Teach Ecotone

Ecotone’s wide-ranging explorations of place makes the magazine uniquely suited to the classroom. We’re always delighted when instructors adopt an issue or subscription for their classes. Learning with Ecotone offers students the opportunity to write critically and creatively, to discover and articulate their own senses of place, to engage with visual art and literary history, and to understand print culture and literature as a landscape that they are part of. Our theme issues, including Sound, Sustenance, and Body, put the magazine in conversation with a variety of disciplines, making it relevant for a range of courses in the humanities and sciences.

Teaching the craft of editing and publishing has always been a vital part of Ecotone’s work. Now, with thanks to the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, we are pleased to offer teaching guides and writing prompts, tailored to specific issues of the magazine and/or the work within them, for instructors of writing, literature, environmental studies, publishing, and other disciplines. Materials in the series will be posted on this page, freely available for instructors to download and use. Our guiding principles for the series are available here.

If you would like to use Ecotone in your college classroom, please write to ecotone at uncw dot edu for our discounted direct class-adoption rate—or ask your campus bookstore manager to be in touch. Upon request, one of our editors will happily Skype in to talk with students about literary editing and/or writing of place. If you are an instructor and would like to see an exam copy of the magazine, let us know.

Ecotone is first and foremost a print magazine—we value print culture and are committed to helping sustain it—but we also value accessibility. Instructors who have adopted a print issue of the magazine for a course and who require a screen-reader–accessible version, for themselves or for a student, may request one by writing to ecotone at uncw dot edu. Ecotone is also archived at Project Muse.

Teaching Guides

Our guides are listed by issue at the links below, and are available both online and as PDFs for download. Please feel free to use, share, and modify them for your classes, being sure to credit the author and Teach Ecotone each time. And please let us know if you do so! We love to hear about the magazine’s adventures in the classroom.

Love Begets Love
A collection of poetry prompts, based on fourteen-line poems from the Love Issue
online

Braving the Elements
One-month Teaching Guide: Issue 27, by Stephanie Carpenter
online | PDF

Imaging / Reimagining Departure and Return
One-week Teaching Guide: The Craft Issue, by Carlina Duan
online | PDF

Soundscapes of People and Place
One-week Teaching Guide: The Sound Issue, by Carla Diaz
PDF