In this course, students will learn a range of techniques and approaches, including memoir and the creative essay, for writing nonfiction about the natural world and the human relationship to it. Traditional nature writing placed humans on one side and nature on the other, often as an untouched, wild environment to be explored and described. In this course we will consider nature writing in an era of ecological loss and high-tech science, when access to land, clean water and air are prominent social justice issues and when it is no longer possible to separate nature from the realm of the human.
In this course, students will learn a range of techniques and approaches, including memoir and the creative essay, for writing nonfiction about the natural world and the human relationship to it. Traditional nature writing placed humans on one side and nature on the other, often as an untouched, wild environment to be explored and described. In this course we will consider nature writing in an era of ecological loss and high-tech science, when access to land, clean water and air are prominent social justice issues and when it is no longer possible to separate nature from the realm of the human.