Module Directory

This module offers an exploration of the extent of writing on the environment, on landscape and the natural world in a time of increasing awareness of a global climate emergency. A number of primary non-fiction and fiction texts will be selected for discussion in seminars. In addition there will be choice literatures of eco-critical writing and contemporary eco-political works such as the Peoples Manifesto for Wildlife and material by Extinction Rebellion.

The course will extol the virtues of the outdoor classroom -- extending learning beyond the seminar walls to explore the nature of Wivenhoe Park and through a field trip. Students will be encouraged to extend their knowledge in multidisciplinary ways to enhance their ability to analyse and write literatures of the environment.

The aims of this module are:

• To expand students’ understanding of writing on the environment. 


• To analyse the manner in which aspects of the environment have been written about, taking in a variety of voices and perspectives from traditional Romantic visions to eco-critical standpoints.

Aspects such as the climate emergency and the Sixth Mass Extinction will be directly discussed in the light of recent writing by nature writers, theorists and political activists.

Assessment will allow students to produce a critical essay, OR to write their own creative material on aspects of the natural world and the environment. The module will broaden students' understanding of a how to see and write the environment in a time of increasing global concern and focus on environmental issues.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate detailed knowledge of a range of environmental writing both fiction and non-fiction.


2. Demonstrate a critical understanding of and analyse the context in which these writers are working.


3. Understand and evaluate some of the key contemporary critical and eco-political approaches to climate change debates.


4. Analyse and write on environment and landscape in a critical and persuasive way.

Indicative Syllabus:

• Introductions: Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1962); Peoples Manifesto for Wildlife, Chris Packham et al. (2018); The Emergency, Extinction Rebellion (2019)


• 'Thinking Like a Mountain': A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold (1949)/ The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd (1977); The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment, Tim Clark (2011).


• Walking, H. D. Thoreau, (1851)


• The Tree House, Kathleen Jamie (2004)/Surfacing, Kathleen Jamie (2019)


• H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2014)


• Writing Workshop


• The Drowned World, J. G. Ballard (1962)/ The Overstory, Richard Powers (2019)


• Field trip


• The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben (2015)/ Underland, Robert Macfarlane (2019)

This module will be delivered via:

• Weekly 2-hour seminar