Bibliographies

Eco-Composition Readers

One of the wonderful advantages of teaching nature and landscape writing and environmental issues in a composition class is that the political nature of most public discussion about the natural landscape becomes self-evident to the students in the class as they read. I've found that in a "landscape and nature writing" literature class students tend to feel obligated to revere the writers of the essays under discussion, whereas in a composition class, the essays which the students read are merely the means to the end of devising stances of their own. Ideas are much more quickly pitted against each other (partly because I always include pro-business, pro-development, wise-use essays). And always some students do not agree with the ideas expressed in the "green canon," leading to sometimes very energetic class discussions, all fodder for good student compositions. It helps that the front page of the local daily newspaper always has something about dwindling salmon runs, timber battles over old-growth, the spotted owl, or salvage logging, and urban-growth boundary disputes, etc. It's useful to learn whose families are suffering from environmental policies. Every landscape is owned by someone who wants to do something to it which displeases someone else.

Eco-composition Texts

Anderson, Chris, and Lex Runciman. A Forest of Voices: Reading and Writing the Environment. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1995.
Although the collection often repeats the same selections in earlier ecocomp readers, this is the first to have a rhetoric bound in with the anthology. I'll be trying it out the first time this coming fall. (1-800-433-1279)

Levy, Walter, and Christopher Hallowell. Green Perspectives: Thinking and Writing about Nature and the Environment. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
A good, balanced, historically organized collection of various environmental stances, from Susan Cooper's 1850 account of changes in rural New York to Al Gore's Biblically oriented appeal for environmental thinking in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. The book has worked well in the classroom for me, although it seems as though the choice of selections is slanted more toward the East Coast, and concerns of those of us in the West were slighted. (1-800-828-6000)

Morgan, Sarah, and Dennis Okerstrom, eds. The Endangered Earth: Readings for Writers. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1992.
A good collection of writings, although slanted toward seemingly unsolvable problems. Sections are headed "Species and Endangerment," "Developing the Deserts," "Wilderness and Intrusion," and "Destroying the Forests." (1-800-852-8024)

Ross, Carolyn. Writing Nature: An Ecological Reader for Writers. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.
An excellent collection; much of what Ross has to say in her introduction states exactly what I've found to be true or appropriate in teaching ecocomp. (1-800-446-8923)

Slovic, Scott H., and Terrell F. Dixon, eds. Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers. New York: Macmillan, 1993.
An excellent collection with well-researched headnotes about each author and a wonderful small set of full-color pictures tipped in for students to consider. I've found the book works best in the first term of composition, particularly for more "creative writing" composition classes. Because the pieces tend not to be very polemical, I don't use it in argument-based composition classes. (1-800-852-8024--Allyn & Bacon handles Macmillan's composition titles)

Verburg, Carol J.  The Environmental Predicament: Four Issues in Critical Analysis.  Boston: Bedford-St. Martin's, 1995.
The best book yet for an argument-based composition class; selections answer each other back on the same issues, sometimes directly referring to other writers' articles which also appear in the text. (1-800-446-8923)

Walker, Melissa, ed. Reading the Environment. New York: Norton, 1994.
The most diverse yet of this first generation of ecocomp texts from major publishers. A solid instructor's manual, too. (1-800-233-4830)

Other Texts

Some other texts which weren't designed specifically for ecologically oriented classes, but which work as if they were.

Dobson, Andrew, ed. The Green Reader: Essays Toward A Sustainable Society. San Francisco: Mercury, 1991.
Edited by a British professor of political science, the 55 essays tend to focus on society-wide problems, particularly from economic and political perspectives. The essays are arranged under such headings as "The Green Critique"   (articles by E. F. Schumacher, Garrett Hardin, Fritjof Capra, David Ehrenfeld, Murray Bookchin, among others); "The Green Society" (articles by Kirkpatrick Sale, Judith Plant, and others); "Green Economics"; "Green Political Strategies" (articles by Petra Kelly, Aldous Huxley, David Foreman, Edward Abbey and others); and "Green Philosophy" (articles by Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, Carolyn Merchant, James Lovelock, and others).

Nash, Roderick Frazier, ed. American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History. 3rd. ed. New York: McGraw, 1990.
Very short excerpts from a wide selection of people who have written or spoken on environmental matters. An excellent collection, historically organized, but frustratingly short selections. (1-800-338-3987)

Westphal, Dale, and Fred Westphal, eds. Planet in Peril: Essays in Environmental Ethics. New York: Harcourt, 1994.
A slim volume (259 pages) of 14 essays clustered around four sets of issues: changes in attitude toward biocentrism, wilderness, pollutions, and animal rights. (1-800-237-2665)

Zimmerman, Michael E., J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, Karen J. Warren, and John Clark, eds. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1993. (1-800-526-0485)

Michael J. McDowell
Department of English
Portland Community College
Portland, Oregon