Walking Between the Worlds: A Qualitative Study of Eco-composition within First-Year Composition

This dissertation explores the possibilities for environmental action research within the composition classroom. The project starts with an auto-ethnographic narrative of my personal journey in the interests of this project, which, among other things, endeavors to bring into conversation the discourses of social constructionism (particularly the notion of relational being), ecocriticism, ecocomposition and feminist methodology . My hope with the introduction is to demonstrate how persons (or “creatures” as I like to call them) operate within physical, material, intellectual and cultural environments or systems in order to create discourse and action. In my case, I have created an ecocomposition course within the parameters of the connected learning initiative at Lasell College. The course is a product of both my personal and professional influences and has the potential to engage students in their own discovery and engagement.

The second part of the project involves an examination of the theories informing my discourse. As already mentioned, I will bring into dialogue several aspects of postmodern theory, including social constructionism , feminism (particularly eco-feminism) and various other eco-theories. A strong connection has already been made between social constructionism and ecocomposition by composition theorists, such as Sidney I. Dobrin, Christopher Weisser and others. This work has been invaluable in establishing the notion of place or environment as relevant as social structures in the influence of discourse. However, by engaging a feminist epistemology, I wish open the discussion to the concept of personhood. Just as feminism was vital to the discussion of how gender and difference complicate definitions of personhood, I wish to use my informing theories to consider nature’s “personhood” or “creaturliness” in its (or their) relationship to humanity.

Following this theoretical discussion, I will reflect on the qualitative and feminist methodologies used to gather data and create my course. Then, I will report on the experience of the course as it happens in the spring semester, 2011. I will be using the work gathered from my students along with my own reflections. Furthermore, the students will gather their own data and produce a qualitative narrative.

After writing several papers and participating in various group activities and presentations, students will collectively design a project that will seek to both create an intellectual “environment” for participants at the semester-end college symposium and to collect data for their own individual action research final projects in which they will envision not a perfect world or utopia, but a “good” one – a “eutopia” that reflects the values and concerns of themselves, their classmates, the authors they have read, and the symposium participants. My final analysis of this data will be to reflect on the possibilities for the “creatures” to influence their environments through their relationship within discourse communities.