Grizzly @ Adams

American Studies. Semester’s end is approaching fast, and it’s time to start thinking about your final paper/project. Whether presented as paper or project (e.g., PowerPoint presentation or poster display), your work should analyze one or more of the texts or authors we’ve read in class in a way that helps readers better understand both the text itself and its relation to environmentalism.

You might consider working with one or two of your classmates to examine how various authors and texts approach a single cultural-environmental theme, such as the discursive construction of nature, the gender politics of environmentalism, or the ethics of direct action.

If you do work with a group you might consider a division of intellectual labor, with one person synopsizing and situating the text, another summarizing its critical responses, and a third advancing a new argument about it.

What I’d like you to do in your replies to this post is to get started thinking about possible topics by going back over the syllabus and combining one critical essay and one primary text with one “real world” environmental issue, and then indicate briefly why the resulting combination might lead to a good paper/project.

Here’s an example of what I have in mind:

Critical essay: “The Social Siege of Nature”

Primary text: Ecotopia.

Real-world issue: Clear-cutting on La Sierra above San Luis.

More detailed guidelines for the paper/project are available here.