David Thomas Sumner

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David Thomas Sumner
Professor of English and Environmental Studies, English Department Chair

TJ Day 316

Professor Sumner loves teaching, discussing, and writing about books, landscapes, and the American West. He offers courses such as Literature and Landscape, and a travel course called The Literary Biology of the Sea of Cortez. In this course, he travels with students to Baja, Mexico and follows the path of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. In the fall of 2024, he will be teaching an Inquiry Seminar, INQS 125: In Search of the Goodlife, and LITR 360: Literature and Landscape.

Professor Sumner is the author of a variety of academic articles on topics such as American nature writing, the American nature tradition, environmental ethics, the use and abuse of the term “ecoterrorism,” writing pedagogy, rhetoric, and the novels of Edward Abbey. In addition to teaching at �鶹�� for the past 16 years, he has been fortunate to also teach at the University of Bayreuth, Germany on a Fulbright fellowship, and as a member of the faculty for Semester at Sea while circumnavigating the globe aboard the M.S. Explorer .

When not teaching and writing, Professor Sumner enjoys backpacking and flyfishing with family and playing bluegrass with the other members of the Bootleg Jam.

Education

B.A. University of Utah
M.A. Brigham Young University
Ph.D. University of Oregon

Academic Interests

Environmental Rhetoric, The Nature Tradition in American Literature, Ecocriticism.

Publications

A selection of publications:

“Activism, Mysticism, and Hope—A Conversation with David James Duncan.” Madeleine Glenn, co-author. Weber Studies Vol. 37, Num. 2, Spring/Summer 2021.
“Bring My Ashes Here.” Backcountry Journal. Spring 2020.
“From Big Ag to School Cafeterias: Technical Communication in Intersections of Food-Supply Networks.” co-authored with J. Richards, J. Lenart, and D. Christensen‎. Cultivating Spheres: Agriculture, Technical Communication, and the Publics, 2018. Open Library of Humanities, 2018, volume 4, issue 2.
“It is All About Inquiry: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation About the Shared Foundations for Teaching.” Jennifer Firkins Nordstrom, co-author. Primus: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies. Vol. 27, Iss. 1, 2017.
“The Limits of Violence: People and Property in Edward Abbey’s Monkeywrenching Novels.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment. Vol. 4.2, Fall 2013.
“Eco-terrorism or Eco-tage: An Argument for the Proper Frame.” Lisa Weidman, co-author. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Vol. 20.4, Fall 2013.
“Location and Landscape in Literary Americanisms: H. L. Davis and F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Americanisms: Discourses of Exception, Exclusion, Exchange. Michael Steppat ed. Universitätverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2009.
“‘That Could Happen’: Nature Writing, The Nature Fakers, and a Rhetoric of Assent.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Vol. 12.2, Summer 2005.

Recent Awards

Fulbright. University of Bayreuth, Germany: 3/07-8/07

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