August 13, 2004

A Program to Create an Ethic of Place

By MALCOLM G. SCULLY

When Terry Tempest Williams was an undergraduate at the University of Utah here, she wanted "a curriculum that honored both literature and the landscape." She longed for courses in literary biology or environmental English, but when she proposed them to professors in either the English or the biology department, she recalls, "They laughed me out the door."

Now, some 30 years later, Williams, an acclaimed writer, naturalist, and environmental campaigner, has returned to the university