How are we influenced by our environment, and how do our actions influence that landscape in turn? In this class, we will read classic and contemporary environmental writing (fiction and nonfiction) to see how writers and other artists use landscape as a tool in narrative storytelling. Sometimes the nonhuman landscape is a character, other times a mirror for the people who live there. You will also engage in your own artistic and analytical explorations of your own relationship to the environment – be it agricultural, suburban, urban, or wilderness.
Objectives
By the end of this course, you should have interrogated your own assumptions about the environment, and have a richer and more critical understanding of the iterative relationship between environment and society. You will have learned skills which are essential to your success in college, including critical reading, writing analytical papers, and undertaking self-motivated original research.
Read the most recent syllabus for this course: FYS Syllabus