Just a followup with the complete reading assignment for Friday (1/22), which includes:
1) pp. 253-291 from Green Philosophy by Roger Scruton, linked in a PDF to the course site at http://susquehannacountry.blogs.bucknell.edu/files/2016/01/Scruton-Oikophilia.pdf
(2) pp. 1-41 in Radical Hope by Jonathan Lear, which is available from the bookstore.
Sorry we didn’t have the whole assignment in the last note, but you can in future always check reading assignments on the course website, susquehannacountry.blog.bucknell.edu, under the reading schedule tab.
This week’s readings include two different philosophical perspectives on place, to stimulate thoughtful discussion for Friday’s class and for your blogs due Sunday at midnight. Lear is writing on place and landscape in relation to Native American culture, which is especially relevant to our opening semester discussions about Native American culture in the Susquehanna Valley. It address issues of radical separation from home landscape due to violence, and how that affects a sense of identity, and how a relation to place can also provide resilience in such situations. This is also very relevant to events globally today.
Scruton is writing about oikophilia or love of place, which he describes as a necessary foundation for a deep environmentalism. He sees this love of place as existing at the intersection of experience of beauty and experience of piety or sacredness. For Scruton, both those types of experiences (which he seeks to define) together constitute meaningful environment and quality of life. His reflections are especially relevant today to the Susquehanna Valley, which has been hit hard across centuries by cultural upheaval, economic stress, and industrial development, but to which many of its residents remain very attached.
For Friday’s class, please also create your own blogsite at http://www.blogs.bucknell.edu
Just log in and follow instructions. If you have any problems or questions, please let us know. Then share your blogsite’s URL with us on an email. We’ll link it to the class website. Also, please make sure that your privacy settings allow others at Bucknell to read your blog posts. We’ll be reading each other’s blogs throughout the semester.
Finally, by Sunday night post your first blog. Please write at least 700 words in which you compare a point from Lear (with page number) to a point from Scruton (with a page number). Be as specific as possible. Please avoid long quotations and don’t summarize, but analyze–address why they have a different or similar view on the points you have chosen, and why that is significant. Please also avoid the first person, and remember the old writing adage “show don’t tell.” We’ll discuss this more in class on Friday, too, before the assignment is due. Blogs throughout the semester will be graded on a 1 to 10 point scale, with 10 being outstanding. The rubric involves up to 3 points for a clear thesis, up to 4 points for good use of specifics from the text(s) being discussed, and 3 points for good editing. Late blogs will not be accepted, to be fair to everyone, since we’ll be going over them in class.