Syllabus/achievement requirements

Primary texts:

Books:

  • Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968)
  • David E. Nye, America as a Second Creation (2004).
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walking (1862/2007)
  • Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (1990).

Additional Books for M.A. students:

  • Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (2005)
  • Robert J. Brulle, Agency, Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective (2000)

Articles/Book Chapters:

  • Sherman Paul, “Birds, Landscape, Place, Cosmicity,” Iowa Review 11: Fall, 1980, 44-61.
  • H. Daniel Peck, “Introduction,” The Green American Tradition, LSU Press, 1989, 1-14.
  • Alfred Kazin, “Afterword: Sherman Paul and the Romance with America,” The Green American Tradition, LSU Press, 1989, 341-345.
  • Lawrence Buell, “American Pastoral Ideology Reappraised,” American Literary History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), 1-29
  • John M. Meyer, “Does Environmentalism Have a Future?” Dissent (Spring 2005).

Additional Articles for M.A. students:

  • Donald Worster, “Transformations of the Earth,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990),1087-1106
  • Alfred W. Crosby, “An Enthusiastic Second,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990), 1107-1110
  • Richard White, “Environmental History, Ecology, and Meaning,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990), 1111-1116
  • Carolyn Merchant, “Gender and Environmental History,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990), 1117-1121.
  • William Cronon, “Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990), pp. 1122-1131.
  • Donald Worster, “Seeing Beyond Culture,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990), 1142-1147.

Newspaper Articles:

  • Craig Leisher, “Off the Grid, Where the Living Is Good,” New York Times, 10 August 2011.
  • Justin Gillis, “Temperature Rising: A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself,” New York Times, 4 June 2011.
  • Anne Perkins, “Are big farms the key to African development?” The Guardian, 6 April 2009
  • Emily Beament, “[UK] Farmers to be paid for conserving landscapes,” The Independent, 18 December 2008.

Films:

  • How The Earth Made Us (2011, BBC documentary)
  • The New World (2005)
  • Deliverance (1972)
  • The Mission (1986)
  • Des Hommes et Des Dieux (“Of Gods and Men”) (2010)
  • Avatar (2009)

Published Nov. 20, 2012 3:57 PM - Last modified Nov. 20, 2012 4:00 PM