ENGL 265 A: Introduction to Environmental Humanities

ENGL 265 A

Introduction to Environmental Humanities:

Spring 2025

Instructor: Alex McCauley, apmccau@uw.edu
Class Location: THO 325, MW 12:30-2:20 pm
Office hours / Office location: PDL A-312 (Modern Language Quarterly), MW 3-4

Course Description

There are two core components to the environmental humanities: our relationship to nature, and the stories we tell about our relationship to nature. Already this sounds unhappy. When it comes to nature, there are so many dismal relationships and stories: global warming, earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts, mass slaughter and extinction. You get the drift.

Ideas and representations of nature are old and familiar topics in the humanities but, given our apocalyptic context, they are insufficient. A grounding premise of the environmental humanities is that there is probably something wrong in treating intellectual inquiry as an insulated experience that never touches the world. Books up here, depleting aquifers down there. So while the course demands intellectual work, part of the point is to find and practice methods of inquiry that connect disciplinary thought and cultural artifacts to the rest of our lives and the rest of the world.  

That’s all pretty abstract. The vehicle for our discussions will be texts: one very long novel, short readings, and a movie. Most of the texts are fairly new, but there’s also a historical component to many of them. A historical approach can help reveal the sources of our current disaster and help us understand ecological problems with fresh terms. That said, you don’t need to arrive with any special understanding of the environment, the humanities, literature, history, or interpretation in order to succeed. It’s enough to be curious and pay attention.

A lot of paying attention means reading and talking together about our texts. Reading itself is work, and there will be plenty of it here. If you don’t think about reading as necessary work, you will run into problems!

Learning Outcomes

• Students are able to perform competent close readings of course texts and similar texts.
• Students understand the investments, contexts, and effects of the kind of close/critical reading skills or approaches under study/use.
• Students have an appreciation for and knowledge of literature’s relationship to related areas or disciplines.

Texts (Available at University Bookstore)

• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (ISBN 978-0-316-30014-8)
• Course Reader (available at Professional Copy, 4200 University Way)

You’ll need to find a way to watch a film (to be determined) in Week 5. Please bring a copy of our current text to class each day.

Contact

The best way to get ahold of me outside of class is my email or Canvas message. Avoid writing from your personal (rather than UW) accounts, because the aggressive spam filter will sometimes disappear messages from external addresses.

You’re welcome at office hours. The best ways to get to my office are Padelford’s A-Wing elevator and the A-Wing staircase. (That’s the part of the building closest to Hall Health.) Otherwise, you will be trapped on an infinite plane of office horrors. It works better if I know in advance that you’re coming. If the hours don’t work for you, send me a message and we will figure out a better time.

Course Assignments and Assessment

Response Papers: In the weeks without essays, you’ll submit brief pieces of writing that respond to that week’s material while connecting to broader concerns. There are six total opportunities, but you only need to complete two in each half of the quarter to receive full credit (each is worth 5% of the final grade.) That means one free skip in the first six weeks, and one free skip in the last four.

Paragraph Essay: A one-page essay on Klein and Malm/Zetkin. Imagine 300-400 words.

Essays: You’ll write a midterm and final essay.  They’re short (3-4 pages.) These essays will not be literary analysis from start to finish, but they’re expected to have core components that offer interpretive analysis of our texts. Interpretation can look like a lot of different things, but the point is to work with detail, analyze carefully, risk being wrong, and offer a context for why you care. It also means clarifying how what you see in a text is different than what someone else might see, and why that difference matters.

You’ll have a chance to revise the midterm essay, if you want. The revised grade replaces the original grade. That revised grade won’t be more than 0.3 over the original – a full letter grade.

Participation: At the end of each class I’ll collect written notecards of your responses to that day’s material. These are graded purely on completion, but the total number of completed cards corresponds to your participation grade in the following way:

                                                                                                                        15-16                   4.0

                                                                                                                        14                         3.7

                                                                                                                        11-13                   3.0

                                                                                                                        9-10                     2.4

                                                                                                                        7-8                        2.0

                                                                                                                        5-6                        1.5

                                                                                                                        3-4                        1

                                                                                                                        1-2                        0.5

Grading criteria for writing will be described in each assignment prompt, but all grades will be on a 4.0 scale.

Course Policies

Sickness: Please don’t come to class if you feel sick. It’s helpful to let me know, but sometimes drafting a message is more work than it’s worth when you’re sick. But it would help to let me know if being sick means missing multiple class sessions.

Students are required to follow the University’s COVID-19 Face Covering Policy at all times when on-site at the University, including any posted requirements in specific buildings or spaces. If a student refuses to comply with the policy, the student can be sent home (to an on or off-campus residence). Student Conduct offices are available for consultations on potential violations of student conduct if needed. University personnel who have concerns that a student or group of students are not complying with this policy should speak with their supervisor, a representative of the academic unit, or report it to the Environmental Health & Safety Department.

Phones: Please avoid using your phones during class (besides the breaks.) This saves me, your classmates, and obviously yourself from distraction. Laptops are discouraged, and may be periodically banned, but may sometimes be necessary. Sometimes class is boring or frustrating – embrace the misery.

Extensions: If you need an extension on the essays, you need to contact me prior to the time the assignment is due. Essays over a week late will receive a 0.

Plagiarism, or academic dishonesty, is presenting someone else's ideas or writing as your own. In your writing for this class, you are encouraged to refer to other people's thoughts and writing--as long as you cite them. As a matter of policy, any student found to have plagiarized any piece of writing in this class will be immediately reported to the College of Arts and Sciences for review.

I consider fake quotes to be a form of academic dishonesty that compromises whatever other intellectual work is happening. If you find yourself tempted by plagiarism, save us all a headache and send me a message instead.

Using AI software to generate an essay that you represent as your own thinking is plagiarism. The content it produces is also (usually) very low quality, and you don’t want to claim it.

If you have any concerns about the course or your instructor, please see the instructor about these concerns as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking with the instructor or not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies: Stephanie Clare, sclare@uw.edu. If, after speaking with the Director, you are still not satisfied with the response you receive, you may contact English Department Chair Habiba Ibrahim, (206) 543-2690.

If you need accommodation of any sort, please let me know so that I can work with the UW Disability Resources for Students Office (DRS) to provide what you require. This syllabus is available in large print, as are other class materials. More information about accommodation may be found at http://www.washington.edu/students/drs. In other words, if you have a relationship to learning that I should be aware of – let me know.

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Faculty Syllabus Guidelines and Resources. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form available at https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request.

Assignment Schedule                                                                                                         Due Date

Grading Breakdown:                

Our Reading Schedule