Environmental Writing
Faculty Advisor:
Phil Condon, Associate Professor - 406.243.2904
Courses
EVST 305: The Environmental Vision, offered each fall.
EVST 373: Nature Works, offered each spring.
EVST 505: Literature of Natural History, offered each spring.
EVST 573: Environmental Writing, offered each fall.
EVST Kittredge Visiting Environmental Writer Program brings an outstanding writer to teach a semester-long graduate writing course each spring (EVST 594.01: Visiting Writer).
EVST VISITING WRITER NEWS: CRAIG CHILDS was here in Spring 2008, TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS for AY 2008-09 (teaching a 2 credit course in Sept 2008), and REBECCA SOLNIT in Spring 2010.
CRAIG CHILDS is the author of The House of Rain, Soul of Nowhere, and The Secret Knowledge of Water, among other books. He is a frequent commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered."
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS is one of the best known nature and environmental writers in America. She is the author of Refuge, Red, The Open Space of Democracy, and many more.
REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of ten books, including Hope in the Dark and River of Shadows. She writes a column, "From the Nearby Faraway," for Orion magazine.
Previous Kittredge VW's include in 2003 the Program's namesake Bill Kittredge, in 2004 Annick Smith, in 2005 Robert Michael Pyle, and in 2006, Kim Todd, the author of Tinkering with Eden, winner of the 2001 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and Gary Ferguson, author of over a dozen books and hundreds of articles.
The 2009 Environmental Writing Institute will feature ELIZABETH GROSSMAN. Elizabeth is an environmental writer and journalist, author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Island Press, 2006); Adventuring Along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Sierra Club Books, 2003), and The Undamming of America (Counterpoint, 2002) as well as dozens of articles and essays in Orion, The Nation, Mother Jones, Salon, and many publications. EWI 2009 will run from May 13 through May 17, 2009. See www.umt.edu/ewi for full details.
EWI leaders have included 2007 (Alison Hawthorne Deming), 2006 (Sharman Apt Russell), 2005 (Janisse Ray, Kim Todd, Phil Condon), 2004 (David James Duncan), 2003 (John Elder), 2002 (Robert Michael Pyle), and many others.
About the EVST Environmental Writing Emphasis
OVERVIEW & THESIS PROJECTS:
The Environmental Writing emphasis within the Graduate Environmental Studies Program at the University of Montana is unique and flexible, and like all parts of the Program, interdisciplinary in approach and activist in focus. It offers students the opportunity to develop and use their writing skills, talents, and interests in ways that promote and demonstrate environmental concerns, awareness, and sensitivities. The culminating thesis project for the Writing Emphasis is described in the EVST Program general thesis guidelines as an "innovative, interpretive, or critical work (as in the Humanities or Fine Arts)."
As the Environmental Writing Emphasis Theses Summary makes clear, the ways in which graduate students fulfill the thesis requirement are quite diverse, and the range of possibilities for a Writing Thesis project is most fully understood through a review of that list. This diversity mirrors, on a Program scale, the great breadth and range in what is called variously, in the wider culture, Nature Writing, Environmental Writing, or the Writing of Place or Landscape. There is an ongoing resurgence and broadening of work in this field, even as its boundaries and definitions interconnect and evolve, in the EVST writing emphasis as in the culture itself. As Barry Lopez has said, in certainly one of the most inclusive definitions of the genre, "it is arguably more helpful to see it [nature writing] as the strain of American literature that, more than others now, is pursuing the ancient discourse on human fate."
A review of Selected EVST Writing Emphasis Alumni Book Publications reveals that Program graduates in this emphasis have followed through their thesis work to book publication (and magazine or journal publication) in significant numbers. Such results, and parallel intentions on the part of current and future students, are in keeping with the activist focus of the EVST Program itself; a main goal for Writing Emphasis students is to produce work that has a clear possibility of reaching a wider audience and contributing to the vital ongoing environmental conversations within society.
Students are encouraged and directed to conceive of their Writing Emphasis thesis project as either a book in progress, a prototype for a book, a series of related non-fiction creative works with individual publication possibilities, and/or a thorough book proposal, including sample chapters or excerpts. Such a vision, regardless of where in the spectrum of Environmental Writing any particular project might fall, indicates that Environmental Writing thesis work should be original, compelling, and impassioned, grounded in knowledge of the tradition and field, informed and critical as to the issues it raises, and written to publication standards.
COURSEWORK:
Coursework leading up to the Writing thesis project is drawn from the supportive resources in the Program (annual Environmental Writing and Literature of Nature Writing courses with Phil Condon as well as an annual Writing course offered by a Visiting Writer), and from non-fiction writing courses as available in the English Creative Writing Program, Environmental History courses offered in History, Environmental Ethics & Philosophy courses offered in Philosophy, Environmental Journalism & Magazine Writing courses offered in Journalism, as well as from many courses of individual interest and relevance throughout the EVST Program itself and across campus: Forestry, Biology, Geology, Native American Studies, for example.
Writing emphasis students must meet all the distribution requirements for the EVST Program degree in addition to E. Literature & Thought: graduate Program courses in the areas of E. Science, Policy, and Engagement. The writing emphasis itself has no formal requirements beyond the required Program distribution requirements, yet in most cases, those who work on a Writing Thesis should plan to take at least one E. Wrtg course, at least one additional E. Wrtg or Non-Fiction or Journalism course, and at least one course from either Environmental Literature, Philosophy, or History. If students intend to complete Program work in two years, a writing thesis idea and proposal should be in mind, and in hand, by the end of the first year.
Selected faculty from other departments and programs who offer and have taught courses of major interest and relevance to Writing emphasis students in the recent past include the following.
Deborah Slicer, Philosophy: Env Ethics & Env Philosopy
Dan Flores, History: Env History
Steve Schwartz, Communications: Env Rhetoric
Dan Kemmis, Center for the Rocky Mtn West: Env Policy
Pat Williams, Center for the Rocky Mtn West: Env Policy
Judy Blunt, English: Creative Writing NonFiction
Jeff Hull, Journalism: Magazine Freelancing and Outdoor Writing
OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING OPPORTUNITIES:
Other opportunities are available to Writing students: working on, writing for, and/or editing the nationally known and distributed graduate student journal Camas:The Nature of the West, produced by students in fall and spring; reading in the Wild Mercy community nature writing reading series each year; and attending the Environmental Writing Institute, a workshop led by a nationally known environmental writer and attended by a combination of second-year EVST student writers with other writers, teachers, and students from around the country each fall.
Prospective applicants or any writing students considering the EVST Program are encouraged to apply to EWI. Many EVST graduate writing students in the past have attended EWI before they applied to the Program and attendance at EWI is an excellent way to get a sense of our Program and of western MT.
Past EWI workshop leaders have included writers such as Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Rick Bass. The EWI leader in May 2009 will be ELIZABETH GROSSMAN, author of High Tech Trash, the forthcoming Redesigning the Future, and many other books and articles.
The EVST Visiting Writer Program is in its seventh year in 2008/09. The first Visiting Writer was William Kittredge, author of many books about the American West and the environmental identities forged and at question within it. In 2004 Annick Smith, author (Homestead and In This We Are Native), filmmaker, homesteader, and writer-activist was Visiting Writer. Robert Michael Pyle, columnist for Orion, author of many books, and founder of the Xerces Society visited in 2005, Kim Todd (Tinkering with Eden, 2001; Chrysalis, 2006) in 2006, nature writer and conservationist Gary Ferguson in 2007, and Craig Childs in 2008. In September 2008, TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS will conduct an intensive 2-cr workshop, and in spring 2010, REBECCA SOLNIT, writer, historian, and activist will be the Visiting Writer.
The WILD MERCY community reading series for nature and environmental writing enters its sixth year in Fall 2008. Monthly readings at a fishing fly shop near downtown Missoula feature 2 writers each evening: EVST graduate students, EVST Visiting Writers, writing alumni, & more.
Questions or visits or discussions about the Writing Emphasis are welcome at any time. It's also possible for prospective students or program applicants to correspond or talk with current students.
Contact Phil Condon ( 406.243.2904).
