The National Consortium of Environmental Rhetoric and Writing exists in the generative and contested discursive space at the intersections among environment, industry, and capitalism. Its roots are planted in the Writing Across Communities Initiative and associated public events, collaborations, and courses at the University of New Mexico, and it is strongly informed by legacies of political and environmental activism.

NCERW Timeline

A (Personal) Narrative History of NCERW's Roots

This has to be my personal narrative history of the NCERW's roots, and inevitably, the story branches out in directions that I can't speak to, because I took the conversation and my part in it with me after I left the University of New Mexico, where it seems like it all began. First, who am I?

I am Erin Gallegos - a child of the Southwest and a lover of many places. I earned my MA from the University of New Mexico Department of English's Rhetoric and Writing Program in Spring 2011, where my research interests always fell at the nexus of language, place, and identity. I was a coordinator of the Writing Across Communities program at UNM during a very productive and generative time, and I was privileged to have worked with and learned from many incredible individuals, some of whom I'll introduce you to below. I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand from 2012-2015, and I've worked as a technical and professional writer, a teacher and trainer, and a communications consultant. I have a background in chemistry and love science, but I am more and more concerned about environmental and social justice. Today, I live in Prague. Next month, it will be Amsterdam. Although I'm out of academia, I will be managing this website and occasionally contributing to the conversation through the blog.

For now, here's one possible history of the NCERW.

I was a student in Michelle Hall Kells's Writing and Cultural Studies class in the fall of 2008. It was a rich course, made all the more so by the political environment of the 2008 election. I was not yet there to earn a degree, but because I had graduated with a Bachelor's the previous spring, and hadn't yet felt ready to give up learning. Many others who became very important in my own experience of Writing Across Communities and in my classroom research and teaching on place and identity were also associated with that course. In fact, it was the generative conversations of that course that led me to enter the Rhetoric and Writing program, to join the Writing Across Communities Initiative, and to become one small node in a growing institutional conversation on Environmental Rhetoric and Writing.

Beth Leahy was another non-degree student in that class. Dan Cryer was then an MA student who came once to the Writing and Cultural Studies course to lead a discussion at Michelle's behest, and he was present at the lecture that Kent Ryden gave on "Place-Based Learning and Writing Across Communities," and which our class had been (strongly) encouraged to attend. On the day that Kent Ryden came to lecture, I mentioned to Dan that I was contemplating applying to the Rhetoric and Writing Program. Dan encouraged me to do so, convincing me that the UNM English department was a ripe place for me to explore my interests in place, culture, and identity. In the end, Beth and I applied to the program in the same semester, began the program together the following fall, and graduated together in 2011.

In some ways these personal connections are insignificant, and yet in others, they represent the cultural ecology that developed in the department and through the Writing Across Communities program and the students who sustained it. Those of us who began the program with any interest in Writing Across Communities were immediately absorbed into the lively ecosystem and given roles to play within it. And that ecosystem has continued to respond to pressures and challenges and opportunities. Below, I chronicle the development of the UNM Writing the World Conference from its humble beginnings as an experimental Earth Day Conference in Spring 2010. I also reflect on my personal journey through coursework and research. It would be impossible to share my part in the NCERW without sharing some of the meandering I've done as an explorer in this intellectual and rhetorical landscape. Furthermore, as much as possible, I've tried to name those responsible for carrying on this conversation, and provided links where possible to their current work or profiles, because wherever they are, they are still active members of a lively discourse on environmental rhetoric and writing.

***

The Earth Day Conference Experiment: In Spring 2010, Michelle Kells was on sabbatical and Gregory Evans-Haley was coordinating Writing Across Communities. A few of us decided that we'd like to put on a conference for Earth Day. It was an idea bandied about by my office mate, Rick Raab-Faber and a few others, but as I was eavesdropping, I came on board. In the end, Greg, Paul Formisano, Rick Raab-Faber and I took a "Well, why the hell not?" approach to putting on an interdisciplinary conference for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, with very little money and the kind of support that can only be rounded up by overly enthusiastic students at the very last minute. We composed a call for papers, developed a list of regional departments that we thought might have interested students, and started soliciting presentations and papers. In the end, we had a small, half-day conference with a keynote by Bruce Milne of the UNM Sustainability Studies program, a single presenter from another state, and a big sense of accomplishment.

Buoyed by our success, we did it again in Spring 2011, managing to fill a full day program with graduate student speakers from across the Southwest. Once again, Writing Across Communities members did the work to connect the dots, envision the program, shape the conversation. Paul and Rick, along with Leslie Fishburn-Clark, Michaelann Nelson, Sara B. Love, Brian Hendrickson, and Elizabeth Caldwell Miller sat on the conference steering committee and gave hours of time to creating programs, soliciting presentations, and developing promotional materials. Gary Harrison, who has taught many courses on environmental and place-based literature--including Writing Nature and Literary Topographies, joined our advisory panel and offered invaluable support. Jimmie Killingsworth gave the keynote address, excerpted from the just published Going Back to Galveston: Nature, Funk, and Fantasy in a Favorite Place. Scott Sanders hosted a reception in the evening, and we celebrated the connections we'd made across disciplines, departments, and professional spaces with music and enchiladas.

Environmental Rhetoric and Writing in the Classroom: Throughout my MA program, I was drawn to courses and projects that allowed me to explore language, place, and identity. I took both Literary Topographies (Fall 2009) and Writing Nature (Fall 2010) with Dr. Harrison, and an Environmental Justice (Fall 2010) course with David Correia in American Studies. In addition, in Fall 2010, I taught a Freshman Learning Community course, "The Biology of Toxins" with biology professor Eric Toolson, and was thrilled to be able to lead my students through discussions of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Sandra Steingraber's Having Faith.

At the same time that we were organizing the second Earth Day Conference in Spring 2011, many of us in the Writing Across Communities circle were taking a course on Environmental Rhetoric from Michelle, and keeping a collective blog documenting our encounters with the works of Barry Lopez, Lawrence Buell, Rachel Carson, Walter Beale, David Suzuki, and others. The conversation was energizing, political, and broad. Furthermore, it required that we get out of the classroom and write about our own encounters with the Environment. Dan and I dragged our significant others to Chaco Canyon for a camping trip, a self-imposed requirement of the course.

Spring 2011 marked the end of my official association with UNM, but it has been impossible not to be drawn back in by the gravity generated by the energy and deep commitments of students who continued these conversations. After I left, the conversation morphed and grew, drawing in additional contributors and moving in new directions.

Earth Day Conference becomes Writing the World Symposium: In 2012, Writing Across Communities members envisioned and executed the "Writing the World Symposium," which grew out of the Earth Day Conference and an earlier Working with Writers and Civil Rights symposia. As the Writing the World Symposium grew along with the Writing Across Communities initiative in subsequent years, its priorities also diversified, and greater emphasis on community, minority and civil rights, inclusion, and social justice became part of the conversation.

• In 2012, Brian Hendrickson along with Deb Paczynski led Writing Across Communities graduate students in an ambitious endeavor: executing the first "Writing the World" Symposium, bringing Allen D. Kanner, Paul Kei Matsuda, Michele Eodice, and Judith Hendry as keynote speakers. Steering committee members included Cathy Arellano, Leslie Fishburn-Clark, Anna Knutson, Ann Lyn Hall, Jamal Martin, Don McIver, Elissia Julia Torres, Lawrence Roybal, Trevor Schmitt, Estela Vasquez, and Genevieve Garcia Mueller.

• Christine Garcia chaired the 2013 Writing the World Symposium, with help from a steering committee comprised of: Clare Russell, Camila Valdez, Leslie Fishburn-Clark, Don McIver, Matthew Tougas, Matt Harris, Lindsey Ives, John Crawford, Mellisa Huffman, Carlos Contreras, Akusua Akoto, and Rachel Munger.

• The 2014 Writing the World Symposium was organized by Writing Across Communities co-captains Matthew Tougas and Clare Russell, and in 2015, the symposium was folded into the UNM Shared Knowledge Conference.

Chicano Ecology Course Integrates Conversations on Rhetoric and Environmental Justice: In 2014, Michelle Kells put together a graduate seminar exploring Chicano/Latin American Ecology and environmental writing through rhetorical theory. The course examined diverse textual representations of the environment as exigences for social action with materials focusing on both Latin America and US-Mexico border. As part of the mission to create a community of environmental thinkers and to cultivate opportunities for considering our roles as citizens, activists, scholars (of place), the students maintained the Chicano Ecology Blog.

Conferences, Conversations, Collaborations: At RSA 2012, Michelle Kells sat on a Panel with Jimmie Killingsworth, Paul Formisano, and Dan Cryer, and began drafting the first outlines of the NCERW. In 2014, Michelle raised the idea formally at RSA 2014 in San Antonio, and found that there was interest and a desire to move forward, although at the normal pace of academe. Together, Michelle and Robert Affeldt proposed their 2016 RSA panel as the official inaugural meeting of the NCERW. In January 2016, Susan Gilbertz, now at Montana State University (and a colleague of Michelle's and Jimmie Killingsworth's from TAMU over two decades ago!), joined as the NCERW Regional Co-Chair for the Northwest Region.

NCERW is the outcome of eight years of local and national coalition building, scholarship, curriculum development, and community outreach through Earth day conferences, colloquia, and national conferences, and personal affinity for people, places, and prose.

Mural on the Local 890 Union Hall in Baird, New Mexico, honoring the Chino mine strikers of "La huelga de los obreros Mexicanos de 1950."