Owen argues that, as composition teachers, we are in a prime position to teach (and have an obligation to do so) sustainable practices to our students (27). We are in this prime position because everyone student is required to take our courses and because teachers can choose the topic of their courses. Owen then offers examples of “writing sequences [he has] used in [his] classes” to teach sustainability thinking (30): (1) Place portraits; (2) Designing eutopia; (3) Neighborhood histories; (4) Oral History Perseveration Project; (5) Tribal testimonies; (6) Work stories; and (7) Future scenarios.
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Killingworth and Krajicek argue that literary environmentalists have tended to hold to a triad of “intellectual conditions”: ecology, alienation, and literacy (41). The writer is alienated (by himself) in nature, uses literacy to communicate with a reader, then the reader is alienated while he reads. However, “close identification with the form of environmentalism that depends upon the conceptual triad of ecology, alienation, and literacy, may alienate that teach of ecocomposition from…a large percentage of any contemporary class of students, and may thereby stand in the way of effective teaching” (42). Therefore, “we should recognize the opportunity for participating in the development of a more socially conscious environmental rhetoric, which advances both environmental protection and social justice” (53). The authors recognize, then, that writing and environmentalism toggle between alienation and socialization, as writers read and write alone, but come back together to discuss, share, and critique with others.
Apostel and Apostel discuss the fact that we have obnoxious amounts of e-waste – computers, key boards, mice, etc. – and offer recommendations for how curb this waste.
In this Afterword, Moran “describe[s] three areas that, in my view, need to be explored if our writing programs, our institutions, and spaceship earth itself are to survive. In doing this I am explicitly encouraging young scholars in our field to begin thinking along one or more of these three lines as they shape their research and prepare conference presentations and submit publications into the near-term future” (2):
Put another way, Moran states that we should look into the following research questions:
Weisser argues that in the past forty years, “all of the approaches –to composition] have has essentially the same purpose – to enable students to develop a greater understating of their own identity through discourse…In fact, we might see the paradigm shift in Hairston’s well-known article as a shift toward a better understanding of how discourse and identity are inextricably linked” (85).
However, he believes, “Our current conceptions of identity are pre-ecological; we have not yet recognized that the whole spectrum of the nonhuman physical environment is embedded in each of our identities” (81). By “nonhuman physical environment,” he seems to mean living entities as opposed to nonliving objects. “Ecological selves perceive their interconnection with others and comprehend the degree to which their own identities are inseparable from the nonhuman world – a recognition that the material world ‘out there’ is a part of our identity ‘in here.’ This recognition accounts for our relationships with locations, material objects, and constructed spaces as well as with the other life-forms and ecosystems that sustain us” (86). I can connect the concepts of ecologies of composition to environmental sustainability in this way: “What a ‘green’ conception of identity doesn’t need to focus exclusively on the natural world, individuals who recognize the ecological dimensions of identity of align themselves with environmentalist perspectives, since they are concerned with the perseveration and appreciation of all diverse ecological systems” (87). Weisser also argues that the way we see our relationship to nature directly affects how we treat other humans. |
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