003)
  • "Performing Critical Interruptions: Stories, Rhetorical Invention, and the Environmental Justice Movement," Western Journal of Communication 65:1 (Winter 2001)
• Robert Benford's criticism of the environmental justice movement as being more focused on "justice" than the "environment," from Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement, ed. David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle (MIT, 2005)
  • "The Half-Life of the Environmental Justice Frame: Innovation, Diffusion, and Stagnantion"

Dec. 11: Field Trip: Phillips Eco-Enterprise Center

• Due: Final Project