(First semester—odd years/3 credits)
How does the American landscape function in our imagination, or policies or lives? This course explores the wide and growing range of writings about the environment in the following arenas: literary, political, scientific, philosophical, autobiographical. Readings include Thoreau, Leo Marx, Aldo Leopold, Leslie Marmon Silko and Annie Dillard, as well as poets such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Gary Snyder and Mary Oliver.