For a variety of reasons, the idea of Yellowstone - America’s first National Park - will never die. As a cultural phenomenon, limning nature and culture, the iconic status of Yellowstone will forever be part of and infused into the American psyche. This paper will be an attempt to look at how and in what way Yellowstone is indelibly linked to the way we think about and look at nature. Knowingly or unwittingly, we recognize the full trajectory of its importance - from its inception to the present day. And, perhaps, now, more than ever, the idea of Yellowstone contributes to the understanding of 21st century sustainability.
About the presenterSaundra Tara Weiss
Saundra Tara Weiss is an Associate Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College / The City University of New York, where she teaches a variety of literature courses, and also serves as the Associate Academic Director/ESL of the Reading and Writing Center and is the co-founder of Kingsborough’s Award Winning Eco-Festival. In 2009, she was invited to facilitate a program on contemporary writing on the environmental crises sponsored by The New York Council for the Humanities. She has been published in Phenomenological Inquiry and the Mid-Atlantic Almanack, where she focuses on images of environmental degradation of the American landscape in visual arts and photography that are thematically representative of today’s environmental crises. Her paper Passion’s Delirium, Passion’s Torment - a Discussion of One Woman’s Arousal in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening appears in Volume CX11 of Analecta Husserliana. In MAPACA, she serves as Area Chair of Environment and Culture.