Climate Consciousness and Environmental Activism in Composition

Book excerpt: Now more than ever—in a time when Americans still do not believe that humans are the primary cause of Earth's climate change crisis, the burden on educators to inform, challenge, and motivate students about sustainability is greater than it ever has been. On college campuses, writing intensive courses, often located within First-Year or General Education curricula, are an ideal place to take up this charge because of the flexibility of their content and the high volume of students that they reach. In this volume, a varied group of composition instructors with wide ranges and types of experiences provides best practices for bringing issues surrounding climate change into the writing classroom. From literature-based composition and creative writing courses to design thinking workshops to seminars "against sustainability," the authors in this volume lay out a multitude of possibilities for blending writing and environmental concerns that fellow practitioners can easily adopt or modify for their own use.