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Now more than ever – in a time when Americans still do not believe that humans are the primary cause of Earth's climate change crisis, the burden on educators to inform, challenge, and motivate students about sustainability is greater than it ever has been. On college campuses, writing intensive courses, often located within First-Year or General Education curricula, are an ideal place to take up this charge because of the flexibility of their content and the high volume of students that they reach. In this volume, a varied group of composition instructors with wide ranges and types of experiences provides best practices for bringing issues surrounding climate change into the writing classroom. From literature-based composition and creative writing courses to design thinking workshops to seminars "against sustainability", the authors in this volume lay out a multitude of possibilities for blending writing and environmental concerns that fellow practitioners can easily adopt or modify for their own use.
Introduction: Now More Than Ever (Joseph R. Lease)
Chapter 1. Sustainability and Writing: Radishes, Scythes, Thoreau, and Students / Ron Balthazor
Chapter 2. Ecotopia Revisited in Image: The Imagined (and Enacted) Peril and Promise of Portland / Hill Taylor
Chapter 3. “meanderings to the river”: A Sustainable Approach to Teaching Sustainability in First-Year Composition / Deborah Church Miller, Lindsay Tigue, and Kim Waters
Chapter 4. Reflecting on Action & Acting on Reflection: High-Impact Practices for Transformative Learning in Sustainability / Justin Rademaekers and Cheryl Wanko
Chapter 5. Design Thinking and Sustainability Problem Solving: Reconceptualizing a First-Year, Writing-Intensive Seminar / Joseph R. Lease, Matthew R. Martin, and Joanne Chu
Chapter 6. Creating Sustainability through Creativity: Using Creative Writing to Reframe and Build Connections / Lesley Hawkes
Chapter 7. East to West—The Interconnectedness of All Things Created / Pamela Herron
Chapter 8. “Against Sustainability”: And Other Provocations for a First-Year Writing-Intensive Seminar / Abby L. Goode
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors
Joseph R. Lease is associate professor and department chair of English at Wesleyan College.
Contributors:
- Joseph R. Lease
- Ron Balthazor
- Hill Taylor
- Deborah Church Miller
- Lindsay Tigue
- Kim Waters
- Justin Rademaekers
- Cheryl Wanko
- Matthew R. Martin
- Joanne Chu
- Lesley Hawkes
- Pamela Herron
- Abby L. Goode
"Learning to live in a world radically worsened by the climate catastrophe is going to forever change our pedagogies, at every level and in every discipline. First-year writing and other writing intensive general education courses will play a major role in addressing the ongoing crises. As more educators are forced to re-examine their teaching, Climate Consciousness and Environmental Activism in Composition will undoubtedly be recognized as an essential early contribution to arguably the most important educational concern facing us from here on out. A volume like this is long overdue."
– Derek Owens, St. John's University
