English C77

Lower Division Coursework: Introduction to Environmental Studies

Other Readings and Media

Cunningham and Cunningham: Principles of Environmental Science; Gilbar, S, ed.: Natural State ; Leopold, A.: A Sand County Almanac; Snyder, G.: No Nature; Williams, T. T.: Refuge; also a course reader

Description

This is an innovative team-taught course that surveys global environmental issues at the beginning of the twenty-first century and that introduces students to the basic intellectual tools of environmental science and to the history of environmental thought in American poetry, fiction, and the nature writing tradition. One instructor is a scientist specializing in the behavior of soils and ecosystems (Garrison Sposito); the other is a poet (Robert Hass). The aim of the course is to examine the ways in which the common tools of scientific and literary analysis, of scientific method and imaginative thinking, can clarify what is at stake in environmental issues and environmental citizenship.