For the rest of the semester, I propose that we read a variety of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs in order to explore the experiences of people telling their own and other people’s stories throughout history. My suggestions for reading are:

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Our coursework so far has given us a smattering of samples across the nonfiction genre. We've dissected graphic memoirs, criticized criticisms of copyright law, tried to define the nature of reality in a genre that is (let's face it) not exactly real. In light of this, I think it would be interesting to look at reality from a scientific and psychological perspective. If something is a work of creative nonfiction but focuses on scientific "facts," what does that work become (faction? fiction?)? Or if a work focuses on a specific case or example - an isolated incidence - , can it be a "factual" representation of an illness or phenomena as a whole?

 Though I could easily nitpick the entirety of Naess' The Ecology of Wisdom, I am only going to do as much with his essay, "Population Reduction: An Ecosophical View." Naess starts with a true enough observation: that we, the human race, have overpopulated this planet to the detriment of our ecosphere. Logically he says, we must then work on reducing our population over the next few centuries, despite that current politics advocate doing otherwise. He states that "[o]n average, no very great population is required of each culture . . . [and that] huge numbers tend to reduce the manifold" (304). So by increasing our population, we not only destroy the environment, but our cultures as well (more people lead to more fractures).