Students take courses that build a critical framework for understanding environmental injustice and environmental racism, as well as ecocritical theories, including indigenous, queer, and feminist ecologies, and literary movements like Afro-futurism. Courses may focus on literature representing or imagining effects of biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, and displacement on both the human and non-human. There is a particular focus on how literature, writing, and media can convey both scientific research and political realities in order to urge systemic change. This track enables students to ethically examine the possibilities and limits of literature and literary studies as tools to address ecological catastrophe and imagine pathways towards creating a habitable planet for all.
Graduates of this emphasis track may pursue careers as science writers, not-for-profit leaders, public relations and communications staff for environmental agencies, environmental lawyers, environmental lobbyists, political advisors and politicians, interpretive rangers, environmental consultants and business workers, novelists, screenwriters, poets, and songwriters who tell ecocritical stories. Students pursuing this track may wish to minor in Environmental Science and Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability and Justice, Cognitive Science, Public Health, or Sociology depending on their interests and goals.
In addition to adhering to General Education and School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Requirements the Literatures in English major requires 48 units (some of which simultaneously meet general education requirements). Courses in the major must be taken for a letter grade and may not be taken on a pass/no pass basis unless the course is only offered on a pass/no pass basis. Students must complete all major course prerequisites with a C- or better.
Literatures in English, Literature and the Environment Emphasis, B.A. Four-Year Course Plan
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