HNRS: Lessons from the Hive: Creative Writing and the Practice of Beekeeping
Spring 2023 Courses
Notes:
**Open to all Honors students**
This course, team-taught by a creative writing professor and a local beekeeper, will combine creative writing with hands-on engagement with bee colonies. In doing so, it will offer the opportunity for students to engage creatively with the ecological and literary context of beekeeping while responding more broadly to intriguing questions about human interactions with the natural world. Students will have the chance to witness and participate directly in the life cycle of the bees through their service learning, which will involve checking on the welfare of local hives during several important junctures in their life cycle. This service experience will then serve as inspiration for creative work that engages imaginatively with the cultural and ecological implications of this practice. The course will also contextualize these experiences by delving into the natural and literary history of honeybees and through readings that make connections to broader questions about the human relationship with other species and the natural world. For example, we might pair the service experience of checking on the hives with "Stung," an essay by Elizabeth Kolbert on the health challenges facing contemporary hives, and then engage with such questions through short fiction or nonfiction narrative. Or we might consider the science and culture of collective behavior such as decision-making and quorum-sensing, a point of significant research in contemporary swarm robotics research. Reading in this area, such as E.O. Wilson's research on social insects, might then lead to narratives that explore the implications of such work creatively. The course grade will be primarily assessed through a portfolio of creative work, which will include a final creative project. Students are responsible for their own transportation to the service sites.