Posted: February 15th, 2015

Burroughs

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

Bill McKibben, ed., American Earth: Environmental Writing since Thoreau (New York: Library of America, 2008)
For this essay, students will read the John Burroughs materials in the text (pp.145-71) and pay particular attention to the arguments of “The Art of Seeing Things” (noting also the quality of Burrough’s topic sentences). They will then write a short essay inspired by “Nature Near Home.” This should be 750 words long; the aim should be a clear, lucid piece that starts with close observation (of ‘nature near home’ or some suitable alternative) and moves toward larger meaning. This is an opportunity to write in a more creative style (say creative non-fiction), though this is not the only possible genre to use. You will need to look and think and formulate a clear plan for this assignment, and there is perhaps more room here for a “personal touch” than in the other assignments. You might also find inspiration in Sanders essay, “After the Flood,” (text, pp.781-89) and /or in Meloy’s piece (text, pp.793- 808)
Prof realize this assignment is very open-ended. To give us some sense of what is possible and how it might be done, here are four essays written in a previous iteration of this course, all of which scored above average marks (B, B+, A) I will uploaded it later.