English and drama

Writing the Environment

Module code: Q3164
Level 6
30 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Workshop, Seminar
Assessment modes: Coursework

It is urgent that we question the relationship between ourselves and the natural world. In this module, we will explore the relationship between writing and our urban, cultural and natural environments. 

The environmental humanities pay particular attention to the relationship between the arts and ecology (including questions of climate change). An ecological perspective understands the entangled relationships between life-forms of incredible variety. This module proceeds by challenging the human-animal’s assumption of ‘species exceptionalism’, the false assumption that the human stands outside the realm of the animal.

Questions of the environment provide us with a framework to explore just some of the places and landscapes habited or imagined by writers and artists, in both a local and a global sense. 

The module includes fieldwork to help us locate the literary imagination in real places. This may include (but will vary each year):

  • Henry James and Joseph Conrad in Rye
  • Virginia Woolf in Newhaven and at Monk’s House
  • Graham Greene in Brighton
  • Raymond Williams in Seaford
  • Derek Jarman in Dungeness.

Throughout this module, we will develop critical knowledge and awareness of the 'inextricable' relations between literature and the environment. You will acquire a critical and conceptual vocabulary for analysis of literature from an ecological perspective.  

Module learning outcomes

  • Develop a fuller critical knowledge and awareness of the inextricable relations between literature and the environment.
  • Develop an enhanced understanding and appreciation of specific literary works in the context of contemporary environmental questions and problems.
  • Acquire a wider and more refined critical and conceptual vocabulary for the analysis and interrogation of contemporary literature, and of more traditional forms of literary criticism, from an ecological perspective.
  • Gain a greater critical understanding of the possibilities of 'English' as a university discipline apropos the local as well as more global environment in which it is taught and studied.
  • Develop a richer understanding and appreciation of the possibilities of creative writing vis-a-vis ecology and the environment.