ENSU 105: American Literature & Ecology

A study of American environmental literature and its imaginative forms in relation to environmental philosophy, including changing ideas of nature and wilderness; representations of space and place; the deep ecology, ecofeminism and environmental justice movements; and the overall relation between human language and value and the non-human world. Attention also to cultural issues of ecology, such as how our ecological understandings affect our sense of identity and our social and economic practices. May include writers such as Thoreau, Abbey, Muir, Snyder, Aldo Leopold, Terry Tempest Williams, Leslie Marmon Silko and Mary Oliver.