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Encountering Social-Constructivist Rhetoric: Teaching an Environmental Writing and Literature Course

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Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies
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Abstract

The student who spoke up at the end of class one day in an environmental writing and literature course took me off guard. In response, I checked the syllabus and confirmed that, why, yes, next time we were reading a great essay, one structured, uh, rather like a walk in the woods. I felt sure she would enjoy it. Plus it was a key text, I noted, defending the assignment. I no longer recall the actual piece, but it might have been Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walking,’ an excerpt from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, or one from Bill McKibben’s End of Nature. The class was not reading A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson’s account of an attempted Appalachian Trail through-hike.

What are we reading next time? Not another walk in the woods, I hope.

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© 2012 Elizabeth Giddens

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Giddens, E. (2012). Encountering Social-Constructivist Rhetoric: Teaching an Environmental Writing and Literature Course. In: Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230358393_4

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