Writing Justice: Teaching Environmental Politics through Experimental Writing (Tanya Matthan)

How can writing facilitate student understandings of and action around environmental in/justice? Joining conversations on radical pedagogies, this paper reflects on modes of teaching environmental politics through the written form. Drawing on the experience of teaching a seminar on water to undergraduates, I outline how instructors might deploy creative writing tools and genres to expand imaginations and instantiations of environmental justice. From diary keeping to speculative story-telling and collaborative manifestos for water justice, introducing students to diverse genres of writing and the stakes thereof.  In this talk, I will discuss strategies of teaching through writing in order to move beyond environmental injustice in the classroom.