LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 25, 2005) -- A University of Kentucky English lecturer’s essay about the impact of mountaintop removal on the environment and life of Appalachia is featured prominently in the April issue of Harper’s Magazine.
Erik Reece’s piece, “Death of a Mountain,” follows the yearlong mining process that resulted in the leveling of Lost Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky.
Harper’s Magazine is considered one of the leading literary essay magazines in the country.
Interspersed among the journal-like entries that detail the mining process and its impact on the eco-system of the area is a passionate critique of the mining industry permitting process and the communities and people that have depended on the coal industry for generations.
“I came here to see what an eastern mountain looks like before, during and after its transformation into a western desert,” Reece writes in the 19-page essay.
Reece, who has taught writing courses at UK since 1999, is now writing a book about strip mining in Appalachia, based in large part on his reporting and writing about Lost Mountain. He also is writing another piece for Harper’s about Thomas Jefferson and religion in America.
“A strip job is more than a moral failure; it is a failure of the imagination,” Reece writes. “It is time we stopped thinking like those who conquer a mountain and started thinking like the mountain itself.”
Reece’s connection to the Appalachian environment and writing is deep. In addition to his teaching duties at UK, he serves as co-director of the Summer Environmental Writing Program (SEWP) at the UK-owned, 10,000-acre E.O. Robinson Forest.
The four-week summer program allows talented undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to explore different types of writing and the environment in one of the most diverse forests in America.
The students write poetry, essays and journal entries and engage in such interesting activities as bear trapping and flying squirrel trapping. These curriculum activities are done with the cooperation and assistance of the Forestry Department in UK’s College of Agriculture. The courses are interdisciplinary and have attracted students from biology, anthropology and forestry as well as English, Reece’s own department.
Ten students were enrolled in the program in 2004, and Reece would like to see the enrollment at about 15 this year. The deadline for applying for this unique writing program is May 1.
“The Summer Environmental Writing Program in an experiential learning process that allows a group of students to withdraw from the distractions of urban living and write intensely in a pristine, natural setting. SEWP is quite literally a classroom without walls,” Reece said of the program. “In addition, we work to break down disciplinary boundaries between the sciences and the humanities. I see SEWP as a model for what the university might achieve here on campus in terms of writing across the curriculum and understanding the complimentary relationship between the arts and the sciences.”
For more information about the Summer Environmental Writing Program and pictures, go to the Web site.
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