Unit 3

Alan Thein Durning--"The Conundrum of Consumption"

Alan Thein Durning's "The Conundrum of Consumption" is a chapter in his book How Much is Enough?  The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth (1992).  He is the founder of the Northwest Environmental Watch. 

Erik Reece--"Death of a Mountain"

Erik Reece is a lecturer within our own department at UK.  His essay "Death of a Mountain" was published in Harper's Magazine and is part of his book Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness.  Reece has since published an additional article in Harper's on "Jesus Without the Miracles," an essay on mountaintop removal in Orion Magazine, and he has helped in promoting the documentary Sludge.

Wendell Berry--"Economy and Pleasure"

Wendell Berry, Kentucky's foremost writer, is a poet and a farmer who lives in eastern Kentucky.  He has written a variety of novels, books of poetry, and essays.

Omri Elisha--"God is in the Retails:  Why Does Evangelical Christian Capitalism Seem So Strange to the Rest of the World?"

Elisha is a staff writer for The Revealer, an online publication of Columbia University's theology department.

Alexis de Tocqueville--"Why Americans are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity"

Unit 4

Henry David Thoreau--"On Civil Disobedience"

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--"Letter from Birmingham Jail"

John Milton--selections from Areopagitica

John Milton, one of England's great writers, wrote against the Parliament's Licensing act.  Milton lived during the English Civil War, and he wrote a great deal of political tracts and theological treatises.  Of course, his best known work is Paradise Lost.

Cornell West--"Introduction to Race Matters"

Cornell West is a lecturer at Harvard University and a highly regarded public intellectual.  He is a founding figure in cultural studies, and has written widely on African American culture and literature.