Now more than everin 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 WestThe 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.