Foundations
This mid-20th-century writer helped spark the modern environmental movement with Silent Spring.
Who is Rachel Carson?
Many Indigenous worldviews describe the land not as property but as this.
What is a relative or living being?
Thoreau and Emerson often warn that industrialization can alienate humans from this, which they consider a source of truth, wisdom, and moral guidance.
What is nature?
Natasha Trethewey’s “After the Storm” is set in the aftermath of this real climate disaster.
What is Hurricane Katrina?
Some contemporary literature imagines futures shaped by climate change, exploring human choices, moral responsibility, and ecological consequences.
What is climate fiction/cli-fi?
This concept, central to early American environmental literature, evokes awe, terror, and beauty in scenes like Shelley’s “Mont Blanc.”
What is the sublime?
In “Honorable Harvest,” Kimmerer outlines principles such as taking only what you need from nature especially and offering this in return.
What is a gift or gratitude?
This short story by Ray Bradbury imagines a fully automated house continuing its routines after humanity is gone, critiquing industrial progress and its disconnect from nature.
What is "There Will Come Soft Rains"?
Richard Powers’ "The Overstory" emphasizes the long-term survival of these organisms, showing that even when their environments are damaged, they persist and adapt over generations.
What are forests/trees?
__________ are often used to reflect on anthropocentrism, ethical obligations, and interconnectedness.
What are animals? or What are the roles of animals in environmental literature?
In the introduction to "Nature", this writer argues that individuals must become a “transparent eyeball” in order to fully perceive the divine presence in the natural world.
Who is Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Works by Kimmerer, Hogan, and Winder challenge the Western assumption that humans dominate the natural world, instead promoting this worldview that emphasizes a different kind of learning.
What is land as pedagogy or learning from the land?
William Blake’s "London" and Leo Marx’s idea of “The Machine in the Garden” explore how industrialization and urban growth disrupt these idealized depictions of nature.
What is the pastoral ideal?
Poems like Ada Limón’s "Instructions on Not Giving Up" and Gary Snyder’s "For the Children" celebrate resilience not only in ecosystems but in this broader social and ethical context.
What is human responsibility and community survival?
Showing how identifying landscapes, species, or places can assert power, control, or intimacy.
What is the significance of language and naming in environmental literature ?
This 19th-century movement, associated with writers like Wordsworth and Shelley, emphasized emotion, imagination, and awe toward the natural world.
What is Romanticism?
In “Speaking Tree,” Harjo describes a tree that remembers everything and speaks across generations, symbolizing this kind of archive beyond written text.
What is an ancestral or living memory?
Experiential or sensory knowledge of nature, gained through direct observation and interaction, which industrial-era writers often highlight as being lost amid rapid urbanization.
What is the type of understanding gained from firsthand experience with the natural world?
Climate fiction works like Octavia Butler’s "Parable of the Sower" or N.K. Jemisin’s "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" depict resilience by focusing on communities adapting to extreme environmental changes, emphasizing this theme.
What is social or cultural resilience?
The emphasis in environmental literature that environmental harms often disproportionately affect marginalized communities.
What is environmental justice?
Early environmental writers often challenged the belief that nature exists only as a resource for humans. This human-centered worldview is known by this term.
What is Anthropocentrism?
Indigenous writers often emphasize that environmental destruction is tied to cultural destruction, highlighting this fundamental relationship.
What is the relationship between land and community? OR What is the bond between environmental and cultural survival?
Romantic and early environmental writers emphasized that industrialization erodes these qualities in human life, which leads to diminished awe, contemplation, and emotional depth.
What are the spiritual or emotional benefits of nature? or What is childlike wonder for nature?
In poetry and prose, environmental resilience is often paired with a critique of industrialization, urbanization, or environmental racism, showing that recovery is not just ecological but also this.
What is justice or ethical responsibility?
The theme in contemporary and future-focused nature writing that highlights the need to respond to rapidly changing ecosystems and climates, showing how both communities and environments persist and recover.
What is adaptation in environmental literature?