When we first attempted to define “environment” and when we watched Darwin’s Nightmare, we confronted the notion of “purity,” this notion that things can be purely good or purely bad, purely economic or purely scientific, purely biological or purely cultural. I believe that purity is a gross reduction of the complex and interconnected world we […]
Introduction to Environmental Studies (Spring 2014)
ENVS 160 is the introductory course for the Environmental Studies major at Lewis & Clark College. I took ENVS 160 in the spring of 2014. In this course, we examined literature from classic environmentalism and contemporary environmentalism, delved into an independent situated project, and tied it all together with a final synthesis post. ENVS 160 created a foundation for academic exploration in the interdisciplinary world of environmental studies for future courses, projects, and travels.
Nature Romanticized? ?
Capital “R” Romantic metaphors abound in the collection of essays Love Your Monsters, named for Bruno Latour’s allusion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Dr Frankenstein, obsessed with the acquisition of knowledge and the power of technology created a wretched being, which became an evil creature once it was abandoned by its creator. Likewise, humans have advanced […]
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her
“My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege, Through all the years of this life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty…” ~William Wordsworth, […]
Limitlessness
When I was a junior in high school, I read an excerpt from a Wendell Berry essay all about limitlessness. Looking back, I’m almost positive that the excerpt was from Faustian Economics. Anyways, the argument of the essay was that Americans have this concept of the limitlessness of the land, of our resources. This perceived […]