Credits

3 (3/0/0)

Description

This course meets MnTC Goal Areas 2, 6 and 10. This course will focus on texts written by great nature writers. While special emphasis will be placed on those works that stress conservation and ecology, others will enable students to see the human struggle with the environment as protagonist. Material may also include travel writing, as well as the more recent directions toward urban nature and nontraditional/multicultural perspectives. Texts may include nonfiction, novels, poetry and plays. Students will gain experience in reading critically and writing logical, sound papers that deal with environmental issues and text analysis.

Prerequisites

ENGL1101

Competencies

Gather factual information about environmental issues and apply it to a given environmental problem in a manner that is relevant, clear, comprehensive and conscious of possible bias.
Imagine and seek out a variety of possible goals, assumptions, interpretations, or perspectives related to environmental concerns and issues which can give alternate meanings or solutions to given situations or problems.
Recognize and articulate the value assumptions which underlie and affect decisions, interpretations, and analyses, and evaluations made by others and themselves.
Demonstrate awareness of the longer works in the arts and humanities which focus on all aspects of the environment.
Understand those works as expressions of individual and human values within an historical and social context.
Respond critically to the literature which has the environment as its focus.
Articulate an informed personal reaction to the literature.
Discern patterns and interrelationships of bio-physical and socio-cultural systems as revealed in books, both fiction and non-fiction, which focus on all aspects of the environment.
Evaluate critically environmental and natural resource issues in light of understandings about interrelationships, ecosystems, and institutions as a result of readings and research into environmental topics.
Propose and assess alternative solutions to environmental problems.
Articulate and defend the actions they would take on various environmental issues as they present these views in papers and in group discussions and presentations.