My dissertation establishes a literacy of place as a key foundation for quasi-critical composition pedagogies in environment and ecology. My work is to augment the ideas of both critical pedagogies and ecocomposition to reduce the reticence students have in engaging in these curricula (paradigms?). I look to reinforce the critical, activist notions of scholars like Paolo Friere and Ira Shor, while establishing a certain respect for the ideologies students bring into the classroom with them. I also revisit the work of early ecocompositionists, respond to some contemporary criticisms of the movement, and present place literacy as one positive approach to environment- and ecology-based writing pedagogies. I argue that a strong literacy of place will awaken students to the exigency of engaging with environmental issues in the writing classroom. I also argue that place literacy is fundamental when engaging with community partners in service learning and other forms of public writing.
Writing classrooms are already crowded spaces. Not only are writing instructors responsible for teaching traditional rhetorical principles, but we must also translate these principles to the myriad of technologies with which our students interact throughout their university education and beyond. Why, then, should we consider a literacy of place as additional material to cover? For one, the same thinkers that established the value of rhetorical education also felt strongly about the foundational nature of place. Both Plato and Aristotle were devout proponents of understanding place, convinced it was the starting point of a sound education. Place, considered as an affective, formative rhetorical concept, has as much bearing on writing instruction as other more traditional rhetorical pursuits.
In my first chapter, I perform a historical trace of place as a concept, starting early with classical rhetoricians Plato and Aristotle before moving to contemporary philosophical and geographical understandings of place. Place is primarily considered, in these early appearances, as a phenomenological concept most concerned with issues of origin, ontology, and identity. These concepts eventually led to concerns for place seen in early theory of geography, where the physicality of a place became its most important characteristic. The study of place eventually began account for how sociological and cultural factors are also strong determinants in how a place becomes.
Chapter two covers the role of place in environmental rhetoric and ecocomposition. I examine the role of place in early ecological theories of writing (Cooper, Coe) before transitioning to how place figures into more traditional environmental writing like Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. It is here that I begin to bridge the phenomenological, social, and physical approaches to place common outside our discipline with the work of those whose writing speaks primarily to teachers of writing.
In my third chapter, I examine place across a trio of pedagogical approaches in which concepts of place are inherent, but not always explicit. The first is how place works when studying designed, wherein students are asked to look at how buildings and urban landscapes are designed to induce specific actions in the people who inhabit them. The second examines how community engagement is steeped in place, and how despite this fact, there isn’t a large push to teach place as a literacy alongside these projects. The third approach I examine involves more general instance of public writing, and how place is primarily considered only implicitly in these curricula.
I use chapter four to position place as a timely augmentation to critical pedagogy, and show why it works to improve critical approaches in the classroom. I also use this chapter to establish the environment as a course theme that bears an almost universal exigency for all students. I examine the criticisms ecocomposition has received when incorporated as a pedagogy of environmental awareness, and demonstrate how a literacy of place helps to focus many of the narratives at play in ecocomposition.
Chapter five looks at my curricular incorporation of place. In it I examine traditional rhetorical writing instruction, and position place as a fundamental part of it. I develop the concept of place as literacy (concept of a literacy of place) more fully. I examine how place fits into the NCTE guidelines for rhetorical writing instruction, and try to answer why it has never been a prominent pursuit in our discipline. I talk about the experiences I’ve had working with community partners in the classroom, both as a student and an instructor. I argue that students are much more willing to engage and commit to community service projects and public writing when the course is framed as an exploration of place, and a literacy of place is one of the primary rhetorical foci.
Jonathan Wallin 