INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

An introduction to some of the ways nature and the environment have been represented in poetry, fiction, film, and essays. Students will read some of the major literary statements about the environment by such writers as Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and others. The course will also look at nature writing as an exploration of religious, ethical, aesthetic, and other human concerns not obviously related to the nonhuman world.