LENGL6256 Literature, Land and the Environment Course Descriptor

Course Overview

The climate crisis has sparked huge debate and reconsideration of humanity’s relationship to the environment, but writers have been thinking about humans in nature, and humanity’s place on and uses of the land for many centuries. This course begins with Shakespeare’s The Tempest – a play which opens with a storm and ends with the promise of fair weather – and guides students through a series of readings of key literary texts which explore humanity’s place in the natural world, and specifically humanity’s reliance upon and understanding of the environment and the land. These might include works by radical political activists, British Romantic poets, 19th century American essayists, and present-day farmers and conservationists. It will conclude in the present day, as a post-Brexit Britain faces a new crisis not only in climate but also in the institutions of farming and land management.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies. .

The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/seminars/labs/studios/workshops 

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group

OR 

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150 

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE. 

Summative Assessments

The written assignment and examination require students to recognise and describe the variety over time of human economic and artistic practices in relation to land and the environment – and to adjudicate between and deploy ecocritical, sociological and other relevant perspectives in describing how these economic, technical, and aesthetic practices relate to their various, evolving political and institutional contexts. 

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours). 

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Shakespeare, William, The Tempest (1611)
• Bate, Jonathan, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (Oxford: Routledge, 1991)
• Rebanks, James, English Pastoral: An Inheritance (London: Penguin, 2021)
• ‘Green Romanticism’, Studies in Romanticism, Vol.35, No.3, Fall, 1996 (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• Kolodny, Annette, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975)
• Ratinon, Claire, Unearthed: On Race and Roots, and How the Soil Taught Me I Belong (London: Chatto and Windus, 2022)

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Levellers and Diggers
• Romanticism, Land and Environment
• Nature and Agriculture in American Writing
• Contemporary Ecocritical Writing
• Race and Gender in Writing on Land and Environment