Are you a 3rd, 4th year, or grad student?
Take Special Topics/Guided Studies CONS 449 – The Literature of Forests, Environment, and Place – in January of 2025!
Have you ever wanted to investigate a place or species more deeply?
Take Special Topics/Guided Studies CONS 449 – The Literature of Forests, Environment, and Place – in January of 2025!
Have you ever wanted literature to inspire these investigations?
Take Special Topics/Guided Studies CONS 449 – The Literature of Forests, Environment, and Place – in January of 2025!
Have you ever wanted to read (short fiction, poetry, essays, and digital texts) more widely on forests, environment, place, and home?
Take Special Topics/Guided Studies CONS 449 – The Literature of Forests, Environment, and Place – in January of 2025!
Have you ever wanted to write about the historical, cultural, Indigenous, linguistic/etymological, literary, colonial, patriarchal, economic, mythological, experiential/personal, political, theoretical, systemic, ecocritical, and/or storied dimensions of a place or species?
Take Special Topics/Guided Studies CONS 449 – The Literature of Forests, Environment, and Place – in January of 2025!
Are you intrigued by any of THESE epigraphs?
Jake had always mistrusted the expression “knowing your roots.” As though roots by their definition are knowable. Any dendrologist can tell you that the roots of a mature Douglas fir forest spread for miles. That they’re dark and intertwining, tangled and twisted, and impossible to map. That they often fuse together, and even communicate, secretly sharing nutrients and chemical weapons among themselves. So the truth is that there exist no clear distinction between on tree and another. And their roots are anything but knowable. (Greenwood, Michael Christie)
As a woman, my everyday urban experiences are deeply gendered. My gender identity shapes how I move through the city, how I live my life day-to-day, and the choices available to me. My gender is more than my body, but my body is the site of my lived experiences, where my identity, history, and spaces I’ve lived in meet and interact and write themselves on my flesh. This is the space that I write from. It’s the space where my experiences lead me to ask, “Why doesn’t my stroller fit on the streetcar?” “Why do I have to walk an extra half mile home because the shortcut is too dangerous?” […] These aren’t just personal questions. They start to get at the heart of why and how cities keep women “in their place.” (Feminist City: A Field Guide, Leslie Kern)
A forest is language; accumulated years. (Eucalyptus, Murray Bail)
Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees. (The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan)
The stories of buffalo and salamanders belong to the land, but scientist are one of their translators and carry a large responsibility for conveying their stories to the world. And yet scientist mostly convey these stories in a language that excludes readers. Conventions for efficiency and precision make reading scientific papers very difficult for the rest of the world, and if the truth be known, for us as well. This has serious consequences for public dialogue about the environment and therefore for real democracy, especially the democracy of species. For what good is knowing, unless it is coupled with caring? Science can give us knowing, but caring comes from someplace else. (People of Corn, People of Light, Robin Wall Kimmerer)
A place is a story happening many times. (Places & Stories, Kim Stafford)
To live in a storied world is to know that… each land, each valley, each wild community of plants and animals and soils has it particular style of intelligence… Each ecology has its own psyche and the local people buy into their imaginations, to the psyche of their place, by letting the land dream its tales through them. (The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram)
Is it possible to imagine being named by a place? And – were we to contemplate such a thing – how would we come to merit that honour? (Otherwise than Place, Don McKay)
Held by the Land was one of many title options. This one rang true. What does it mean to be held? To me this means being seen, recognized, supported, allowed just to be. Being held also means being offered what you may need in a particular time, whether that be space, nourishment, health, connection, challenge, or reflection. The land can hold us, and our needs, as humans on this earth. How does the land hold someone? (Held by the Land, Leigh Joseph)
The truth about stories is that that’s all we are. (The Truth About Stories, Thomas King)
Take Special Topics/Guided Studies CONS 449 – The Literature of Forests, Environment, and Place – in January of 2025!
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