Literature and the Environment

- English; Literature & The Environment Option

College Humanities & Sciences

Catalog Year: 2015-2016

Degree Specific Credits: 45

Required Cumulative GPA: 2.0


Core Courses

Rule: Must complete 27 credits from the following:

Show All Course Descriptions Course Credits
Show Description LIT 201 - Intro to Literary Studies
Offered every term. Introduction to the field of literary studies, to the conventions of literary analysis, and to the literature option for English majors. Reading, writing, and research skills will be stressed, along with interpretative approaches to major genres within the field.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 202 - The Environmental Imagination
Course is designed to introduce students to the many discourses of nature. In this course we will approach “natural history” as a complex literary genre grounded in personal experience of the “more-than-human” world (in David Abram’s now ubiquitous phrase). While the study of natural history writing has historically focused on authors like Gilbert White, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs (as prominent practitioners of the personal narrative essay that explores the natural world), a more thorough understanding of the genre requires consideration of the role race, class, and gender play in shaping discourses of nature. Further, consideration of non-Anglo-American traditions (including, for example, a range of Native American and Asian “literary” practices) expands our understanding of those traditions as it allows us to see the Anglo-American tradition in useful perspective.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 210L - American Lit I
Offered every term. Representative texts from the pre-colonial period through the Civil War.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 221L - Brit Lit: Enlightenment to Rom
Offered every term. Representative texts from the seventeenth through the eighteenth century.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 300 - Literary Criticism
Offered every term. Prereq. or coreq., 12 credits of lower-division English courses. Study of various literary theories and their application to literary texts.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 327 - Shakespeare
Offered autumn and spring. Prereq., LIT 300 or consent of instr. A survey of selected Shakespeare plays emphasizing close reading of the texts and consideration of their dramatic possibilities.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 373 - Lit & Environment
Offered autumn. Prereq., LIT 210L or 211L (ENLT 224L or 225L) and LIT 300 (ENLT 301) or consent of instr. Study of major texts and issues in American nature writing.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 402 - Literature in Place
This course gives students a set of advanced learning opportunities to engage with Anglophone texts on the general theme of nature and culture, applying an ecocritical lens to extended literary analysis. Drawing from various periods and from various trans-Atlantic national literatures, the course is designed to focus on the emerging critique of nature and culture that questions foundational structures of epistemology and economy, animate and inanimate, civilization and wilderness.
3 Credits
Show Description LIT 422 - Ethical Theory and Practice
Prereq., or coreq., LIT 300. This course surveys the developing field of ecocriticism, introducing students to the major issues and methodologies entailed in the study of literature and the environment.
3 Credits
Minimum Required Grade: C- 27 Total Credits Required

Upper-Division English Elective Courses

Rule: Must complete three 300- or 400-level English courses

Note: Students must elect nine (9) credits, one course from each of the following designations: A (Medieval through early modern British Literature); B (Enlightenment through Romantic British Literature, or Pre-1865 American Literature); D (diversity).
Designations A and B can be satisfied fully or in part at the 200-level. When a student elects this option, he or she must select other 300+ level Literature electives to ensure completion of 42 credits and the requisite 12 upper-division LIT credits. Designations of course offerings for each semester will be posted in the English Department.

Minimum Required Grade: C-
9 Total Credits Required

Senior Seminar

Show All Course Descriptions Course Credits
Show Description LIT 494 - Seminar: Lit Capstone
(R 9) Offered autumn and spring. Prereq., LIT 300 and nine credits in literature courses numbered higher than 300. Required for completing the English literature option, this seminar will allow students to conduct advanced studies in literary figures and topics chosen by faculty to engage a broad range of interests. A long research paper is required.
3 Credits
Minimum Required Grade: C- 3 Total Credits Required

Foreign Language

Note: Foreign Language: Two years of a SINGLE modern or classical language or the equivalent (200+ level) score on a competency exam is required.


An approved complementary course from a discipline other than English

Minimum Required Grade: C-
3 Total Credits Required