John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist
FAIN: ES-267106-19
San Jose State University Research Foundation (San Jose, CA 95112-5569)
Susan Shillinglaw (Project Director: February 2019 to July 2023)
William Gilly (Co Project Director: July 2019 to July 2023)
A three-week institute for 28 K-12 educators to
study the writing of John Steinbeck.
The Summer Institute will examine why John Steinbeck remains relevant as
a novelist, social critic, and ecologist, and endures as a voice of
twenty-first century American values and ideas. The Institute's target primary
audience is middle and high school teachers of a diversity of subjects,
including English, History and Science. The project objective is to demonstrate
new ways in which Steinbeck can be presented as a central figure in these
subjects, and how his work continues to address the complexity of the American
populace. An important element will be to consider the impact of ecological
thinking on several of Steinbeck's major works, and how historical and
contemporary agricultural and fishing industries influenced these works as well
as today's society.