Choose some manifestation of pastoral thinking in American life or art of any period.  Depending on your interests, you may want to choose a product of high or popular culture (a novel [Huck Finn, White Noise], a children's book [The Little House on the Prairie, The Lorax], a painting [Cole, Bierstadt, Diebenkorn, Norman Rockwell, David Hockney, Tula Telfair], a movie [Tender Mercies, A River Runs Through It, The Color Purple] a TV show [?], a song ["America, the Beautiful," "Rocky Mountain High"] a photograph or set of photographs [Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, Dorothea Lang, Walker Evans]), an item of commerce (a product or a commercial), a cultural institution (Outward Bound, the American Museum of Natural History, the Sierra Club), a historical event or a government policy (The Homestead Act, Wilderness Act of 1964, farm aid, forest fire policy) or a personal experience (farming, gardening, vacation, adventure).  Whatever you choose, think about it as an embodiment of a pastoral ideology as Marx and Buell define it, of some set of assumptions about the relations between human beings and the natural world.  What connections does it make or assume?  What values does it assume or assert?  What sort of behavior does it approve or advocate?  Would you call it simple or complex, or do the terms not apply?

Write a brief essay describing your subject, outlining the version of pastoral it seems to espouse or assume, and offering an evaluation of its cultural or political effect, whether positive or negative.

Class will be devoted to sharing these essays.  Please bring any relevant material with you.