Professor Julia 
Evergreen Keefer
Major Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Writers
New York University
Summer 2008
How do humans write about their environment?
How does geography mold politics, war, racism, and cultural evolution?
How does personification of rocks, trees, seas, and streams affect rhetorical devices and reader-response criticism?
How can a desert, river or a mountain change a story?
How do human versus natural disasters impact the dramatic structure and narrative sequencing? 
Reading List:
Forest, Farms, and Rivers
The Heart of Darkness and Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
How to Survive as an Adjunct Professor by Wrestling by Julia Keefer
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Snow, 
Rocks and Mountains
The Snows
of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow and Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Gardens
Garden in the Dunes and (Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit) by Leslie Marmon Silko
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Seas
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
The Alexandrian Quartet by Laurence Durrell (You can just read one unless this is your project)
Deserts
The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
God Dies by the Nile by Nawal el Saadawi
Voices from the Other World (required) and Three Novels of Ancient Egypt (optional) by Naguib Mahfouz
Optional reference books: The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram and Norton's Anthology of Nature Writing
Note that the purpose of the course is to introduce you to a vast buffet of global literature, provoke interesting debate and discussion, sharpen your tools of close reading and critical analysis, and then let you focus on only 3-4 works of your choice for your special project.
May 12: Introduction to course, reading list, theme, criticism, and elements of close textual analysis.
May 19: Rivers, Trees, and Jungles. Discuss the Heart of Darkness. Read Gordimer and Keefer.
September 24: Discuss The Conservationist by Gordimer and how nature and the Hudson River influence Keefer's book. Lecture on Narrative Styles. Read Hemingway and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
October 1 : Compare Things Fall Apart to The Conservationist and The Heart of Darkness. Snow, Rocks, and Mountains.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Read Pamuk.
October 8: Discuss Snow and Istanbul. Lecture on Pamuk. Read Proust and Silko.
October 15: Gardens: Civilized and Natural. Discuss Gardens in the Dunes and Swann's Way. Read Black Water.
October 22: Midterm. Close Textual Analysis and Improvised Nature Writing due. Presentations, discussion, and lecture.Discuss Black Water. Read Woolf.
October 29: Seas and Poisonous Waters. Discuss The Waves. Read Coelho.
November 5: Deserts: Discuss The Alchemist.
Lecture on Ordinary/Special World Campbell mythology journey. Read Mahfouz.
November 12: Three Novels of Ancient Eygpt and Voices from the Other World. Lecture on Mahfouz. Read El Saadawi.
November 17: God Dies by the Nile. Read The Alexandrian Quartet.
December 3: Nature films and improvisational writing. Rough drafts of final due. Discuss The Alexandrian Quartet.
December 10: Nature films and improvisational writing.
December 17: Final papers due. Global Food Fest and Nature Appreciation Party.
Student Papers
Natural Conquest by Phan L. Xi
Mother, Lover, Whore? by DaMond Taylor
The belief that thinking beings are part of a vast physical order can awaken a kind
of awe, wonder, even natural piety. The reflection which moves us is that thought, 
feeling, moral aspirations, all the intellectual and spiritual heights of human
achievement, emerge out of the depths of a vast physical universe which is itself,
over most of its measureless extent, lifeless, utterly insensitive to our purposes,
pursuing its path by inexorable necessity. The awe is awakened partly by the
tremendous power of this world which overshadows us --we sense our utter
fragility as thinking reeds, in Pascal's phrase; but we also feel it before the
extraordinary fact that out of this vast blind silence, thought, vision, speech can
evolve. (Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity,
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989, p. 347)
No other nation equaled the American people in their paradoxical ability to
devastate the natural world and at the same time mourn its passing. (Arthur A.
Ekirch, Jr. Man and Nature in America, New York: Columbia UP, 1963, p. 189)
Human beings simply cannot go on as they are now going, exhausting the earth's
resources, altering the composition of the earth's atmosphere, depleting the numbers
and varieties of other species upon whose survival we, in the end, depend. It is not
simply wrong, it is a piece of stupidity on the grandest scale for us to assume that
we can simply take over the earth as though it were part farm, part park, part zoo,
and domesticate it, and still survive as a species. Up until quite recently we firmly
believed that we could do just this, and we regarded the prospect as man's natural
destiny. (Lewis Thomas, The Fragile Species, New York: Collier/Macmillan, 1992:
122.)
This course will focus on the evolution of American attitudes toward nature, especially as
they have been both reflected in and influenced by writers from Thoreau to the present. Among the
topics to be considered will be the recognition of mountains and deserts as sublime landscapes; the
significance of hunting; and the growing prominence of Native American, Arabic, and Asian natural
values within American literature in English. Our discussions of several authors will be
complemented by considerations of closely associated painters and photographers.
This class is about relationships--about the struggle to create just, decent relationships with
a place and with the people in that place. The readings for this course aren't primarily descriptions
of nature. Instead, they are stories about power and place--about family, home, and community
defined in the broadest senses, to include biotic as well as human connections. 
Today--perhaps more than ever before in our history--we are striving to understand
our relationship to the natural world. As our population continues to grow
exponentially, and pollution, resource depletion and extinction intensify, we
question whether we are apart from or a part of nature, whether we are free to use
and manipulate our environment without consequence, or whether we must show
more respect for it.
Environmental literature is a form of writing that attempts to reconcile these
discrepancies for us. This emerging body of literature is playing an important role
in overcoming the alienation many people feel toward science and science writing.
Modern natural history writers bridge the differences between science and art,
eloquently interpreting the complex web of interconnections that link us to our
environment. At different times and to different degrees, they inform, persuade,
describe, inspire, and entertain us. Their writing may take the form of political
activism, popularized science, adventure story, or philosophical meditation.
In this course, we will read and study historical and current examples of
environmental literature, and will practice writing, with particular attention to
understanding the varied forms and aims of environmental writing. Classes will be
devoted to discussions about the readings, writing exercises and readings from
works in progress.
This semester we'll read literature that asks 'Why humans have somewhere along their way made a
wrong turn and developed a destructive relationship with the non-human world of nature. How
have humans become so unnatural as to be deliberately heedless and exploitive of their physical
environment and each other to the point, some say, of crossing over the line from biophilia to
necrophilia?'
The books and poems ask how a human knows when sickness has set in. What is healthy?
Discussing the books, we'll trace relationships between physical sickness, psychological sickness,
and spiritual sickness. What happens when a culture loses belief in God or trivializes God into a
manageable deity? We'll examine the human tendency to glorify humans (believing that humans are
the ones who create meaning).
We'll talk about beliefs, values, and attitudes that cause sickness. These include such obvious
visible things such as greed and selfishness, rampant consumerism, and mindless materialism.
Some environmentalists lump these bad habits together into the mindset ("dominant Western
paradigm") that sees the world divided up into me and them, inner and outer, objective and
subjective. We'll question this simplification, as well as others that say such a view is caused by
religious "domination" terminology. We'll seek no scapegoats. Maybe the real cause is deeper--
spiritual alienation?
We'll get to know well the anthropocentric mindset that places humans at the top of the heap,
Justified in doing what they want because nature is "there for the taking." We'll also ask whether
nature is morally neutral, and what this means. Are humans morally neutral, for instance, in their
scientific dealings with the physical world? Do we have moral obligations toward the unborn or
toward the non-human world or toward the future? Are we or are we not our brother's keeper- -
either of nature or each other? Do we humans just pay lip-service to morality? Is It true that the
platitude "Don't do anything to hurt anyone else" really means "don't do anything you don't want
to do"? We'll examine our society's dominant ethical position--ethical relativism-- that allows all of
us to get away with whatever we want. Is this because it's based on human values alone? What
other ethical positions are there? How do we know when they work and when they fail? All of this
questioning will spring from the literature; we won't reinvent the wheel but see what better minds
than ours have thought and felt. We'll examine alternative ways of relating to the natural world
and each other based on respect and even reverence for life. We'll resist romantic notions of
finding these ideals perfectly realized in primitive or indigenous cultures. If we humans really are
embedded in the spiritual world, as we are in the physical world, then we'll ask what we're
supposed to do here. We'll examine the futility of just telling people to be more responsible, more
environmentally aware, or more spiritual-- plus the dangers of forcing environmentalism, morality,
or spirituality on people.
We'll start by asking one of the hardest questions of all- does the wild concern us? We say
we have all the right answers to this one: "in wildness is preservation of the world." But think
again: eagles, spiders, and tigers don't know or exhibit such human realities as beauty, altruism,
and responsibility. If these things are meaningless in the wild, then why should they be
meaningful for us? Does the wild really concern us?
Nature writing addresses an area where science, culture, art, and perception
join. Understandings of our views of environment are gleaned from many
perspectives, including the scientific, the cultural, the aesthetic, and the personal
emotional realms. Arguably some of the finest writing of this century has
concentrated upon environmental themes. The genre know as nature writing is
incredibly rich and varied. In this course we are going to examine and savor a
sampling of this literature.
Extended List
American
Late Harvest: Rural American Writing . Ed. David R. Pichaske. Paragon House, 1991.
Wendell Berry. The Memory of Old Jack . HBJ, 1974.
Mary Oliver. American Primitive . Little Brown, 1983.
Annie Dillard. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . Harper Perennial, 1974.
Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony. Penguin, 1977.
Gary Snyder. Turtle Island. New Directions, 1974.
Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia
Scott Slovic and Terrell Dixon, Being in
the World
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Ballantine)
Barry Lopez, Crossing Open Ground (Random House)
Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Houghton
Mifflin)
Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put (Beacon)
Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (North Point)
Walt Whitman: "Song of Myself" and other Leaves of Grass such as
"Inscriptions", "Starting from Paumanok"
Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm, Ecocriticism Reader
Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind
Thoreau, Henry David. Walking and Walden
Muir, John. The Mountains of California
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac
Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire
Oliver, Mary. New and Selected Poems
Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems 1957-1982
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and
the Formation of Culture
Garb, Yaakov Jerome. "Perspective or Escape? Ecofeminist Musings on
Contemporary Earth Imagery." Reweaving the World: The Emergence of
Ecofeminism. Ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein
Garber, Frederick. Thoreau's Fable of Inscribing
Griffin, Susan. "A Collaborative Intelligence." The Eros of Everyday Life:
Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society
Meinig, D. W. "The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene." The Interpretation
of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. Ed. D. W. Meinig
Ryden, Kent C. "Of Maps and Minds: The Invisible Landscape." Mapping the
Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place.
H. D. Thoreau, Walden (Penguin)
John Muir, The Mountains of California (Penguin)
Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain (Penguin)
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford)
William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses (Random House)
Gary Snyder, Turtle Island (New Directions)
A. R. Ammons, Selected Poems (Norton)
Mary Oliver, House of Light (Beacon)
John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)
H. St. J. de Crevecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer (1782)
Lewis & Clark, Journals (1804-1806)
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968)
John McPhee, The Control of Nature (1989)
Edward Abbey, The Monkeywrench Gang (1975)
Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge 1991)
Anne Matthews, Where the Buffalo Roam (1992)
Wendell Berry, A Place on Earth (1983)
The Norton Book of Nature Writing (Finch & Elder, Norton, 1990)
White Silk and Black Tar (Spencer, Bergamont Books, 1990)
Alaska Quarterly Review: Alaska Native writers
(Vol. 4, No. 3 & 4)
Mississippi Solo (Harris, Harper & Row,)
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Williams,)
Lorraine Anderson (ed.), Sisters of the Earth
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Craig Lesley, Winterkill
Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge
Crevecoeur. Letters from an American Farmer, 1782; Sketches of Eighteenth
Century America: More Letters from an American Farmer. Ed. Albert E.
Stone. New York: Penguin, 1981.
Henry David Thoreau. The Natural History Essays.
Sarah Orne Jewett. Country of the Pointed Firs.
Willa Cather. Death Comes for the Archbishop.
William Faulkner. Go Down, Moses.
Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac.
Loren Eiseley. The Immense Journey.
Rachel Carson. Silent Spring.
Wendell Berry. Home Economics.
Lewis Thomas. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher.
This Incomparable Land . Thomas Lyon, ed. Penguin
A Sand County Almanac . Aldo Leopold. Ballantine.
[Walden . Henry David Thoreau.
Lyon, Thomas J. (Ed.) - This Incomperable Lande
Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown and Other Stories
Leopold - A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River
London - The Call of the Wild
Chekhov - The Cherry Orchard
(Faulkner) Six Great Modern Novels
Nelson - Primis: Literature and the Environment
The Pastoral Tradition
"To Sir Robert Wroth" (Ben Jonson)
"The Praises of a Countrie Life" (Jonson)
"To Penshurst" (Jonson)
Passage in Letters from an American Farmer
(Crevecoeur)
"Agrarian Values in an Urban Society: The
Ruhr Country" Virginia Forests , Winter 1991
Film: Land
Film: The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
The Land Ethic
A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation
(Aldo Leopold)
"An Indian at the Burial-place of His Fathers"
( W. C. Bryant)
"The Ohio," The Ornithological Biography
(J. J. Audubon)
"The Rhodora" (R. W. Emerson)
"Apparently with No Surprise" (E. Dickinson)
January 26 Stewardship
Film: Timber on the Move
Virginia Wildlife (Stewards of the Land: A Special
Edition), December 1992
"Inscription for an Entrance to a Wood" (Bryant)
"The Forest Theatre Presents 'Trees Don't Live Forever,'"
Virginia Forests , Fall 1994
Moss Always Grows on the North Side of Trees: Forestry
and Wildlife Myths (VDF)
"Three Models of Forest Management in the Pacific
Northwest," Virginia Forests , Winter 1994
Film: Ready for Harvest and Forests: A Growing Concern
Literature, Art and the Land
Walden (H. D. Thoreau)
Walden
Explication by Small Groups
"The Snow-Storm" (R. W. Emerson)
"Snowflakes" (H. W. Longfellow)
"The April Snow" (Jones Very)
"To a Locomotive in Winter" (Walt Whitman)
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)
The Holy Season: Walking in the Wild (Al Stewart)
"The Holy Season," "Under the Sycamore Leaf"
"Insured," "Sunday Morning Deer," "Arbutus,"
"Deptford Pinks," "The Deer Meadow," "A
Winter Ode," "Winter Fox," "Dulcimer Song,"
"Lesson in Biology,""The New Mule," "Into My
Own"
Explication by Small Groups
"The Message"
"The Letter"
"The Cattle in Their Summer Pastures"
"Morning of Snow"
"In the Kingdom at Yellow Mountain"
"Passage"
"Seasonal"
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard)
Reading the Landscape
A Gathering of Old Men (Ernest Gaines)
Deliverance (James Dickey)
Film: Deliverance
Robert Frost's poems
British
Coleridge
Keats
Shelley
Wordsworth
D.H.Lawrence
French
Poetry by Lamartine
La Nouvelle Heloise by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Arabic
The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jalloun
Oceans
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Rivers
Thames River: Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Nile: Adrift on the Nile by Naguib Mahfouz
Hudson River: How to Survive as an Adjunct Professor by Julia Keefer
Seine (Paris):
Colorado River:
Africa: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Mountains
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Deserts
Forests, Jungles, Trees