essay #5: the penultimate frontier

Essay #5
• Due Date: Wednesday, 12/2/09
• Length: three to six typed and stapled pages
• Formatting: one-inch margins; 12pt. font, Times New Roman; MLA citation
• Grade: a standard letter grade will be given


I am giving you two options for this assignment:

I. Moser presents the eight-stage Movement Action Plan on page 128 of the Coursepack. How can you utilize this MAP as a lens through which Thompson’s article, “Responsibility…” can be analyzed? In other words, how do some of the philosophies, theories, notions, and ideas—e.g., those concerning nature and man’s relationship to nature, wilderness v. wildness, excessive civilization and the post-natural world, etc.—presented in Thompson’s text connect to the current debate on global warming and environmental repair? How have these ideas influenced our current beliefs about climate change? Where might the dynamic of social movement lead these ecological debates in the future? Lastly, to draw from Moser’s text, how might “ignoring [these] internal dynamics […] possibly lead to failure” (129)?

II. Compare and/or contrast at least two of the following five article choices: (i) Moser and (ii) Thompson, from the Coursepack; (iii) Kallman and (iv) Gore, which were posted on the blog; and (v) the essay you researched and chose for Article Paper #4.