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Guest Speakers
We would like to thank the following
individuals for their time and contributions to our seminar.
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Kem Badger |
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| Dr. Kem
Badger is an associate professor of biology, with emphasis on
botany, at Ball State University. Badger assisted our group
by giving a guided tour through Ginn Woods and Cooper Farm,
both located near Muncie, Indiana. His tour added to our knowledge
of restoring old-growth forests
and understanding the importance of plant life by giving us
a glimpse of what Indiana forests used to look like. |
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Ken
Brunswick |
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Ken Brunswick
is perhaps the most dedicated advocate of the Limberlost
Swamp cause. A former dairy farmer, Brunswick currently
works for the Department of Natural Resources and has devoted
his time to restoring the wetlands
to its original state. He assisted our group in restoring
our part of the Limberlost Swamp by teaching us how to spot
tiles in ditches, survey the landscape, and plant trees. Ken
also gave us a look at what the Limberlost Swamp formerly
looked like and the efforts being made by many people to restore
the swamp. |
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| Dr. Nancy
Carlson is an associate professor and Chairperson of the Department
of Telecommunications. She contributed
to our seminar by giving us a new perspective on Gene
Stratton-Porter with her videotape, Gene Stratton-Porter:
Voice of the Limberlost. She was very influential in answering
our questions about Stratton-Porter and the Limberlost
Swamp. We also enjoyed an activity she gave us, entitled
“You, Too, Can Write a Gene Stratton-Porter Novel!” |
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James Eflin |
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Dr. James Eflin
is an associate professor of natural resources and environmental
management at Ball State University. His interests include
environmental planning, environmental economics and development,
and natural hazards. He helped us get a feel for the scientific
side of the environment, which helped us understand the environmental
dynamics at work in our literature. |
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Gene Frankland |
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| Dr. E.
Gene Frankland has been a professor of political science at
Ball State University since 1972. One of his primary teaching
interests is environmental law and policy, and in fact he edited
The International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
(2001). Because Frankland is heavily involved in both the environment
and the editing process, he was a valuable resource as we began
to plan and create our entries about environmental literature. |
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Martha Hunt |
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Martha Hunt is
an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Ball State
University. She took us through Christy Woods, a nature preserve
on Ball State University campus, to learn different ways of
"reading" the landscape. This helped us to look
creatively at the land and observe its cultural and environmental
history. It also helped us to realize that the land is not
simply a thing to use, but an entity with a history. |
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| N. Scott Momaday is
an internationally renowned Native American writer from the
southwest United States. He visited Ball State during UniverCity,
a multi-cultural educational event held on campus every year.
He took time to speak with our class about writing, environmentalism,
and his Kiowa culture. Though not from Indiana, he offered valuable
insights on how and why a writer is connected to place and why
a resource like ours is important. |
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Scott
Russell Sanders |
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Scott
Russell Sanders is one of the nation’s leading environmental
authors. His work is directly related to nature and is frequently
inspired by his immediate surroundings. Our class was fortunate
enough to spend a Saturday morning with Sanders in his adopted
hometown of Bloomington.
With him, we visited many sites that he's written about, such
as Clear Creek, the setting of his essay “Sanctuary,”
and the Empire State Building limestone quarry, featured in
his book Stone Country. Reading the essays and then
seeing the places that inspired them was a great experience
that made the connection between nature and writing more vivid.
We loved having the chance to meet one of our authors firsthand
and to share the surroundings that so often appear in his
work. |
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Geri Strecker |
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| Dr. Geri
Strecker is an assistant professor of English at Ball State
University. She has made many contributions to literary reference
sources, such as the Masterplots, Reader Reference,
and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Strecker’s
experience with writing concise, accurate, and information-dense
articles guided us in writing our own author entries. |
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David
Wagoner |
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David
Wagoner, award-winning poet, novelist, and a Chancellor
of the Academy of American Poets, spent much of his childhood
in northwestern Indiana. He visited with
us to discuss environmental literature and the importance
of place in a writer's life, asking probing questions like,
"Where is the good place?" Wagoner drew upon experiences
from his own career as a writer, stressing the importance
of growing up in two very different Midwestern towns, one
of them the steel town of Whiting,
Indiana. He delivered a talk to an audience of university
and community members entitled, “Why I'm Still an Indiana
Writer.” |
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| Nationally
recognized naturalist author Ann
Zwinger is a professor of natural history at Colorado College,
natural history consultant, and popular speaker. During her
visit with our seminar, and later in a public talk to the university
and community, she spoke about her experiences of growing up
along the White River in Muncie.
Those experiences, she said, have influenced all of her writings,
and Indiana landscapes have been the reference point against
which she understands all other landscapes. Zwinger also explained
why she does not consider herself an environmental
(but instead a natural history writer), and she joined us in
discussion of what constitutes a "Indiana author."
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