ENGL 556: Environmental Humanities
T/Th 1:30 – 3:20; Savery 141

Instructor: Jesse Oak Taylor

jot8@uw.edu; 206-747-4818 (cell)
Office Hours: T/Th 12:00 – 1:00 (PDL A-408) & By Appointment

Overview

This course provides an introduction to the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary field that seeks to extend humanistic methods of critical reading and interpretation beyond the human. We will explore topics such as resource extraction and energy regimes, biodiversity and extinction, climate change, and the challenge of thinking at planetary scale while retaining local specificity. Readings will be drawn from ecocriticism, environmental history, multi-species ethnography and ecomedia, focusing primarily on first books written within the past five years. An additional learning outcome of the course will be the practice of reading, reviewing, and responding to academic books, thus helping prepare students for PhD exam reading and, eventually, framing their own dissertation projects.

We will conduct our engagement with the course texts in the spirit of Virginia Woolf’s wonderful 1926 essay, “How Should One Read a Book?,” in which one should begin by reading as though one were writing it. That is, we ought to begin by trying to understand the author’s purpose, and asking what we can learn from, it before evaluating its successes and failures. In short, we will begin by asking what these books are good at – and good for – before moving into critique, modeling attentive curiosity as both ethics and practice.

Readings

We will be reading the books below in their entirety. I encourage you to purchase copies from the press(s) or your preferred local vendor. Most are also available as e-books through UW libraries (in which case they are linked below), so you’re certainly welcome to access them that way. but I trust that you can find them through other vendors. Readings for the first day of class are posted on Canvas and linked in the schedule, below. Please do buy a copy of the Cascadia Field Guide. My hope is that it will serve both to orient us to our region, and as a touchstone text to which we can return throughout the quarter since we are not otherwise reading literature together.

Louise Westling, Deep History, Climate Change, and the Evolution of Human Culture (Cambridge, 2022)

Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Dereck Sheffield, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry (Mountaineers, 2023) – widely available in Seattle bookstores!

Bathsheba DeMuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (Norton, 2019)

John MacNeill Miller, The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science (Virginia, 2024)

Sarah Dimick, Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures (Columbia, 2024)

Siobhan Angus, Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography (Duke, 2024)

Melody Jue, Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater (Duke, 2020)

Jamie L. Jones, Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling (North Carolina, 2023)

Shannon Cram, Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility (California, 2023) 

Grade Breakdown

Participation: 30%

Book Review: 20%

Final Project Proposal: 10%

Final Project: 40%

Assignments

Written assignments will include: a book review of one of the course texts (due the week after we read that book in class) and a final project consisting of either a “review essay” describing a movement within the field or a research paper offering an interpretation of an artifact of your choice. Book reviews should be 500 – 750 words. Final projects should be around 3,500 – 5,000 words, though longer is acceptable especially if you are revising an existing piece for publication. Multi-modal projects and alternatives to traditional academic essays are welcome, provided they involve substantive research and are of equivalent scope.  

Book Reviews should be around 750 - 1000 words, and provide an overview of the book’s argument, methodology, archive, and key contributions. The review should also offer an assessment of strengths and weaknesses. However, in academic reviews, this “thumbs up / thumbs down” aspect tends to be less prominent than an overview assessing the book’s contributions. Book reviews will be due the week after we read the book in class, so that you can draw on insights that emerge from the seminar in writing your reviews.

Helpful guidelines for writing academic book reviews are available here: https://wendybelcher.com/writing-advice/. The Woolf essay also provides a useful guide to engaging with a book and thus in a way a kind of template for a review.

Final Project At the end of the quarter, each student will complete a research project related to the course theme. These may consist either of a critical intervention or interpretive reading of a text or artifact of your choice or a review essay describing a movement within the field. Either should be around 3,500 – 5,000 words, and include substantial engagement with relevant scholarship. Multi-modal projects are welcome for either option provided they are of equivalent scope. More details on both options will be available on the Assignments page.

Final project proposals will be due at the beginning of Week 8. These 3 – 5 page documents will ask you to describe: 1) a title 2) your research question and why you care about it 3) your primary text(s) or archive, 4) your methods and/or a few key secondary works, and 5) any looming questions or challenges that you foresee in completing this project, including any skills or resources that you might need to complete it, whether you have them, and how you plan to acquire them. This last aspect is particularly important for creative or multi-modal projects.

If you are having a hard time making up your mind, you are welcome to submit proposals for two different final projects. I will be happy to help you choose between them. I also realize that projects often change shape during the writing. However, I do expect you to write at least some version of the project that you propose – indeed, part of the point of a proposal like this is going into enough detail and doing enough research to determine whether or not the project is viable.  

Participation

A seminar is a collaborative enterprise. Please come to class prepared not merely to pose and answer questions from me, but to engage in frank, thoughtful, and respectful conversations with your fellow students. While I recognize that you may not be able to complete all of the reading, I do expect you to do a substantial amount of it, and have something tangible and specific to say. Because this is a small, discussion based course, you must speak up in class. Similarly, in order for everyone’s voices to be heard, you must not dominate the discussion. If you feel excluded or marginalized by class discussions, please come talk with me about it. I am committed to fostering a classroom environment in which any idea or perspective can be discussed, and in which all participants are respected. To that end, we will adhere to the English Department’s statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (posted below).

Nothing generates discussion better than questions. If you are confused by something in the reading, aren’t sure what a word means (or who a theorist is), please ask. This is doubly important given that we are reading criticism about works that we are not reading together as a class. I guarantee you that no one in the room (me included) fully understands all of these readings. Nor will any of us have read every book discussed by every critic. We will rely on one another for guidance. To that end, a final stipulation: no name dropping. If you want to bring up a critic, theorist, or work of literature that isn’t on the syllabus please be prepared to explain it, such that the idea is available to the group as a whole.

Disability Accommodations

I want this class to be inclusive for everyone. If you have a disability or any other issue that needs to be accommodated, please ask. The UW Office of Disability Resources (https://depts.washington.edu/uwdrs/) offers a number of services for students, and I will be happy to work with them. If you have a DRS accommodation, please let me know at the beginning of the term. In addition, there are circumstances arise that press upon your ability to participate in the course – whether or not they amount to an officially recognized disability or condition -- please tell me. I am happy to work with you. Whatever you do, please don’t simply disappear.

Religious Accommodations

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 Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Departmental Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The UW English Department aims to help students become more incisive thinkers, effective communicators, and imaginative writers by acknowledging that language and its use are powerful and hold the potential to empower individuals and communities; to provide the means to engage in meaningful conversation and collaboration across differences and with those with whom we disagree; and to offer methods for exploring, understanding, problem solving, and responding to the many pressing collective issues we face in our world--skills that align with and support the University of Washington’s mission to educate “a diverse student body to become responsible global citizens and future leaders through a challenging learning environment informed by cutting-edge scholarship.”

 
As a department, we begin with the conviction that language and texts play crucial roles in the constitution of cultures and communities, past, present, and future.  Our disciplinary commitments to the study of language, literature, and culture require of us a willingness to engage openly and critically with questions of power and difference. As such, in our teaching, service, and scholarship we frequently initiate and encourage conversations about topics such as race, immigration, gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, and colonialisms. These topics are fundamental to the inquiry we pursue.  We are proud of this fact, and we are committed to creating an environment in which our faculty and students can do so confidently and securely, knowing that they have the backing of the department.

Towards that aim, we value the inherent dignity and uniqueness of individuals and communities. We acknowledge that our university is located on the shared lands and waters of the Coast Salish peoples. We aspire to be a place where human rights are respected and where any of us can seek support. This includes people of all ethnicities, faiths, gender identities, national and indigenous origins, political views, and citizenship status; nontheists; LGBQTIA+; those with disabilities; veterans; and anyone who has been targeted, abused, or disenfranchised.

Schedule

The reading load is intense. While I realize you may not be able to read everything, I ask that you do your best to read enough that you have a sense of the whole book instead of only reading the Introduction. I’ve included page numbers so that you can get a sense of how long each will take, recognizing that some are considerably longer than others.

Week 1:

1. 1.7: Introductions. Jeffery Jerome Cohen & Stephanie Foote, “Introduction: Climate Change/Changing Climate,” Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities (pp. 1-10); Ursula Heise, “Introduction: Planet, Species, Justice, and the Stories we Tell About Them,” Routledge Companion to Environmental Humanities (pp. 1-10); Greg Garrard, Ch. 1 “Beginnings” from Ecocriticism (pp. 1-18)

Recommended: Virginia Woolf “How Should One Read a Book?”

Th. 1.9: Louise Westling, Deep History, Climate Change, and the Evolution of Human Culture -- read the whole thing – it’s short ! (pp. 1-59).  

Recommended: Owen Oliver, Indigenous Walking Tour at the University of Washington (2021) weather permitting, we will take a walk around campus together in the second half of class. (If walking is difficult for you, please let me know ASAP.)

Week 2:

1. 1.14: Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Dereck Sheffield, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry –no need to read in order, but try to read around half

 Th. 1.16: Bradfield, Fuhrman, Sheffield, Cascadia Field Guide – read around some more!

Week 3:

1. 1.21: Bathsheba Demuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait Intro – Ch. 5 (pp. xiii – 168)

Th. 1.23: Demuth, Floating Coast FINISH (pp. 168-318)

Week 4:

1. 1.28: John MacNeill Miller, The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science, Intro. – Ch. 2 (pp. 1-77)

Th. 1.30: Miller, The Ecological Plot, FINISH (pp. 78-162)

Week 5:

2. 2.4: Jamie L. Jones, Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling Intro – Ch. 3 (pp. 1-116)
   
   
3. 2.6: Jones, Rendered Obsolete FINISH (pp. 117-194) 

Week 6:

2. 2.11: Siobhan Angus, Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography Intro – Ch. 3 (pp. 1-131)

Th. 2.13: Angus, Camera Geologica, FINISH (pp. 132-229) 

Week 7: NO CLASS – WORK ON FINAL PROJECT PROPOSALS -- DUE MONDAY 2.24

Week 8:

M. 2.24: Final Project Proposals *Due* 

T. 2.25: Melody Jue, Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater, Intro – Ch. 2 (pp. 1-  111)

Th. 2.27: Jue, Wild Blue Media, FINISH (pp. 112-166)

Week 9:

3. 3.4: Sarah Dimick, Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures Intro – Ch. 4 (pp. 1-128

Th. 3.6: Dimick, Unseasonable FINISH (pp. 129-238) 

Week 10:

3. 3.11: Shannon Cram, Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility Intro. - Ch. 3 (pp. 1-86)

Th. 3.13: Cram, Unmaking the Bomb, FINISH (pp. 87-130)

Final Projects *Due* March 20^th (on Canvas)