Tag Archives: Flight Behavior

Nature Lit Has Healed for Centuries

For years my Intro to Lit class has had a nature theme.

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Kingsolver Explains Climate Denial

Rush Limbaugh has been calling Hurricanes Harvey and Irma liberal conspiracies. In “Flight Behavior,” Barbara Kingsolver shows the dangerous impact of such pronouncements.

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To Save Planet, Scientists Must Protest

Saturday’s March for Science is a sign that scientists are realizing they don’t have the luxury of remaining aloof from politics. Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior” explores the issue.

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Teaching Euripides in the Age of Title IX

Recently a student reported me for using sexist language in the classroom. (This while teaching a Kingsolver novel and Euripides’s “The Bacchae.”) The language did not reflect my own views, but the complaint made me realize that I need to be more careful with this generation of students.

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Using Lit to Discover Purpose in Science

My Intro to Literature students, few of whom are English majors, are often startled to discover that literature understands them better than they understand themselves. Today’s post describes the encounters between two science majors and, respectively, Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” and Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior.”

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A Talk with a Cli-Fi Activist

Dan Bloom, inventor of the term cli-fi for climate fiction, tirelessly advocates for such fiction, regarding it as indispensable in the struggle to save the human race. I interview him in today’s blog.

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Monarchs & Ezekiel’s Burning Coals of Fire

Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior” shows us Baptists farmers, not normally friends of environmentalists, turning to religious language to save the environment.

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The Peace of Wild Things

My Intro to Literature class explored how a disconnect from nature leads to existential anguish while opening themselves up to nature provides spiritual nourishment.

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Kingsolver Tries to Save the Planet

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012), which I’m currently teaching in my Introduction to Literature class. It fits well with my theme, which is “Humans in Nature,” and I certainly agree with Kingsolver’s point that climate change is one of the greatest dangers facing humankind. I just have […]

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