In "Literature and Environment" we will study texts that are acknowledged as environmental literature and also we will also develop an eco-critical sensibility that enables us to read all literature from an environmentally conscious point of view. Over the semester we will learn a vocabulary of critical terms that enable us to do this, as well as learn to think of existing literary-critical terms in a more eco-conscious way. We will explore the ethical implications of eco-critical reading, the responsibility that humans have toward nature and each other as cohabitants of one planet. We will look at poetry, fiction, and essayistic prose. 

At the moment of writing this course description (August 30) these are authors and works I intend for us to read in part or whole. We will not be able to read everything listed here, so the actual reading assignments will be taken from this list. Some of this will serve as readings for your research projects rather than as required reading for class. 

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

A. R. Ammons, poems 

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Rachel Carson: Silent Spring

Emily Dickinson, poems

Annie Dillard,  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage

Wallace Stevens, poems

Walt Whitman: poems

William Wordsworth, poems

I will post a PDF online and also leave on reserve an introduction to ecocriticism: 

Greg Gerard, Ecocriticism: the New Critical Idiom