ENGL 312
Poetry and the Ecological Imagination Spring 2025
Division I
Cross-listed ENVI 315

Class Details

How does the human imagination encounter its environment? And how do poets reflect an increasing awareness of anthropogenic climate change and other forms of environmental catastrophe? In this class, we’ll read selections from the long tradition of ecologically-minded poetry to answer these questions. Our readings will focus primarily on writers from Romanticism to the present, from John Clare and Gerard Manley Hopkins to contemporary writers including Juliana Spahr and Craig Santos Perez, whom we’ll read alongside various theoretical texts that will introduce you to some of the major ecocritical concepts. Finally, we will explore via our own writing the ethical and aesthetic imperative to find ways of imagining the ever-changing relation between the imagination and the environment.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 12
Class#: 3824
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: one 7-page paper, one 12-page paper, in-class presentation, thoughtful participation in discussions
Prerequisites: either a 100-level ENGL course, a score of 5 on the AP English Literature exam, a score of 6 or 7 on the Higher Level IB English exam, or permission of the instructor
Enrollment Preferences: English majors and those intending to major in English; Environmental Studies majors or concentrators and those intending to major or concentrate in Environmental Studies
Distributions: Divison I
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENGL 312 Division I ENVI 315 Division I
Attributes: ENGL Literary Histories B
ENGL Literary Histories C
ENVI Humanities, Arts + Social Science Electives

Class Grid

Updated 12:08 am

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