Tools for Reading the Environment: Literary Field Guides & Poetic Inventories as Place-Making Literature
Location
Virtual presentation
Document Type
Presentation
Start Date
4-27-2020 8:00 AM
End Date
5-2-2020 5:00 PM
Abstract
Faced with climate change, many people feel powerless to combat widespread environmental degradation. But complex problems such as this one require action on local and individual levels, and interdisciplinary solutions are necessary. One often-overlooked tool for fostering ecologically-conscious individuals is writing, because in many ways, our environmental crisis is a crisis of rhetoric. Discussion of how people conceptualize nature and the environment will inevitably play a key role in finding solutions. Many writers now recognize this, and create pieces with the intention of connecting their readers to a certain place or view of the natural world. In recent years, two similar genres are emerging from this new nature writing movement: literary field guides and poetic inventories. Much like natural field guides, these genres highlight the individual parts of a region that contribute to the biodiversity of the whole. But they adopt a more holistic definition of what that biodiversity might entail; in addition to traditional biodiversity of flora and fauna, a literary field guide might explore a diversity of human experiences with the understanding that these, too, impact and shape ecosystems. In this presentation I will situate literary field guides and poetic inventories as emerging genres within the greater family of nature and environmental writing, and argue that they can be useful as a means for helping people cultivate a sense of place, a key element of encouraging pro-environmental thought and action.
Keywords:
Nature writing, Literature, Poetry, Environmental literacy, Sense of place
Recommended Citation
Jones, Lily, "Tools for Reading the Environment: Literary Field Guides & Poetic Inventories as Place-Making Literature" (04/27/20). Senior Symposium. 10.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/seniorsymp/2020/presentations/10
Major
English; Environmental Studies
Project Mentor(s)
Jennifer Bryan, English
T.S. McMillin, English
April 2020
Tools for Reading the Environment: Literary Field Guides & Poetic Inventories as Place-Making Literature
Virtual presentation
Faced with climate change, many people feel powerless to combat widespread environmental degradation. But complex problems such as this one require action on local and individual levels, and interdisciplinary solutions are necessary. One often-overlooked tool for fostering ecologically-conscious individuals is writing, because in many ways, our environmental crisis is a crisis of rhetoric. Discussion of how people conceptualize nature and the environment will inevitably play a key role in finding solutions. Many writers now recognize this, and create pieces with the intention of connecting their readers to a certain place or view of the natural world. In recent years, two similar genres are emerging from this new nature writing movement: literary field guides and poetic inventories. Much like natural field guides, these genres highlight the individual parts of a region that contribute to the biodiversity of the whole. But they adopt a more holistic definition of what that biodiversity might entail; in addition to traditional biodiversity of flora and fauna, a literary field guide might explore a diversity of human experiences with the understanding that these, too, impact and shape ecosystems. In this presentation I will situate literary field guides and poetic inventories as emerging genres within the greater family of nature and environmental writing, and argue that they can be useful as a means for helping people cultivate a sense of place, a key element of encouraging pro-environmental thought and action.
Notes
Click here to view this presentation at the Office of Undergraduate Research website from April 27-May 2, 2020.