For generations, the passage west and notions of wilderness have provided resonant subject matter for American writers. In the words of Wallace Stegner, “the wilderness idea is something that has helped form our character and certainly shaped our history as a people.” But if that idea is rooted in perceived notions of untouched earth, today it has more to do with managed landscapes that require constant human intervention. The course will investigate the evolution in our ideas of wilderness and how such thinking has been expressed in American literature. Reading will range from the sublime to the satirical and include work by John Muir, Henry Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Sam Shepard.