August 24

What is place? What is the environmental imagination?

In this course we will explore the environment, environmental writing, and environmental movements--however it will not be "an environmentalist course" as much as a class which engages the environmental imagination. We will examine not only the American wilderness but man-made considerations of the urban world and broader questions of community and identity, not limited to the natural environment.

To begin to examine these considerations, I want to look at five different musicians, all inspired by their environment, in very different ways:

Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi



(Traditional environmentalism, what we think of when we imagine activism and the environment)


Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama



("Hometown" as environment, environmental writing as defence of one's "place")

The Weakerthans: One Great City



(Nostalgic dislike of home, troubled relationship with place)

Radiohead: Fake Plastic Trees


Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
Uploaded by nopulse. - Explore more music videos.

("Unplaces", a lack of connection to place)

Bruce Springstein: The River



(Place as part of the larger human narrative, a backdrop for issues of class, relationships, and human relationships)

Homework: "Everything Is a Human Being,” by Alice Walker, p. 659
from Leaves of Grass, “This Compost,” by Walt Whitman, pp. 62-63, and "Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood" by Michael Chabon (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jul/16/manhood-for-amateurs-the-wilderness-of-childhood/) (Journal on one)