Rhetoric of Nature

In this era of melting polar icecaps, green architecture, solar panels, mega-hurricanes, hybrid cars, and natural products, what exactly do we mean when we talk about nature? Where do our assumptions about and understandings of nature come from? In order to answer these questions we will look at three areas of culture that have great influence over our attitudes towards nature: literature, science, and popular culture.

This course has taken nature as its theme, but we’re more generally concerned with the following questions that are relevant across disciplines:

• How can we better understand something (in this case nature) by contemplating 3 different ways of seeing and thinking about it?
• How does the way that we speak and write about something reflect the way that we understand it and how we feel about it?
• Does the way that we speak and write about something define it?
• How can we use technology effectively to investigate the previous questions?

The goals are to make observations, understand the major concepts of a particular field, and learn new ways of thinking.

In our attempt to answer these questions, we will learn about the basic rhetorical concepts and try to answer these questions about the texts:

• Who is the audience?
• What is their reaction?
• What is the context?
• What is the purpose?
• Is it successful?

Because this is a writing course, we also have another set of goals that are more specific to writing skills. By the end of the course you will have improved your skills in the following areas:

• Clarity of thinking and writing
• Discovering your own ideas about writing
• Understanding and using a variety of research sources
• Representing your research
• Documenting sources from various genres
• Asking questions of your own texts and those of others
• Analyzing texts in terms of rhetorical strategies and rhetorical situation

We will use the topic of the rhetoric of nature to try to achieve all of the above goals.

The course is divided into three different sections, but we will be constantly trying to make connections between these sections.

Unit 1: Popular Culture and Nature
Representations of nature in popular culture shape the public’s perception of it. Therefore, this unit will look critically at those representations, consider where they are coming from, and determine the purpose behind them. We will look at how nature appears in film, print and multimedia advertisements, television, music, photography, and popular magazines. We will consider the following questions: How is our relationship with nature framed in popular culture? How is nature portrayed by the automobile industry, oil companies, Hollywood, the National Parks system, National Geographic, etc? What are the common tropes and metaphors used to describe our relationship with nature? Our overall goal will be to establish a basic understanding of the way that mainstream American culture understands and defines nature.

Unit 2: Literature and Nature
All current legislation on the environment as well as the environmental and preservationist movements can find their origins in nature writing. We will look at some of the most influential nature writers (Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Edward Abbey, and Rachel Carson) to establish a basic understanding of where the American concept of nature comes from. And we will try to answer the following questions: What assumptions are made about nature? How is nature defined? What is the purpose of nature? How do humans interact with nature? Why is nature valuable?

Unit 3: Science and Nature
Most of our knowledge about nature comes from scientific inquiry. And it would seem that we could find the “truth” about nature in science. This unit goes straight to the source, to look at how the scientific community discusses nature. We will use 3 different scientific controversies about natural phenomena (embryonic stem cell research, global warming, and evolution) to consider how rhetorical strategies are at work even in what are usually assumed to be very objective and factual scientific arguments. Specifically, we will look how notions of religion, social progress, and economic competitiveness all play a large role in these debates. What moral and ethical assumptions are being made in these discussions? How do authors appeal to their intended audiences? What events created the controversy? What called these writers to write, and how does that shape their writing?

Possible Readings and Texts:

We will be using excerpts of the longer works.
Walden, Thoreau
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey
An Inconvenient Truth
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
Science Magazine
Environment Magazine
National Geographic
Into the Wild
Cast Away
Ansel Adams’ photography
Erin Brockovich
The Simpsons
Thank You For Arguing, Heinrichs