Using the course blog:

• http://blogs.uoregon.edu/environmentalliterature230/• Joining blog• Must first go to blogs.uoregon.edu and login for first time.• Then let me know you have done this and I will invite you

specifically to our course blog.• Syllabus – changed blog post #1 due date• How to blog?• Blogging rules and guidelines• What to write in your blog posts?

Literature and EnvironmentKey Questions, Premises, Concepts and Terms

What can/does environmental literature/art/culture do?

Environmental literature: maybe it’s not the “immune system of the planet” but still… •Environments and environmental problems become socially and culturally meaningful through particular narratives and metaphors. •How we imagine (and image) a thing affects our conduct toward it—the conduct of individuals, communities, even nations. And vice-a-versa.

•Aesthetics and narrative can be a decisive force for or against environmental change.

•Thus, literature is a barometer and a reflection, but sometimes also an agent of change

Connotations

In the present day, environmental often seems to imply a politics: in favor of conservation or preservation; against too much human development, use of resources, or control.

But what counts as “environmental literature” could be any writing that focuses on or represents environment, even if it doesn’t have an overtly ecological or political aim.

How does studying environmental literature fit within the University?

Part of a growing movement (or cluster of disciplines) called the environmental humanities.

What are the Environmental Humanities?• “In this field of study and scholarship, we consider ethical assumptions, cultural perspectives, and expressive approaches to environmental insight.”

• “What different ways of knowing influence perception and action?”

• “How do various intellectual frames shed light on different aspects of environmental problems?”

• Kaza also claims that environmental humanities try to add an additional perspective to the scientific and economic approaches that have previously dominated in environmental problem-solving.

What are the Environmental Humanities?

“Environmental literature also works with story, bringing forward individual experience of place and region, of encounters with environmental toxins, of struggle with environmental dilemmas. Literary analysis examines the role of the land in the story and the slant of the narrative telling the story.”

--Kaza, “Why Environmental Humanities?”

Ecocriticism

• Ecocriticism is the term used to describe the study of literature and the environment. It is sometimes called literature and environment studies. For some critics, that means focusing on nonfiction nature writing. For some critics, that means talking about how the environment is an important factor in almost any text.

Texts

For literary and cultural critics, a “text” is any artifact taken as an object of study. Most commonly, we refer to a text as some kind of writing, such as a book or a poem, but movies, television shows or commercials, speeches, scientific data are all texts as well. Critically and closely reading a text can reveal much about the culture and historical period of which it is a product and can provide insight into its author’s goals and worldviews.

How do we read a text for the environment?

Stories, metaphors, images … have come to seem deceptively transparent through long usage.

If we pay attention we can read in any text and see these stories, metaphors, images at work.

Checklist of characteristics of environmental texts• The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a

framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history.

• The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest.

• Human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation.

Checklist of characteristics of environmental texts

• Some sense of the environment as a process rather than a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text.

--Buell, The Environmental Imagination (1995)

How do we read for the environment?

1. What kinds of environments or landscapes are depicted or imagined in this text? And how are they depicted?

2. What are the text’s attitudes towards these environments or landscapes? What values does the text attach to these environments or landscapes?

3. What does this text say (or imply) that the environment “should” be like? How can you tell?

4. How are humans and culture linked to the environment in this text?

5. Does this text suggest a certain kind of politics or action regarding the environment? Does it have an ethical motivation? If so, what?

For TuesdayReading:• Excerpts from Genesis, 1.1-3.24• “Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World” • Rowlandson, “A Narrative of the Captivity…”• Crevecoeur, “Letters from an American Farmer” (Particularly pages 1-15)(Also remember to print these out and bring them to class)

Reading questions:• There is historical evidence that Genesis actually contains two different creation stories,

written in two different time periods and cultures. The “Priestly” (P) version goes from 1:1 to 2:3, and the “Yahwist” (J) version goes from 2:4 to 2:25. The second version is actually much older than the first. What are some key differences in these two accounts of creation? What do these accounts imply about the human relationship to the natural world?

• To what extent does the Christian tradition foster an anti-ecological perspective, and to what extent does the Christian tradition foster a pro-ecological perspective?

• What are the differences and what are the similarities between the Genesis creation narrative and the Pima creation narrative?

• How do Mary Rowlandson (1682) and Crevecoeur (1784) describe the landscape and people(s) of North America?

Assignments:• First blog post due by Monday evening, October 1, at 8 pm.

For TuesdayReading questions:1. There is historical evidence that Genesis actually contains two

different creation stories, written in two different time periods and cultures. The “Priestly” (P) version goes from 1:1 to 2:3, and the “Yahwist” (J) version goes from 2:4 to 2:25. The second version is actually much older than the first. What are some key differences in these two accounts of creation? What do these accounts imply about the human relationship to the natural world?

2. To what extent does the Christian tradition foster an anti-ecological perspective, and to what extent does the Christian tradition foster a pro-ecological perspective?

3. What are the differences and what are the similarities between the Genesis creation narrative and the Pima creation narrative?

4. How do Mary Rowlandson (1682) and Crevecoeur (1784) describe the landscape and people of North America?