How Literature Looks at Climate Change
Ralph Waldo Emerson is just the beginning of literature that can teach us about environmental issues relevant to contemporary life
Most English departments offer coursework in classic and modern literature, creative writing, and poetry. But Colby’s English majors can focus their studies on one of the most pressing issues of our time: the environment.
“This concentration came from a groundswell of student demand,” said Assistant Professor of English Chris Walker, who built the curriculum with Associate Professors of English Katherine Stubbs and Elizabeth Sagaser and Jay Sibara, associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. “We really wanted a concentration that would allow for students to deeply investigate the ways in which writing and narrative about the environment has a long history, but also contemporary significance. Our goal is to prepare students for facing the hard, wicked problems of the present moment.”
The team designed the concentration to cover important topics in the environmental humanities, including requiring students to take at least one class outside of the English Department. “Students get to become acquainted with environmental literature in fun and capacious ways. There is a long history and tradition of environmental writing, especially as it interacts with social justice issues. This concentration gives students the tools necessary to understand the complicated dynamics of environmental change and their representations in literature,” Walker said.
More than the transcendentalists
You won’t just find the transcendentalists here. This type of study broadens the understanding of literature to include film, graphic novels, and professional writing. Said Walker, “It’s definitely not your standard survey of American environmental writing. We regularly offer a wide array of coursework for students, from medieval literature and the environment to geological narratives, so they can take classes across a range of historical periods, geographic areas, and authors.”
Intentionally making this concentration interdisciplinary has also attracted students from other majors to these courses. Walker notes that his Environmental Humanities course mixes English majors with environmental science, computational biology, and science, technology, and society, which makes for lively and engaging discussions.
“I have my students investigate how notions of the natural world are constructed in their home discipline as one of our projects in the course,” said Walker. “A biology major may talk about lab space, or someone from economics might dissect a theory like the tragedy of the commons.”
For Colby students passionate about the environment—but hesitant about lab work or scientific study—this concentration feels like the perfect match. “I’ve always been interested in climate activism, but I didn’t feel like science was the way to get to the root of those social justice issues,” said Sammie Chilton ’25, who hopes to go to law school. “I really that I can participate in rigorous coursework relating to the environment that’s not necessarily in the sciences. For Colby to give me that opportunity is really special.”
Similarly, Claire Campbell ’26 came to the concentration after taking a philosophy course as a first-year student. “It made me realize how much I care about the environment, but I’m not a science person,” she said. “I wanted to study the environment in a way that’s aligned with my strong suit, which is reading and writing.”
Both students cited Associate Professor of English Matthew Schneider-Mayerson’s course Ecotopian Visions as a favorite. “We learn a lot in these classes about climate reality, and it can get very grim, especially when you dig into the data. This was such a hopeful class,” said Campbell. “The class mixed traditional papers with semi-formal blog posts and reflections on interdisciplinary material. It might be an academic study, a film, or a short story.”
Solving the climate crisis will take a multi-layered, interdisciplinary approach, which is exactly what this curriculum hopes to achieve. Said Walker, “This analysis we’re teaching transcends just reading about nature in a novel. We’re trying to help students understand how vital the study of language and narrative is for confronting pressing problems in the contemporary world in a variety of mediums.”
Courses in the concentration
Among the courses in the concentration: Environmental Humanities: Stories of Crisis and Resilience; Environmental Writing in the Himalayas: Practicing the Arts of Unmastery; Creative Environmental Communication; Medieval Ecopoetics; 17th-Century Literature and the Natural World; Another World is Possible: Ecotopian Visions.
