The English Department is pleased to offer an exciting new option in Literature and the Environment. The option is for students interested in literary expression that addresses the human relationship to our more-than-human world. 

The body of work encompassed by Literature and Environment includes oral and written “texts” spanning diverse cultural traditions through millennia of human experience. Though differing greatly in the kinds of rhetorical strategies they deploy, these “texts” share a common interest in fundamental ontological and ethical questions and the social and environmental implications of our answers to them. The many approaches to this body of literature, under the rubric of Ecocriticism, engage students in vital inquiry, an exploration of sustaining and sustainable aesthetic and environmental relationships.