Assignment: You will sign up to present a Literature Analysis of a short story or essay to the class. Your presentation should take a maximum of twenty minutes and should allow for a brief discussion. Your presentation should

• analyze the gender assumptions in the story or essay
• make use of feminist theory to illuminate the way in which gender is understood and used in your example.
• explain how the author does or does not present nature as a partner; does or does not present the possibility that being compassionate with nature is part of being compassionate with people who are sexually, racially or culturally different.

Purpose: Analyzing writings  will help you put theory to work in the world around us.

Method: Choose one of the following texts:

• Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron," 1886
• Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden, 1894
• Mary Austin, Land of Little Rain, 1903; read a chapter
• Rachel Carson, 1907-1964, excerpts
• Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South," 1974
• Terry Tempest Williams, "The Clan of One-Breasted Women" 1991
• Rosemary Radford Reuther, "Ecofeminism and Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth" 1998 lecture

Your presentation should briefly summarize the context and content of the story or essay. Most of your time should be devoted to an eco-feminist analysis, either of the story itself, or of the purpose of the essay.

Assessment: Your Literature Analysis presentation will be graded on the complexity and thoroughness of your analysis, your incorporation of course readings and theories into that analysis, clarity of presentation, and adherence to time limit.