Monthly Archives: April 2014

Getting to the Roots of the Matter: Trees and the Environmental Imagination in 19th Century Literature.

A video recording of my lecture in Interdisciplinary Explorations: The Idea of Nature Public Lecture Series at Boise State University, Idaho is now available at Boise Scholarworks. Thanks to the sponsors for their generosity in making the series possible, to … Continue reading

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Sage Grouse Lekking and Canyon Fiction.

Green River at Green River City, where John Wesley Powell’s Grand Canyon expedition was launched. The grey-green sagebrush steppe and yellow and red rock canyons are two of the most contrastive, distinctive, colorful environments of the North American West. Arid … Continue reading

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Of Rocks and Hard Places . . .

I was talking with my group of graduate students about John Muir’s essays originally written for newspapers, published in the collection Travels in Alaska (1915). Muir developed a hypothesis during the 1870s revising accounts of how the geological landscape of … Continue reading

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Overhauling. . .

  I’ve been reading Kathleen Jamie’s collections Sightlines (2012) and The Overhaul (2012), in readiness for a graduate student discussion. The Overhaul is a collection of lyrical poems that, amongst other things, confronts the paradoxes and pains of isolation and our desire … Continue reading

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