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Chapter 7. A Place at the Table: Writing for Environmental Studies
- University of Nevada Press
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A Place at the Table Writing for Environmental Studies j e f f r e y m a t h e s m c c a r t h y I’m not the nervous type, but when the second TV station called, I began to feel a little queasy. Three radio interviews. Reporters from the two major newspapers. And suddenly tv cameras were coming to class. The dean was coming too, the president left a message, other faculty were going to be there, and fourteen freshman composition students would be the hosts. These freshmen were the center of attention for their place-based class project—a full Thanksgiving dinner of local ingredients. But why were they making such a meal and how did this project fit the goals of a writing class? Few professors would be inclined to describe their students as “diet aware.” Detachment from our meals and from our land is as American as apple pie, especially for those accustomed to cafeteria food and raised in the suburbs. But when these composition students read about American eating, they found that the topic led beyond their plates to the towns and streets where they grew up, and from there to issues of global environmental health. A week before Thanksgiving they were primed to serve up food, “And how does cooking a meal teach college students to write?” —Interview question from a Salt Lake Tribune reporter c h a p t e r 7 j e f f r e y m a t h e s m c c a r t h y 9 9 followed by their reasoned claims about the environmental consequences of the American diet. The regional meal would incarnate their research about our food and present an alternative for anyone willing to listen and chew. From my office it looked as if this project was going to be either a moon shot of a success or a Hindenburg of a disaster. I took a deep breath. These fourteen students made up Westminster College’s first environmental studies “learning community,” which meant that they were enrolled simultaneously in a composition course and an environmental biology course. The reading they did in my class informed the field trips they took in environmental biology, and the work they did there contributed to the writing projects they undertook in composition. Such learning communities give first-year students an established peer group, energize interdisciplinary education, and promote retention. This local meal project was drawing attention because it put theory into practice by linking student action with environmental writing. When the Tribune reporter asked me, “How does cooking a meal teach college students to write?” I said that the best writing mixes direct experience with careful reading. I added that students who take responsibility for something generally write better about it because they’re moved from abstractions and generalizations to the particular qualities of the idea—or the beet they’re preparing with their own stained fingers. Since I teach composition with a rhetorical emphasis, we study useful structures for argumentation, yet leave the particular shape of the final written argument to each student’s interest and ability. As I told the reporter, students have to care about what they’re writing for this rhetorical approach to work. Thoughwedon’twrestletoomuchGreekinmyclass,mystudentsread [54.242.75.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:57 GMT) 1 0 0 m a k i n g c o n n e c t i o n s John Gage’s Shape of Reason and apply its terms—thesis, enthymeme, dialectic—less as inheritors of classical rhetoric than in the tradition of American pragmatists aiming to do work with language. Looking back, I see that the regional meal was their direct action, and from that action came a feeling for writing’s purpose and power. The semester itself was organized into three main themes: Wilderness, Suburb, and Action. Those may seem curious at first blush—suburb?— but they emerged from my determination to engage students with the environments they actually inhabit. Because the idea of wilderness is so central to American self-definition and the Utah experience, readings from Roderick Nash, the Old Testament, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Chief Seattle went over easily. I complicated the journey with readings from Joyce Carol Oates and William Cronon. And thanks to the contributions of my colleague in biology, Ty Harrison, students studied our valley by canoeing its rivers, prodding its plants, and exploring the old Lake...