My Literature and the Environment class has had 2000 hits on iTunes U. That, plus blogging, is more circulation than I've ever gotten for these ideas.
Hugh McGuire put a great essay on Huffington Post encouraging academics to blog. I like the third point: that the ideas are just too important to waste on preaching to the choir in the in-house language (or jargon).
3 comments:
I guess I am one of those 2000 hits on itunes, and I'd like to say thank you! for recording and posting your classes.
Not only have the ideas been illuminating for my own thinking in environmental criticism, but it's given me models for how to infuse ecological thinking and ecological reading into the freshman composition courses I am currently teaching. Often when I tell people I am trying to teach an environmentally oriented course in the English Department, they assume I must be teaching Thoreau, Muir, Dillard... whereas I try to explain that ecological reading can be (or perhaps should be) more than just nature writing (though "nature" writing is great too).
The lecture on animals is particularly insightful.... though after listening to it I began, strangely enough, to think of my students as strange strangers themselves (perhaps this is not such a bad thing for a teacher?)
Thanks again!
That's great, Stephen. I appreciate it. There's another lecture on iTunes called “Animals, Vegetables, Minerals, and Other Alien Beings,” in the UCD Neuroscience folder (for some reason) and Authors and Literature folder. It's video as well as audio.
I am one of the hits too! I downloaded all of the classes while I was in a city and on broadband, because I live in the Pyrenees in Spain and using internet through a dial-up modem. Yes, they still exist. Listened to the class called Space yesterday, and delighted.
Recently attended a Buddhism and Nature seminar in Birmingham, UK, and stumbled upon your work when I was looking for ecopoems on Google. (Bought an anthology by Neil Astley, called Earth Shattering, by the way. Very good. Ecology as such often leaves me a bit tired and weary. The Dharma inspires me and I feel this area of eco-aesthetics is bridging the two. Have MA in English Renaissance literature and very pleased to see all current interests combined.
I moved to the Pyrenees recently and now part of what is called ecoDharma centre here. You can look up our site adding .com if you like. Anyway, I just ordered your book and looking forward to read it.
Kind regards, Yashobodhi
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