Landscape, Ecology, Community
“无论你在哪里，无论你住在哪里，你生活中最重要的东西在某种程度上都与风景、天气和空气有关，与内在和外在世界、想象和事实的关系有关。””
— Gary Snyder
A Specialized Concentration in Environmental Writing
A century ago, famed poet Robinson Jeffers encouraged an earlier era of ecological awareness in his emphasis on “the fate going on outside our fate.” That perceived gap between human existence and other species has narrowed. In our era, climate change and mass extinction impinge upon Jeffers’s soft duality: nothing is “outside”; rather, we share our fate with all life-forms.
Since Jeffers’s time, our intimacy with the environment has at once waxed and waned: we understand the intricacies of ecology better than ever, yet many of us spend less quality time outdoors. Though our world today “seems increasingly focused on the needs of humans,” as poet Melissa Kwasny said recently as visiting writer to the 澳门金沙娱乐城app MFA program, “the struggle to widen the world to one where we exist in relation to other forms of life seems crucial.”
Formerly known as the Wilderness, Ecology, and Community concentration, 澳门金沙娱乐城app MFA’s special track in environmental writing was recently renamed Landscape, Ecology, and Community (the LEC) to broaden this important conversation and more clearly include both natural and built environments in Eastern Oregon and beyond. We acknowledge and celebrate that we live in a mosaic landscape that is urban, suburban, rural, “conserved,” “wild,” and everything in between. Students and faculty in the Landscape, Ecology, and Community concentration are drawn to these diverse geographies and to the manifold lifeforms of the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, we are cautioned by the legacy of extraction and marginalization within the region’s history.
The LEC concentration empowers students to explore these many environments and histories, while connecting students to the Pacific Northwest’s rich tradition of writers and thinkers with a deep and abiding attachment to the land—William O. Douglas, Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, William Kittredge, Annick Smith, James Welch, Norman Maclean, Kim Barnes, Gloria Bird, Barry Lopez, Kathleen Dean Moore, Duane Niatum, Annie Dillard, Robert Michael Pyle, Ana Maria Spagna, John Daniel, Elizabeth Woody, and Theodore Roethke, to name only a few who are familiar to us today. Via the concentration, students join their voices to this long and ongoing conversation with the landscape and its many peoples and organisms.
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LEC Course of Study
In addition to a foundational course in “The Roots of Environmental Writing/The New Environmental Writing,” students take at least five courses from a rotating assortment of LEC special topics and residency craft classes. Recent and upcoming topics include “Gender, Sexuality, and Environment,” “Films about Place,” “Speculative Fiction of the (Post-)Anthropocene,” “Concepts of Home,” “Queer Ecologies,” “Northwest Place-based Literature,” “Agrarian Literature/Writing about Water,” “Animal Experiments,” and more. Typically these courses are multi-genre. Course topics are representative, evolving, and not all will be taught in a two-year period. Each year, some of Fishtrap workshops also have an environmental or place-based theme that supplement the LEC concentration.
First Year
| Summer Residency—Fishtrap and 澳门金沙娱乐城app (two weeks in July) | |
| WR 550 Residency: Generative Workshop (Fishtrap) | 2 cr hrs |
| WR 541 Residency: Workshop (in your primary genre) | 2 cr hrs |
| WR 542 *LEC Craft Class* | 2 cr hrs |
| Summer Post-Residency | |
| WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (a follow-up to WR 541) | 1 cr hrs |
| Fall Term—Distance | |
| ENGL 536 *The Roots of Envtl Writing/The New Envtl Writing* | 4 cr hrs |
| WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (workshop) | 4 cr hrs |
| Winter Term–Distance | |
| WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (workshop) | 4 cr hrs |
| WR 510 Special Topics in Writing: *LEC Focus* | 4 cr hrs |
| Spring Term—Distance | |
| WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (workshop) | 4 cr hrs |
| WR 536 Rhetoric: *The Rhetoric of Disaster* | 3 cr hrs |
| WR 609 Practicum (taken in any term either year; click on link to see options) | 1 cr hr |
Second Year
| Summer Residency—Fishtrap and 澳门金沙娱乐城app (two weeks in July) | |
| WR 550 Residency: Generative Workshop (Fishtrap) | 2 cr hrs |
| WR 541 Residency: Workshop (in your primary genre) | 2 cr hrs |
| WR 542 *LEC Craft Class* | 2 cr hrs |
| Summer Post-Residency | |
| WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (a follow-up to WR 541) | 1 cr hrs |
| Fall Term—Distance | |
| WR 510 Special Topics in Writing *LEC Focus* | 4 cr hrs |
| WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (workshop) | 4 cr hrs |
| Winter Term–Distance | |
| WR 510 Special Topics in Writing *LEC Focus* or WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (workshop) | 4 cr hrs |
| WR 660 Thesis | 2 cr hrs |
| Spring Term—Distance | |
| WR 510 Special Topics in Writing or WR 552 Individualized Studies: Projects in Writing (workshop) | 4 cr hrs |
| WR 660 Thesis | 4 cr hrs |
Third Summer
| WR 661 Thesis Presentation (a reading) and Submission | 0 cr hrs |
| Total | 60 cr hrs |
- A maximum of 60 graded credit hours in English/Writing at the 500- level or above.
- At least 4 credit hours in WR 552 (one workshop class) must be in genres other than your principle genre.
- WR 550 Residency: Generative Workshop (Fishtrap workshop) is graded S/U.
- Post-Residency WR 552 (1 cr) is devoted to the polishing work begun in the Summer Residency.
- A minimum grade of “C-“ and a cumulative GPA of 2.00 (or better) is required in all courses counting toward the degree.