For your second paper, you will revise, elaborate, and expand upon your first writing assignment (paying particular attention to the feedback you received on that assignment), integrating texts, concepts, and frameworks from the course.

This class has engaged two key definitions of nature: as inherent qualities/characteristics (i.e. human nature), and as space/place (i.e. wilderness)—and where those two definitions sometimes meet. Further, we have been exploring the co-constitutive relationship between nature and culture; that is, how nature and culture produce one another.

This assignment asks you to write a clear, critical essay in which you analyze an experience in/of “nature” that addresses either of the senses in which we’ve been using that word.

You may continue to expand directly on the “nature” experience you wrote about in your first paper, or you can write about a different one. If you are expanding your first paper, you can keep some of what you have already written, but it should be edited and revised. Don’t just tack more writing on to the end!

You will need to articulate an argument; an argument is a claim that is supported by evidence. Your argument should answer the question:

How and why are “nature” and “culture” being produced, and what is the relationship between the two concepts?

* Be sure to clearly delineate how “nature” is being culturally defined, and how your understanding of “nature” is represented.

Necessary to your analysis is a consideration of this question:

What ideologies are imbedded in the experience you’re analyzing? To what end/what are the stakes?

* support that argument using your own analysis — and research if you would like — as well as course texts (3)

Your assignment should be approximately 1200 words in length (about five double spaced typed pages).