WRD 283 Environmental Writing is an undergraduate course designed to help students “develop the knowledge, critical thinking skills, and multimodal literacies that define writing practices in the environmental community.” Through relevant topics such as eco-justice, environmental racism, and the gendered politics of environmentalism, students read and write across a range of genres to learn how to reach and engage diverse audiences in these contemporary issues.
This Spring, WRD 283 will be taught by Dr. Deborah Rintels Weiner, a professor who has taught writing at DePaul for over a decade. We sat down with Dr. Weiner to learn more about this environment-focused course.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your interest in teaching WRD 283.
I’ve been teaching writing at DePaul for 11 years and many more teaching English. My interest in teaching the Environmental Writing course is that I’m really interested in the power of rhetoric and how we can use actionable writing to initiate change. That could mean a change in perception, but it could also be a change in terms of changing habits or voting practices. That’s pretty powerful. I think it’s powerful for students to understand the messages that they’re receiving and be able to deconstruct and decode those messages for themselves.
How would you describe WRD 283?
WRD 283 Environmental Writing is a class that teaches environmental writing, which I perceive as actionable writing. We’ll do assignments such as nature writing, where we engage with our environment and learn to see by studying authors and writers like Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold and many others, because before we’re able to think about how to save our environment, we have to first see it. From there, we’ll be writing blogs as part of an academic non-profit organization, HumansAndNature.org, where we’ll be contributing to their “Essential Questions” series on topics such as, “Is fracking a human rights violation?” or “what does a good ancestor look like?” So students will not just write in the class for each other or for me, but they will really be writing in the world and contributing to other scholars and academics in the field who are really thinking about these questions.
From there, we’re going to be looking at advocacy speeches and people who have made very strong environmental action speeches, including people as young as Greta Thunberg, who has gotten incredible attention for her age, but also Al Gore and Dalai Lama and other strong environmental voices of our time.
How can students make use of what they learn in WRD 283 beyond the course—in other classes, extracurriculars, or the workplace?
The last project is grant writing. When I’m not a professor at DePaul, I work for a foundation where I am the Director of Grant Management and Director of Operations. My other job is writing grants, and that is a skill that I feel like is a really important and usable skill. There is a lot of money out there for organizations that need it, and to be able to be that person to bring the money and the need together is a critical skill that I feel is probably the best takeaway from this class.
What makes you excited about teaching WRD 283?
I feel like, more than ever, we live in a time where understanding the power of rhetoric, the power of writing, the power over us as well as the power we can wield over others, is incredibly crucial. This course will help students decode what they’re seeing and hearing, looking at issues in a way that deconstructs the rhetorical elements around them and really speaks to what people are trying to do and the motivations behind that. If you understand your counterargument, undoubtedly you will have a stronger argument. These are skills that transcend environmental conservation issues and can lead to other arenas outside of academia.
WRD 283 Environmental Writing will run Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:20-12:50 pm, during Spring Quarter 2020.