Communication

Build communication skills to motivate and collaborate with diverse and/or conflicting constituencies

Homework 1: Visualization Blog

Write a post on the class blog about a data presentation you saw recently (250ish words). Include a link and a picture/screenshot of the presentation. Make sure to address:

  • what data is being shown
  • who you think the audience is
  • what you think the goals of the data presentation are
  • whether you think it is effective or not and why

Journals

In many fields, the journal (or sketchbook, field notebook, or lab book) is an important aid both to the process of research and discovery, and to the documentation of that process and its product, the findings, in more formal papers or books.

Your journal is a place to begin puzzling out some of the ideas that you will explore further in each of four assignments: Select A Site; Natural Processes; Change Over Time; and Traces and Trends. The first step in preparing to write the journal is to read the guide for that assignment: to familiarize yourself with what the assignment is asking you to do; to figure out what kind of background information and evidence you will need to accomplish that task. You will gather that information and evidence in class discussion, in the required readings, and on field trips.

Essay 3

Your third essay, like the second essay, should explore a question or problem that has emerged from your reading. You may not be able to arrive at an answer or a solution, but over the course of your essay, you should at least be able to refine the central question or identify a range of solutions for your problem. By the end of your third essay, your readers should be able to see what they have gained by exploring this question or problem with you. Stay close to the texts as you explore your chosen issue. Do not wander through the theoretical stratosphere.

Essay 2

You will need to choose two texts to consider in this paper (see below guidelines for a list of works that you may select from), but you should not write an open-ended comparison of the two texts; instead, you should choose an issue or theme that emerges in both of them. Most of you will end up working with writers who share many basic values; you will need to read and think carefully to uncover meaningful distinctions between them.

Essay 1

Purpose of assignment:

  • To focus your attention as you read and think about a particular work.
  • To help you distinguish between observed details and the ideas that emerge from those details.
  • To ensure that your own ideas are rooted in specific textual evidence.

William Cronon's "The Trouble with Wilderness; or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature"

Select one or two paragraphs from Cronon’s essay and examine the full range of connections to one other reading from our syllabus. Your own commentary should be 200-300 words long. Be sure to include textual evidence from “The Trouble with Wilderness” and the other work that you consider in your commentary

 

Introductory Exercise

Search your memory for an encounter with a particular bird (it does not need to be a close encounter). Devote one page of your exercise to your description of the bird and its action. Do not include your thoughts or your feelings about the encounter on this page, but do try to evoke the entire sensory experience.

Historiographical Essay

For the historiographical essay, you may select your own topic (and within that a framing question) from among those considered in the course. Students should also develop a useful bibliography on the topic. The expectation is that you will encompass a major literature while demonstrating the ability to think critically about the theories and methods engaged by other historians to answer the question you have posed. You should organize the paper around this question, giving careful consideration to why different historians sometimes answer important questions in such different ways.

Book Review Assignments

The first two writing assignments for this course are to select two of the books we are reading in class and complete a 3–4 page review of them. If there is another book you wish to review, this is fine as long as you seek permission in advance. Such a review should accomplish three things:

Pages

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