Reading the Book of Nature

provided the foundation for Visions of the Land a few years later.) Thirdly, the additional
research I conducted on Rachel Carson and Loren Eiseley during that leave produced a scholarly
article focused on their scientific rhetoric in a 2003 issue of Technical Communication
Quarterly.
II. Mapping the Urban Wilderness: An Ecological and Literary Topography of Chicago
(spring 2007) -- My second research leave provided me with an exceptional opportunity to
change directions in my research agenda significantly, from a wide-ranging emphasis on scienceand-literature
studies to a new focus on the urban environment (particularly Chicago) and citybased
nature writing. The goals of this study were to lay the initial groundwork for a book
tentatively entitled Mapping the Urban Wilderness: An Ecological and Literary Topography of
Chicago, discussed earlier in this proposal, as well as to write and publish a scholarly essay (of
30-40 manuscript pages) based on that research that would be suitable for publication as a standalone
article in a notable environmental studies / interdisciplinary journal.
This leave period also was fruitful on multiple fronts. Notably, in the course of my
research for Mapping the Urban Wilderness, I unearthed some fascinating information on the
Chicago-based urban nature writer Leonard Dubkin, a self-taught naturalist and journalist who
published a string of singular and otherwise remarkable books from the mid-1940s to the early
1970s about observing nature in Chicago. When I made contact with Dubkin's daughter, who
lives in Chicago and gave me unfettered access to many of her personal papers, I knew I had an
extraordinary chance to research and write about a forgotten author, with access to drafts, letters,
and other papers. I was able to capitalize on this work by publishing the first scholarly treatment
of Dubkin's work in the leading journal of ecocriticism, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature
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