Instructor: Zamora
TR 9:30-10:50AM
Humans have a deep and complex relationship with the Earth. We are natural beings living in a natural world. Our relationship with the natural world and our naturalness is long and complicated and roots in our connection to the landscape, place, environment, and the physical changes occurring both in the land and in our society. We are tethered to this world—in action, in artistic calling, at the cellular level, at the level of existence, which is also a level of survival. As a species, we have written about the environment throughout history out of wonder, awe, reverence, confusion, terror, appreciation—and now especially—necessity. We write in direct response to forces threatening our environment through degradation, destruction, and change.
In this writing workshop, our focuses will be examining current trends in creative writing around the environment in all three genres—poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, and the creation of your own original art based on our collective wonderings. All writers with an interest in environmental action and writing about the Earth are welcome. We’ll investigate ways contemporary authors approach and complicate writing about the Earth and environmental issues that are important to them. You will create new bodies of art that explore what your relationship to the environment is, what environmental issues your art necessitates, and ways to research and interrogate current societal, political, psychological, and economic structures and ideations that pressurize the Earth’s most pertinent issues of today. This semester we will question: What does an Eco-lens in creative writing look like right now? How does art, specifically creative writing, play a role in environmental justice and awareness? Does art have impact in the issues of today’s environmental crisis? What does it mean to be an environmental citizen? An environmental artist? We’ll explore current environmental debates and concerns shaping our understanding of the genres. Our lenses will zoom in and out with micro and macro issues, global and local considerations, building a practice of thinking, wondering, researching, and creating with an eye toward environmental action in our art.