Course Description
Immerse yourself in the natural world through walks around campus and service-learning with community organizations; juxtaposing readings about the natural world from pre-industrial times with contemporary insights; and reflective journaling about your experiences with natural or wild spaces
Athena Title
Early Env Lit SL
Non-Traditional Format
Course includes a service-learning project during the semester that either employs skills or knowledge learned in the course or teaches new skills or knowledge related to course objectives. Students will be involved in the planning and implementation of the project(s) and may spend time outside of the classroom. Students will be engaged in the service-learning component for approximately 25-50% of overall instructional time.
Prerequisite
Two 2000-level ENGL courses or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 3000-level ENGL course) or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 2000-level CMLT course)
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
- Students will gain a hands-on or basic understanding of a particular practical or scientific aspect (taxonomy, life-cycle, ecological niche, etc.) of the natural world (plant, marine, mineral, and non-human animal life) by engaging in a service-learning project or placement within an on-campus or nonprofit space dedicated to preserving that space and encouraging community engagement with it (the community partner).
- Students will analyze human engagement with the natural world, including the role of race and identity in human engagement with nature, by reading and writing about literature (poems, drama, fiction, belles-lettres) about the natural world in light of practical experience with the community partner.
- Students will reflect upon the environmental, personal, and social benefits of campus or urban green, wild, or sea spaces through a public-facing final project.
- Students will use discussion and writing to contrast early modern English and pre-colonial America's (pre-industrial) societies' attitudes to nature, the environment, foodways, and land use with present-day practices.
Topical Outline
- The outline of the class may vary depending on instructor. Typically, however, we will begin by contrasting accounts of creation in the Biblical Book of Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost; the story of Skywoman in Robin Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass; and other sources.
- Then we begin a series of site visits to managed green spaces in Athens and on campus, interspersed with historical and twenty-first-century readings from poetry and prose about plants, animals, and trees. Throughout the semester, students write reflective journals about the literature they are reading and the work they are conducting at their service-learning sites.
- We conclude the semester with work in groups on our community projects, culminating with a presentation, open to the public, documenting, reflecting upon, and showcasing our projects.
- Confirmed service-learning sites include the Founders' Garden, the Piedmont Preserve (Oconee River Land Trust), and the UGarden. Additional sites might include the Latin-American Ethno-Botanical Garden and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.
- Sample readings could include:
BOOKS
Robin Wall Kimmerer, _Braiding Sweetgrass_
Camille Dungy (ed), _Black Nature_
EXTRACTS
1. Ovid (43BCE- 17 or 18 CE), from Ovids Festivalls: Or Romane Calendar, Book 5 (May; Festival of Flora), trans. John Gower (London, 1640), off copyright, open-access via Early English Books TCP-IP Partnership, University of Michigan, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A08637.0001.001/1:13?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
2. Edmund Spenser (1552/3-1599 CE), from The Shepheardes Calender: January (1595), off copyright, ed. Richard Bear, edition licensed for scholarly/nonprofit use, https://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/januarye.html
3. Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645 CE), The Description of Cooke-Ham (1611), Perseus Digital Library, off copyright, open-access under NEH Phase 2 grant
4. Ben Jonson (1572-1637 CE), “To Penshurst” (1616), off copyright, Project Gutenberg, open-access
5. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), “Of Gardens” and “Of Plantations” (1625), off-copyright, Project Gutenberg, open access
6. John Milton (1608-1674 CE), from Paradise Lost, Books 7 and 8 (1674), reprinted in The Milton Reading Room, edited by Thomas H. Luxon and copyrighted by the Trustees of Dartmouth College, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
7. John Evelyn, (1620-1706), from Sylva (1662), “Of the Beech,” off copyright, open access (Gutenberg)
8. William Cowper (1731-1800 CE), “The Hare” (1783), off copyright, open-access (Gutenberg)
9. Robert Burns (1759-96 CE), “To a Mouse” (1785), off copyright, open-access (Scottish Poetry Library)
10. Margaret Cavendish, "The Hunting of the Hare" (1656)
11. Edmund Topsell, "The Hare" (1608)
12. Mary Wroth, "A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love" (1621)
13. Andrew Marvell, "The Garden" (1681)
14. William Shakespeare, "When Daisies Pied" (1598)
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
Communication
The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, interpersonal, or visual form.
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
Social Awareness & Responsibility
The capacity to understand the interdependence of people, communities, and self in a global society.
