By Theresa A. Dougal<\/p>\n
As people across the globe grapple with the consequences of environmental degradation, \u201cteaching sustainability\u201d within the context of the humanities is imperative, yet the challenges are daunting for many educators who struggle to address the topic within their disciplinary norms.\u00a0\u00a0 In English Studies, we have seen this dilemma played out in numerous, ongoing scholarly debates about the practice and teaching of ecocriticism and environmental literature, the relative value of theory versus more experiential learning, and the merit and methods of an interdisciplinary approach and an action-oriented curriculum.\u00a0 Cheryll Glotfelty captures the impulse many of us feel when she says in a letter published in PMLA<\/i>: \u201dThe question that fires me incessantly is this: how can one, as a literary critic and teacher, contribute to the ecological health of the planet?\u201d1<\/sup>\u00a0 In addressing this pressing question, those of us sympathetic to the cause bring to the table an array of possibilities that reflect our best intentions as well as the realities of the institutions we teach in and the students we teach. My own experience in teaching sustainability within English Studies at a small liberal arts college has led me to foreground a strongly interdisciplinary approach grounded in ethics, an effort made possible by a curriculum that actively encourages interdisciplinary learning and includes an upper-level category called \u201cThe Moral Life.\u201d\u00a0 The thoughts shared here emerge from my evolving efforts over the past several years to responsibly integrate an environmental perspective into my teaching.<\/p>\n The title \u201cSustainable Communities\u201d originates with a first year seminar I was invited to teach within a new living-learning community on our campus.\u00a0 After having recently experimented with a short section on the environment in my \u201cMoral Life\u201d literature course, I welcomed the opportunity to address the topic more comprehensively within a first-year writing course populated by students who shared a common interest. Unlike literature courses, a general education writing course is easily conducive to the kind of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that Greg Garrard and others advocate, including but moving beyond mere Environmental Education (EE) to concrete action.\u00a0 Through a variety of readings, films, speakers, discussions, and writing assignments, students examined how threats to the natural environment are influencing our ways of living, and how communities are working to create more balanced lifestyles, social structures, and economies.\u00a0 The course aimed to provide the \u201cfundamental knowledge\u201d that Garrard describes as a \u201ccritique of consumerism and advertising . . . an understanding of distorted retail prices and environmental costs, and the contrast in moral values between a technocentric and ecocentric perspective.\u201d2<\/sup>\u00a0 Students also moved beyond merely thinking and writing about these issues, and participated in multiple hands-on activities, enacting what Stephen Sperling sees as the \u201cprimary aims\u201d of education for sustainability \u2013 \u201cto develop and link systemic and critical thinking and environmental and social action, or in other words, develop ecoliteracy and political literacy for full and active citizenship.\u201d3<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 Teaching this seminar and witnessing its effect upon the students, several of whom went on to major in Environmental Studies and to assume leadership roles in environmental initiatives, motivated me to try to find ways to bring this pedagogy to bear within other courses.<\/p>\n Teaching the environment within standard English literature courses is clearly no easy task, as English major courses provide much less room for Education for Sustainable Development, a circumstance that underlies the dilemma of ecocritics who are sincere in their desire to make a difference outside the classroom.\u00a0 Lawrence Buell, Ursula Heise, and Karen Thornber affirm the value of ecocriticism, which, as they write, \u201cbegins from the conviction that the arts of imagination and the study thereof \u2013 by virtue of their grasp of the power of word, story, and image to reinforce, enliven, and direct environmental concern \u2013 can contribute significantly to the understanding of environmental problems.\u201d4<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 Critics like Garrard, however, worry that too few students exposed to this EE model, which emphasizes the \u201cadmirable canon\u201d of environmental literature, go on to make practical use of their knowledge after they graduate.5<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 Karen Kilcup expresses similar concern when she writes, \u201cThe challenge for literary studies is to make an environmental perspective fundamental far beyond the discipline, to avoid making ecocriticsm merely another interpretive system.\u201d6<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 She asks the pertinent question: \u201cHow can a literature course be structured both to meet departmental (and disciplinary) demands and to connect reading with real life \u2013 while developing students\u2019 ecological literacy?\u201d7<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 In my own limited efforts to \u201cteach the environment\u201d within early 19th-century American and British Literature courses, I have been acutely aware of the\u00a0way the various, important disciplinary demands of these courses conflict with the impulse to foreground practical environmental concerns.\u00a0 At my undergraduate institution, with an English Department consisting of eight full-time faculty and no environmental literature track, English students\u2019 exposure in their courses to environmental issues and\/or ecocriticism is minimal, to say the least.\u00a0 In the end, my best effort to address this deficiency has emerged in an interdisciplinary course called \u201cLiterature and the Way We Live.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLiterature and the Way We Live\u201d draws juniors and seniors from across all majors and, in addition to being an English major elective, fulfills an upper-level category in the general curriculum called \u201cThe Moral Life.\u201d\u00a0 The deliberately interdisciplinary framework of the course allows us to approach a variety of literary and cultural texts from multiple perspectives, with less of a focus on strictly literary analysis.\u00a0 Our central texts are works included in Peter and Renata Singer\u2019s The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature<\/i>8<\/sup><\/i> and Simon Blackburn\u2019s short but comprehensive Being Good: an Introduction to Ethics<\/i>.9<\/sup>\u00a0 These are supplemented, particularly in the environment section, with a variety of articles and films.\u00a0 For their presentations, students provide the class with peer-reviewed articles from their particular disciplines, which I review and approve in advance for everyone to read.\u00a0 Students maintain an extensive daily journal that includes responses to Blackburn, the literary text, and the reserve article, and a hypothetical dilemma related to the topic.\u00a0 This substantial writing component, along with two formal essays and class discussion, constitute the work of the course.<\/p>\n In advance of the environment section, students read literature and secondary texts that explore the theme of identity, and they absorb a good deal of the Blackburn ethics text \u2013 all of which primes them for ongoing discussion about civic life, personal lifestyle, and moral decision making.\u00a0 In the identity section we consider issues having to do with race and gender, money and ambition, education, technology.\u00a0 With Blackburn, as we lead up to and engage in the environment section, we discuss, among other things, the concepts of relativism, egoism, desire and the meaning of life, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, rights, and unreasonable demands.\u00a0 All of this material, when read in conjunction with provocative literature and related secondary articles, is conducive to preparing students to think about and analyze various beliefs and behaviors regarding the environment.\u00a0 If, as Al Gore claims and many of us believe, the environment is essentially a moral issue and crisis,10<\/sup>\u00a0 using ethics to frame a literature course both preserves the ideal model of liberal learning and grounds the discussion within universal concepts rather than partisan positions, allowing for dialogue that, though challenging, doesn\u2019t turn off students who are skeptical or under-informed, that compels them to think broadly about concrete problems.<\/p>\n One cornerstone of the course is the use of interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed secondary articles submitted by the students.\u00a0 In addition to presenting on the central readings, students lead the class in discussion over environmental topics related to their majors or to careers that emerge from their majors.\u00a0 So, for instance, we\u2019ve learned together about \u201cAssessing Ozone-Related Health Impacts under a Changing Climate\u201d (nursing), \u201cExtinction Risk from Climate Change\u201d (biology), \u201cPsychology and Environmental Sustainability: A Call for Integration\u201d (psychology), \u201cThe National Environmental Literacy Project\u201d (education), \u201cA Regional Dynamic General-Equilibrium Model of Alternative Climate-Change Strategies\u201d (mathematics\/economics).\u00a0 I name these articles at length because the titles, so alien to an English course, work well as a supplement to our discussion about the primary texts.\u00a0 I have found that when students are encouraged to seek out and share information that is relevant to their own scholarly and career aspirations, they process all the course material more fully.\u00a0 Although students are not participating in any actual hands-on activities within the course, they\u2019re integrating course content into their own frame of reference.\u00a0 Nursing students begin to consider the ways in which climate change is impacting public health.\u00a0 Education students are motivated to introduce environmental literacy into their classrooms.\u00a0 Psychology majors recognize the potential effects of dramatic and ongoing weather changes on people\u2019s psychological well being.\u00a0 Everyone in the class benefits by being exposed to a variety of perspectives on pressing environmental issues, and the practice contributes to the kind of \u201ctransformative teaching\u201d that Hayden Gabriel, Greg Garrard, and Steve Pratchett call for within a pedagogical framework that includes \u201cawareness, analysis, evaluation, and participation.\u201d11 12<\/sup>\u00a0 The ideal is that, by relating the environment to what they already know and care about, students gain a measure of control.\u00a0 And as David Sobel says in \u201cClimate Change meets Ecophopia,\u201d \u201cA sense of agency and control leads to the knowledge of issues and action strategies, which lead to an intention to act, which under the right precipitating conditions, leads to environmental behavior.\u201d13<\/sup><\/p>\n Because \u201cLiterature and the Way We Live\u201d is, at its core, an English course, we pay close attention to the rhetorical\u00a0practices of our texts, and one Communication student\u2019s secondary article was particularly useful in this regard.\u00a0 The article, \u201cCommunicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement,\u201d14<\/sup>\u00a0 helped us to consider the extent to which the novel, articles, and films we were using in class were effective in truly engaging us in our topic.\u00a0 As I continually seek out the best material to use in class \u2013 cultural texts, dystopian or apocalyptic novels, nature writing, non-fiction and journalistic pieces \u2013 articles such as this one on \u201cframes,\u201d found and presented by a student in the class, are successful in drawing students into an even larger conversation \u2013 about the importance of communicating environmental issues to the public at large, and about how literature and other arts can play an essential role.\u00a0 \u201cLiterature and the Way We Live\u201d is an interdisciplinary course but it is also firmly aligned with the belief that the humanities are crucial to achieving environmental awareness.\u00a0 As Stephanie LeMenager and Stephanie Foote argue, \u201cthe humanities are especially suited to speak to the rhetoric of crisis and to problems of futurity and scale because they demand that we understand how narratives about place, about value, and about the relation of social actors to those ideas are made.\u201d15 <\/sup>Our study of such narratives and their effectiveness is central, and it is enhanced by the valuable insights and information brought into our deliberations from scholarship in a variety of disciplines.<\/p>\n In addition to the students\u2019 interdisciplinary articles, another important interactive practice in the course involves the hypothetical dilemmas that students regularly write and deliberate upon.\u00a0 For each moral issue addressed by the texts, students practice articulating truly difficult dilemmas for themselves \u2013 ones that have no easy answers and that tend to generate intensive debate in class.\u00a0 During the environment section, such dilemmas have involved choices about where to live and how to transport oneself, how much stuff to buy, what profession to pursue, what energy to consume, whether to become vegetarian or vegan.\u00a0 Students are encouraged to make direct applications of moral issues to their personal lives and professional aspirations in a way similar to what Richard Kerridge calls for in his article \u201cEcocriticism and the Mission of English\u201d when he suggests that impersonal scholarship should be brought into dialogue with \u201cpersonal narratives of reading, including emotions and bodily reactions, and the influence of other things going on in the person\u2019s life at the time of reading.\u201d16<\/sup>\u00a0 In \u201cLiterature and the Way We Live,\u201d our goal is to do more than merely read and learn about environmental issues.\u00a0 The hypothetical dilemmas and student-chosen interdisciplinary articles are meant to compel students to internalize and be deliberate about tangibly dealing with environmental challenges that many of them admittedly would rather ignore.\u00a0 Such classroom practices also have the added benefit of shielding the teacher from the charge of being activist in the classroom, since discussion emerges from peer-reviewed scholarship and student-centered dilemmas, all considered within the context of universal ethical concepts.<\/p>\n Obviously, no one course is likely to propel students toward environmental action, and only anecdotal evidence is available about how students have gone on to behave after taking the course.\u00a0 Ideally, as Julie Matthews recommends in \u201cHybrid Pedagogies for Sustainability Education,\u201d students are exposed to a number of approaches, including the \u201cwhole of institution\u201d approach, which alongside theory, invites all constituents on campus to participate and to \u201cthink differently about life.\u201d17<\/sup>\u00a0 Students might also benefit from a pedagogy that, as Stacy Alaimo argues, recognizes the problematic nuances of the very term, \u201csustainability,\u201d with its techno-scientific perspective, and endorses a more \u201cembedded, passionate, and purposeful\u201d mode of knowledge such as what the humanities can provide.18 <\/sup>In any case, since I began polling students at the beginning and end of our \u201cWay We Live\u201d course, I have seen a dramatic surge in the number of students who conclude that the environment is our most pressing moral concern.\u00a0 These students, and those who have yet to be reached, certainly deserve our continued efforts to find a pedagogy that works.<\/p>\n Notes<\/b><\/p>\n Works Cited<\/b><\/p>\n Alaimo, Stacy. “Sustainable This, Sustainable That: New Materialisms, Posthumanism, and Unknown Futures.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America <\/i>127.3 (2012): 558-564.<\/p>\n Balaev, Michelle. “The Formation of a Field: Ecocriticism in America \u2013 An Interview with Cheryll Glotfelty.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America <\/i>127.3 (2012): 607-616.<\/p>\n Blackburn, Simon. Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics<\/i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.<\/p>\n Buell, Lawrence, Ursula K. Heise, and Karen Thornber. “Literature and Environment.” Annual Review of Environment & Resources<\/i> 36. (2011): 417-440.<\/p>\n Gabriel, Hayden and Garrard, Greg. \u201cReading and Writing Climate Change.\u2019\u201d In Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies<\/i>. Garrard, Greg, ed.\u00a0 London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 117-129.<\/p>\n Garrard, Greg. “Ecocriticism and Education for Sustainability.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture<\/i> 7.3 (2007): 376.<\/p>\n Gore, Al. “Former U.S. Vice President Gore’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture.” Current<\/i> 499 (2008): 7-10.<\/p>\n Huckle, John, and Stephen R. Sterling. Education for Sustainability. London: Earthscan, 1996.<\/p>\n Kerridge, Richard. “Ecocriticism and the ‘Mission Of English’.” Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies<\/i>. 11-23. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.<\/p>\n Kilcup, Karen L. “Fresh Leaves: Practicing Environmental Criticism.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America<\/i> 124.3 (2009): 847-855.<\/p>\n LeMenager, Stephanie, and Stephanie Foote. “The Sustainable Humanities.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America<\/i> 127.3 (2012): 572-578.<\/p>\n Matthews, Julie. “Hybrid Pedagogies for Sustainability Education.” Review of Education\/Pedagogy\/Cultural Studies <\/i>33.3 (2011): 260-277.<\/p>\n Nisbet, Matthew C. “Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement.” Environment<\/i> 51.2 (2009): 12-23.<\/p>\n Pratchett, Steve. \u201cA Model for Sustainable Development.\u201d Primary Geographer <\/i>68 (2009): 25-27.<\/p>\n Singer, Peter, and Renata Singer. The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature<\/i>. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2005.<\/p>\n Sobel, David.\u00a0 \u201cClimate Change Meets Ecophobia.\u201d\u00a0 Connect<\/i>\u00a0 November\/December, 2007, pp. 14-21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Theresa A. Dougal As people across the globe grapple with the consequences of environmental degradation, \u201cteaching sustainability\u201d within the context of the humanities is imperative, yet the challenges are daunting for many educators who struggle to address the topic within their disciplinary norms.\u00a0\u00a0 In English Studies, we have seen this dilemma played out in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9762,"featured_media":0,"parent":1050,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9762"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":971,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/918\/revisions\/971"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n