I spent the Spring 2025 semester teaching ART 180/INTD 170: Narrative, Creative Storytelling, and Brown Identities in the U.S. As the topic for the class, I chose: Nature and Walking as Creative Methods for Personal Narrative.

 

The course introduced students to a range of storytelling methods for interpreting and engaging with the natural world. By the end of the course, students were expected to be familiar with the basic methods of “close looking”; be able to engage in critical discussions about contemporary art and writing; and be familiar with a range of writers and artists of color working today. 

 

My hope was that students would gain an understanding of how to bring personal narrative and themes of cultural identity into their own writing and artwork that included plants, nature, walking, and the city. 

 

We read a number of texts, including poetry and essays, and studied the work of artists across mediums, from photography to painting to illustration. These writers and artists, though differing in their specific subject matters and artistic approaches, all considered the significance of nature as a way to understand cultural identity, major life chapters, humans’ impact on the environment, and our shared humanity. 

 

During the course of the semester, students told me about the trees that grew in their childhood backyard; the plants they saw around campus; and the persimmons their parents sliced on a plate for them. They homed in on wonder and delight: the sound of wind rushing through bamboo; the sight of surfers at the beach; a cluster of birds of paradise at the Citadel outlet shops. 

 

We read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which imparts so many essential lessons about non-human living beings, our natural environment, and Indigenous teachings. 

 

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: “Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own… “Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.”

 

While teaching this course, I also reflected on my own relationship to nature, something I started doing a lot more during the pandemic. Because I was limited in where I could spend my time in those early months of quarantine, for fear of traveling and getting sick, I spent a lot more time walking the same few stretches in our neighborhood. And that, in turn, inspired me to look more closely at all the trees, bushes, flowers, and plants around me. There were so many things to see — so many natural sights that I only glanced at in pre-pandemic times, when it seemed I was always moving from one thing to the next. 

 

For our final project, I asked that students focus on one plant, or natural element; they were asked to bring in research and personal narrative, along with references to the readings we did in class. Some of the students chose to write a paper, while others opted for a visual art medium (plus a short paper). 

 

I hope it inspires you to look more closely at the nature around you, and to reflect on the ways in which that nature is part of your everyday life. 

 

Please read two examples of student work: