My master plan is to double major in ENVS and English. I am intrigued by the connections between literature and our mindsets about “environmental issues” and how these can evolve over time. For instance, my ENVS 160 synthesis project focused on the Grand Coulee Dam and the rhetoric that transformed this proposed project into the “Eighth Wonder of the World” in the 1930s and 1940s. I think this historical perspective can be informed greatly by language, stories, poems, and songs, as was this perspective on Grand Coulee.
Rivers and watershed geography in the context of landscape, recreation, and historical transformation are aspects of “the environment” that particularly compel me. I come from the state with the most miles of river in the continental USA, a legacy that celebrates the wild & scenic character of rivers. Certainly a place, a “situated context,” that seems relevant to me, my heritage, and academic endeavors is the Western United States. “The West” has such a steep mythology attached to it. It is the frontier, the promised land, the best America has to offer. It is also the arena of genocide, of suburban sprawl, of Depression catastrophe, and certainly debilitating drought.
Water in the West- it seems almost biblical. And there is a concentration, or area of interest in there. There is Whitman, there is Lewis & Clark, there is Jack London, there is John Muir, there is Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway. I think my situated context may very well be an author, or a poem, or movement.
Its a start.