Environment in the Literary and Visual Arts

Concentration Adviser: Jane Costlow

This concentration allows students to focus on particular literary and/or visual approaches to the human place in the environment (for example, how a particular lyric poet or photographer has seen and represented the natural world), or to focus on a range of literary and/or visual approaches to a particular aspect of the environment (how Ktaadn was depicted and written about in the 19th century, or how urban nature is represented by contemporary American writers).  Students who elect this concentration should have completed several other courses outside these requirements, in the historical or cultural contexts and in the methods of analysis germane to this concentration. Consultation with instructors is essential.

This concentration is designed by the student no later than his or her sophomore year, in consultation with, and by the approval of, Professor Jane Costlow.

The design of the concentration must meet the following criteria:

  1. a coherent five courses, six if a necessary prerequisite for a course is involved
  2. the courses must focus on at least two different cultures, or include two different literary genres, or two different visual media, or a literary genre and a visual medium, and should include a course in literary, visual or cultural theory
  3. one of the courses must be a seminar
  4. one of the five courses may be an independent course (360 only).

Courses that count for the fourth course (200- or 300-level) requirement within the core:

Concentration Requirements:

Current courses which usually are available for this concentration include (but are not limited to):

  • ACS 100  Introduction to American Cultural Studies
  • ENG 130 Writers of Maine
  • ES/RU 216 Nature in Russian Culture
  • ENVR 227 Catastrophes and Hope
  • INDS 220 Afroambiente: Writing a Black Environment
  • EN/ES 237 Books That Changed the World
  • PLTC 243 Politics and Literature
  • AVC 285 Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Gardens and Landscape Architecture
  • AVC 286 Romantic Landscape Painting
  • ENG 295 Critical Theory
  • AVC 293 African Photography: Representations of Africa
  • AVC 318 Photography II
  • ENVR 334 The Question of the Animal
  • ENVR 340 Literatures of Agriculture
  • ENVR 348 Nature and the Novel
  • AC/EN 395C Frontier and Border in U.S. Literature
  • ENG 395O Poetry and Place
  • AVC 377A Picturesque Suburbia
  • ENG 395K The Arctic Sublime.
  • AV/ES s15 Photographing the Landscape
  • ES/RE s25 Food and the Sacred
  • AVC 218 Photography I: The Analog Image.
  • AVC 219 Photography I: The Digital Image.
  • AVC 281 Realism and Impressionism.
  • AVC/WS 287 Women, Gender, Visual Culture
  • FYS 401 Reading the Wild in Film and Literature
  • FYS 271 Into the Woods: Rewriting Walden
  • ENG 292 Poetry Writing
  • ENG 392 Advanced Poetry Writing
  • HIST 216 Science and Science Fiction
  • EN/ES s31 Climate Change and The Stories We Tell

From time to time special course offerings are listed.