Students will analyze human engagement with the natural world by reading and writing about literature (poems, drama, fiction, belles-lettres) about the natural world. Students will become skilled at raising and discussing (in both written and oral forms) critical questions prompted by this literature. They will learn to read closely and think critically, write stylistically sound prose, and craft an argument grounded in textual evidence.

Since individual texts and topics will vary from year to year and instructor to instructor, this outline is just a sample:   
 
Unit 1: What are plants? (3 weeks) 
 
Readings from: Tom Michaels, The Science of Plants (open-access); Camille Dungy, ed., Black Nature;  James Baldwin, ed., Six Centuries of English Poetry (open-access)  
  
Unit 2: What are trees? (2 weeks) 
 
Readings from: Jacob Levison, Studies of Trees (open-access); John Evelyn, Sylva (open-access); Richard Powers, The Overstory (very long book; will read over the course of the semester) 
  
Unit 3: What are animals? (2 weeks) 
 
Readings from: E. Connolly, Introduction to Zoology (open-access lecture notes and illustrations); Edmund Topsell, The Historie of Four-footed Beasts and The Historie of Serpents 
  
Unit 4: What are stones? (2 weeks) 
 
Readings from: N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season trilogy; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone;  Johnson, Affolter, et al., Introduction to Geology (open-access) 
 
Unit 5: What is “cultivated” land, and what is “wilderness”? (3 weeks) 
 
Readings from: Francis Bacon, Essays (open-access); Walter Ralegh, Description of Guiana (open-access); Edmund Spenser, View of the Present State of Ireland (open-access); James Oglethorpe, “Some Account of the Design of the Trustees for Establishing Colonies in Georgia” (open-access); Andrew Millison, Introduction to Permaculture (open-access)