Landscape and the body in Mary Karr's Lit

Our goal is to use Mary Karr's memoir Lit as the lens through which we consider landscape, ecofeminism, writing the body, and women-focused ways of being/seeing. We do this, in part, anticipating that Karr's voice will be distinctly different from Terry Tempest Williams, allowing an alternate, yet equally provocative lens for experiencing self in the world.

Body Earth -- Karen Morrill-Bryan
Fishing Spaces -- by Diane Embry
21 Meditations on the Catholic Body -- Trisha Collopy
Righting: Women-Focused Ways of Seeing and Being -- Elizabeth Brenner

Three Views of the 35W Bridge Disaster

Disasters are a global reality – occurring all over the world on various scales. As we read A Paradise Built in Hell, our group, which focused on the ideas of home and community, decided to examine a disaster that occurred in our home state of Minnesota. On August 1st, 2007, the 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring many others. Our mission in this blog post is to provide three different ways of thinking about the collapse of the bridge using our own experiences, thoughts, research and creative work surrounding the bridge collapse, what caused it, and its aftermath.


Part 1: Lorna Hanson

Part 2: Caitlin Thompson

Part 3: Kendra Cuthbertson

Questions of environment, wilderness, and spirit

“Out of shared imagination comes collaboration. Out of collaboration comes community.”

- Terry Tempest Williams

As we individually witness landscape through the lens of Terry Tempest Williams and related texts, we ask questions about wilderness, nature, environment, and spirit. We explore these questions through our individual voices, voices which were shaped by listening and imagining together. 

What makes a place sacred? - Mary Caruso
What is this call to co-create? - Jen Gehrig
What stirs the frozen blood? - Nuria Sheehan 
Which calls do we listen for, and how do we then respond? - Dana Hoeschen