Literature and the Environment
The study of literature and culture from an ecological or environmental perspective is a strong emphasis within the University of Oregon English Department.
Faculty
- Elizabeth Bohls
- Allison Carruth
- Suzanne Clark
- James Crosswhite
- John Gage
- Glen Love
- William Rossi
- Gordon Sayre
- Louise Westling
Coursework Opportunities
In any given year, five or six courses are offered, ranging from introductory to advanced levels. Although only one regular ecocriticism course is listed in the UO catalog -- Literature and Environment (English 469/569)--other courses are offered as special topics. Recent courses include:
- American Tropics
- Conquest and Cultural Representation of the
- Faulkner, Welty, and the Natural World
- Henry David Thoreau
- The Idea of Wilderness
- Literature, Natural History, and
- Migration in American Literature
- The Natural History of Modernism
- Nature in Medieval Literature
- The Rhetoric of Nature Writing
- Rhetoric of Science
- Science and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Culture
- Senses of Place
- Thoreauvian Traditions in Contemporary Environmental Writing
- The
- Virginia Woolf and Participatory Aesthetics
- Women and the Body of the Real
- Women Writers and the Environment
Interdisciplinary links exist with many other strong programs on campus: Environmental Studies, the Environmental Law Program at the UO Law School, the Institute for Sustainable Environment, and the departments of Landscape Architecture, Geography, History, and Biology.
Graduate Study
Ph.D. in English with a Structured Emphasis in Literature and the
Environment
Graduate students in Ecocritcism have created an informal interdisciplinary group,
Dissertations in Literature and the Environment:
- Jeffrey Harrison, “Shelley's caves : linguistic landscape and the aporetic gap from Pyrrho to Rorty,” Forest Pyle, director (F95)
- Lila Harper, “Solitary travelers: nineteenth-century women's travel narratives,” William Rossi, director (S96)
- Creighton Lindsay, “The rhetoric of modern American pastoral,” John Gage, director (S96)
- Jean Beck, “Unsettling frontiers in the American West: Robinson, Kingston, Silko,” Linda Kintz, director (U96)
- David Gilcrest, “Greening the lyre: environmental poetics and ethics,” John Gage, director (U96)
- Yvonne Rauch, “Traversing the discourses: the common grammar of wild and domestic in American nature writing and biology,” James Crosswhite, director (U97)
- Peter Blakemore, “Writing home: inhabitation and imagination in American literature,” Glen Love, director (U98)
- Rob Ensign, “‘Lean down your ear upon the earth, and listen’: the eco-consciousness of Thomas Wolfe,” Karen Ford, director (U98)
- Nic Witschi, “Landscape matters: natural resources and the claim to realism in western American literature,” Suzanne Clark, director (U98)
- Laird Christensen, “Spirit astir in the world: sacred poetry in the age of ecology,” John Gage, director (U99)
- Aimee Ross, “From ghosts to skulls: selfhood, bodies and gender in Renaissance revenge tragedy,” George Rowe, director (F00)
- David Sumner, “ ‘Speaking a word for Nature’: the ethical rhetoric of American nature writing,” John Gage, director (U00)
- Christopher Hitt, “The natural sublime: romanticism and the aesthetics of wilderness,” Forest Pyle and Louise Westling, directors (S01)
- Alex Hunt, “Narrating American space: literary cartography and the American Southwest,” Louise Westling, director (U01)
- Ce Rosenow, “Pictures of the floating world: American modernist poetry and cultural translations of Japan,” Suzanne Clark, director (S02)
- Keiko Kagawa, “Bodies in the ‘house of fiction’: the architecture of domestic and narrative spaces by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot,” Richard Stein, director (U02)
- Barbara Cook, “Women's transformative texts from the Southwestern Ecotone,” Louise Westling, director (S03)
- Jennifer Shaiman, “Building American homes, constructing American identities: performance of identity, domestic space, and modern American literature,” Paul Peppis, director (S04)
- Sara McCurry, “The Places of Contemporary American Poetry,” Karen Ford, director (S05)
- Sarah McFarland, “Engendering the wild: the construction of animals in twentieth century nature writing,” Louise Westling, director (S05)
- Arwen Spicer, “Toward sustainable change: the legacy of William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells in the ecological discourse of contemporary science fiction,” William Rossi, director (S05)
- Ryan Hediger, “Embodying ethics: at the limits of the American literary subject,” Suzanne Clark, director (U05)
- Nathan Straight, “Natural biographies: ecology and identity in contemporary American autobiography,” Suzanne Clark, director (F05)
- Angela Thompson, “Ethics of seeing and politics of place: FSA photography and literature of the American south,” Louise Westling, director (W06)
- Michelle Satterlee, “Shadows of the self: trauma, memory, and place in twentieth-century American fiction,” Mary Wood, director (S06)
- Scott Knickerbocker, “Modern Ecopoetics: The Language of Nature/The Nature of Language,” Karen Ford, director (U06)
- Kevin Maier, “The Environmental Rhetoric of American Hunting and Fishing Narratives: A Revisionist History,” Suzanne Clark, director (U06)
- Dan Shea, "The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modernist British Literature," Paul Peppis, director (F06)
- Kelly Sultzbach, "Embodied Modernism: The Flesh of the World in the Work of E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and W.H.Auden", Louise Westling, director (S08)
In Progress:
- Sara Jaquette (ESSP), "Indians, Invasive Species, and Invalids: the Ecological 'Other' in American Environmental Thought," Shari Huhndorf, director
- Janet Fiskio (ESSP), "Ecohermeneutics and the Epistemology of Literary Form," Louise Westling, director
- Tristan Sipley, "Second Nature: Literature, Class, and the Built Environment 1848-1915," William Rossi, director
- Rachel Hanan, "Silva Rhetorical: (Re-) Placing Early Modern Environmental Language," Lisa Freinkel, director
Professional Connections:
Oregon faculty and graduate students are active in the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). Tina Richardson and Barbara Cook served as ASLE Graduate Liaisons for 2001-2003. During the academic year 1996-97 Laird Christensen and Peter Blakemore also held these positions. Louise Westling was elected Vice-President of ASLE for 1997 and was President in 1998.
Links
For up-to-date links to web resources in Literature and the Environment contact Elizabeth Peterson, Assistant Professor Humanities Librarian:
141 Knight Library
Office Phone: 541-346-3047
Email: emp@uoregon.edu
