Write an essay of approximately 1500 words (5 typed, double-spaced pages) describing your perceptions and experiences of an “edgeland,” or of an ecological contact zone between the human and the non-human. How do you engage with this space? You may wish to use the essays by Kathleen Jamie, by Don McKay or by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts as examples or models. What form or style should your own essay take up? Remember, too, that your paper must have a focused argument: what key point do you want to make about the intersection of the natural and the human?
Write a critical description of no approximately 1500 words of a photograph by Edward Burtynsky. How does the photograph you choose shape the ways in which we look at land or at landscape? How does Burtynsky use elements of visual form? Can you “read” an image in the same ways that you read or interpret a text? To what end? Remember that your paper must have a focused argument: what key point do you want to make about the intersection of the natural and the human?
Due in class on Friday, January 29.