Professor John Warnock
Department of English, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721
MW 2 - 4:45
John_Warnock@breadnet.middlebury.edu or johnw@u.arizona.edu
Bread Loaf School of English, University of North Carolina - Asheville
Summer 2010
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Professor John Warnock Department of English, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721 MW 2 - 4:45 John_Warnock@breadnet.middlebury.edu or johnw@u.arizona.edu |
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Course Description
We may think of writing about place as something that insiders are best able to do, but then again as something that outsiders—travelers, anthropologists—may in some ways be in an even better position to do. We may think of a “place” as having a certain character, an identity, a particular kind of order and stability. And yet we know that a sense of place can emerge most strongly when it is being threatened or otherwise contested. We take place as something “natural,” and yet we also know that place is constructed and has a history. Not surprisingly, the meanings of “place,” according to the OED, are all over the place: “[T]he senses are numerous and…difficult to arrange.” In this writing class, we will enter this world of possibility through reading, a field trip or two, music, and regular writing.
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In our readings and discussions, we will look for writerly ideas and practices in the work-- that is, not just for the work's arguments or possible meanings but for ways in which the writer uses language to do and mean what the language does and means. Look for things you as a writer might try in order to do what you want to do, to achieve your meanings. Look for writing that moves you somehow. Let it move you. Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings (Warner) Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (Harvest) Harry Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Jesse Stuart Foundation) Wylma Dykeman, The French Broad (Wakestone) Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (HarperPerennial) James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Mariner) |
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Food for Thought Once in his life a man [sic] ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else. Imagine Swann's Way laid in London, or The Magic Mountain in Spain, or Green Mansions in the Black Forest. The very notion of moving a novel brings ruder havoc to the mind and affections than would a century's alternation in its time. Eudora Welty, "Place in Fiction" To know a place, like a friend or lover, is for it to become familiar. [T]o know it better is for it to become strange again. Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams Over time I have come to think of these three qualities--paying intimate attention; a storied relationship to a place rather than a solely sensory awareness of it; and living in some sort of ethical unity with a place--as a fundamental human defense against loneliness.... As a writer I want to ask on behalf of the reader: How can a person obtain this? How can you occupy a place and also have it occupy you? How can you find such a reciprocity? Barry Lopez, "A Literature of Place" For our own writing about place this summer, we will try for the qualities Lopez sets out here:
You are asked to perform three exercises this summer (about 500 words each) and to produce two finished pieces. Due dates appear below and in the Class Schedule. Each of the exercises will be given 10% credit. The first finished piece + reflection will be worth 30% of the final grade and the second finished piece + reflectionl will be worth 40%. Exercises (Each 10% of grade) Exercise 1 (Post in our Conference Folder by Friday, June 18)
Exercise 2 (Post in our Conference Folder by Friday, June 25)
Exercise 3 (Post in our Conference Folder by Friday, July 2)
Assignments for Finished Pieces (# 1 @ 1000 words, 30% of grade, #2 @ 2500 words, 40% of grade) Each of the finished pieces should be accompanied by a Reflection (250 words or more, see below for more detailed description).
Reflections (250 words or more) should accompany both pieces. These Reflections are intended to help you re-read your draft critically and consider possibilities for revision. With this purpose in mind, they should address the following:
I prefer that writings be submitted as attachments in email (.doc, .docx, or .rtf files okay, with Draft and Reflection in a single document please). This allows me to respond using the Comment utility in Word and return the writing to you expeditiously. Anyone who prefers to submit writing in hard copy should feel entirely free to do so. We will use our conference space in Breadnet to make our writings available to all members of the class. Other Protocols For this writing class this summer, I strongly recommend regular (daily) writing, writing that is of any amount and any kind within the very wide purview of writing about place. Call your writing place a Journal, Day Book, Log, Writing Notes--whatever helps make it a place for you to write in. Use it to record thoughts and observations, but be sure also to use it as a place for experiment and play. I also recommend forming a writing group of two or more other Breadloafers who want to work on their writing this summer and undertake to meet regularly outside of class. This can be a good way to help generate ideas for writing and revision and (like exercise buddies do) help you keep to your writing schedule. Sometimes these writing groups decide to keep meeting after the summer. Below are some different angles on writing about place. Other angles are possible:
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Asheville and Environs The Blue Ridge Parkway Association in Asheville, NC National Park Service website for Great Smoky Mountains National Park John Warnock's partial list of possible field trips/outings/encounters near Asheville Some Films about Appalachia
The Appalachians, dir. Phyllis Geller et al., 2005 (an excellent historical documentary in 3 parts, 3 hours total, prod. Nashville Public Television, sponsored by the Sierra Club) The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken, 2005 (documentary, produced by The American Experience, the powerful story of the family said to have invented country music in a region just a few miles north of Asheville (See John Warnock's list of possible field trips above for a possible trip to a performance at the Carter Family Fold.) Matewan, John Sayles 1987 (Not quite a documentary, but the next thing to it, about a famous coal miners' strike in Matewan,West Virginia in 1920 and its suppression) Black Diamonds: Mountain Top Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice, dir. Catherine Pancake 2006. (One of the most powerful documentaries on this subject) Agee, Ross Spears 1980 ( nominated for Academy Award as Best Feature Documentary. See also To Render a Life, Ross Spears 1992, nominated as Best Documentary of the Year, 1993, which features the descendants of the people featured in Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) Stranger with a Camera, dir. Elizabeth Barrett 2000 (tells the story of a Canadian documentary film maker who was shot and killed by a local person while filming in Appalachia) Strangers and Kin: A History of the Hillbilly Image, dir. Herb E. Smith 1984 (considers the controversial work of a native photographer who has portrayed the lives of poor rural whites in Appalachia) Open Windows, dir. Anne Lewis 1991 (celebration of Appalachian cultures other that the Scots-Irish) Many other excellent documentary films are available through Appalshop, a culture and media group in Whitesburg, Kentucky that got its start in 1969 as a youth project in the War on Poverty and is now a major repository and sponsor of culture and media projects on Appalachia.
Thunder Road, dir. Arthur Ripley 1958 (A Korean war vet comes home and takes over the family moonshining business.) Deliverance, dir. John Boorman 1972 (Based on novel of same name by James Dickey, who also wrote the screenplay and changed the novel in ways that got him accused of playing to hillbilly stereotypes) Songcatcher, dir. Maggie Greenwald 2000 (A professor of the English ballad is passed over for promotion and heads for Appalachia where she hears some extraordinary music and makes some significant discoveries about music and herself) O Brother, Where Art Thou, dir. Joel Coen, 2000 (The Odyssey is given a writer's credit on this film. See also the excellent Down from the Mountain, 2000, documentary and concert film featuring artists who contributed the wonderful music for O Brother, Where Art Thou? The concert was held on May 24, 2000 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee) Cold Mountain, dir. Anthony Minghella 2003 (From the novel of same name by Charles Frazier about a deserter from the Confederate army trying to get home to his love in a war-torn world) Cultural Centers Highlander Research and Education Center, New Market, TN (descendant of the adult education school founded in 1932 by Myles Horton and Don West and attended by Rosa Parks, among others, still going strong in grass roots organizing, two hours or so west from here) Carter Family Fold, Hiltons, VA (2 hours or so north, concerts and clogging on Saturday nights throughout the Bread Loaf summer) Swannanoa Gathering (1/2 hour east at Warren Wilson College, July 5 - August 8, one-week classes devoted to Traditional Song, Celtic, Fiddle, Guitar, Old Time, Dulcimer, Contemporary Folk - and concerts) National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site Heritage Protection Service site on the Civil War (National Park Service) Appalachian Regional Studies Center at Radford University, Radford VA (4 hours) Museum of Appalachia at Norris, Tennessee, "a working museum of frontier and mountain pioneer life in Appalachia" -Wikipedia (3 hours) The Foxfire Museum, Mountain City, GA, "focuses on Appalachian life and is rooted in the work that hundreds of high school students, in The Foxfire Magazine classes, have put into documenting their local history." (2 hours) Dollywood, Pigeon Forge, TN (2 hours or so southwest). The entertainment park of an American icon. Cherokee Sites Official website of the Cherokee Nation Museum of the Cherokee Indian, in Cherokee, NC (1 1/2 hours southwest) Coal Mining Gracie Stover's website on Coal Mining in West Virgina Citizen's Coal Council site on mountaintop removal strip mining in Appalachia A piece on the history of coal mining in Appalachia by Breece D' J' Pancake Miscellaneous Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge TN, 3 hours west, where the uranium for the Hiroshima bomb was enriched and federally sponsored scientific work goes on apace. Tennessee Valley Authority, reservoirs and dam sites US Census Bureau's Quickfacts on North Carolina Suggest a link: Email John_Warnock@breadnet.middlebury.edu |
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Writing Links - These sites might be useful to you this summer or later in any teaching of writing about place. EnviroArts: Orion Online, described as "a collaboration between The EnviroLink Network and The Orion Society. This site is home to the best of the Environmental Arts, featuring essays, poetry, interviews, and portfolios gleaned largely from the pages of the award-winning magazines: Orion and Orion Afield. This site is updated frequently, so check back often for new additions!" Planeta.com, an eco-tourism dot com site that invites submission of writing about place (See their guidelines). Site linked to writing samples and to a bibliography of academic books exploring the idea of ecotourism. Advice to journalists on writing about place by a consultant to The Poynter Institute (the motto of which is "Everything you need to be a better journalist"). Two interesting essays presented at the Media, Environment and Tourism Conference held in 2001: "'Place' as a determinant of travel and focus for travel writing," by Herb Hiller, examines the difference between ideas of "place" and "destination," and Banff Heritage Tourism, by Holly Quan, which develops the idea of "heritage tourism" as requiring a sense of "place." American Cultural Landscapes, from Library of Congress's American Memory project. "Presenting the Nation's Cultural Geography: 1790-1920," essay by geographer Donald Dahmann, George Washington University, as part of the American Memory project. Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (UK), an interesting window on the current fermet in the field of geography. An issue of Social Research Update (1993) that offers an annotated list of academic works exploring issues in ethnographic writing. Three websites developed by teachers that offer a range of ideas for writing about place assignments:
Suggest a link: Email John_Warnock@breadnet.middlebury.edu |