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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2025/2026

Timetable information in the Course Catalogue may be subject to change.

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Undergraduate Course: Green Thoughts: Contemporary Environmental Poetry (ENLI10436)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course is concerned with how contemporary poetry responds to the challenges of the ecological emergency. In a period of climate breakdown and declining biodiversity, what can poetry have to say? By examining a range of voices, including indigenous poets, we will explore how poetry in both lyric and experimental modes provides new frameworks for thinking about what might constitute a poetics of the Anthropocene. Green Thoughts will introduce students to current trends in literary ecocriticism and criticism emerging from the interdisciplinary environmental humanities. These include the problem of 'lively materials' like plastic and fossil fuels, the possibility of multispecies ethics in a time of extinction, and how the climate crisis is a colonial legacy.
Course description This course is concerned with how contemporary poetry responds to the challenges of the ecological emergency. In a period of climate breakdown and declining biodiversity, what can poetry have to say? By examining a range of voices, including indigenous poets from the Arctic and the Pacific, we will explore how poetry in both lyric and experimental modes provides new frameworks for thinking about what might constitute a poetics of the Anthropocene. Green Thoughts will introduce students to current trends in literary ecocriticism and criticism emerging from the interdisciplinary environmental humanities. These include the problem of 'lively materials' like plastic and fossil fuels, the possibility of multispecies ethics in a time of extinction, and how the climate crisis is a colonial legacy.


Indicative reading list for 2025/26

Essential:

Caleb Parkin, This Fruiting Body
Julianna Spahr, That Winter the Wolf Came
Khairani Barokka, Ultimatum Orangutan
dg nanouk okpik, Corpse Whale
Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Swims
Adam Dickinson, Anatomic
Sean Borodale, Bee Journal

Recommended:

Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble
Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology
Thom van Dooren, Flight Ways
Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
Environmental Humanities journal

A full resource list is available.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2025/26, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  0
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 196 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) 30% mid-semester essay (2,000 words)
70% final essay (3,000 words)
Feedback Students will receive formative feedback on all written assignments. For undergraduate students, the formative feedback on the mid-semester essay will be available before submission of the final essay. Postgraduate students will have the opportunity to submit a 1,000-word plan and receive feedback on this before submission of the course essay.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. produce effective close readings of contemporary environmental poetry
  2. understand and evaluate a range of key concepts in the environmental humanities and eco-critical studies
  3. produce clear, well-evidenced arguments that respond to the course themes
  4. present the results of research undertaken individually and as part of a small group, respond judiciously to such research undertaken by others, and critically evaluate the importance of such material for an understanding of the chief themes of the course
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills This course will promote the following graduate attributes:

curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference

passion to engage locally and globally

The course addresses pressing environmental issues such as the climate and biodiversity emergencies, particularly as they affect developing nations, and the environmental legacies of colonialism. It will explore these issues at local and global scales.

creative problem solvers and researchers

critical and reflective thinkers

Students will be invited to engage with a range of interdisciplinary methods and concepts via the environmental humanities, and consider how they can be effectively applied to an understanding of (a) ecological contexts and issues and (b) the affordances of environmental poetry. They will be invited to develop their own critical methodologies and discover and draw upon both scientific and creative-critical materials. Students will be encouraged to reflect on what different methodologies make possible, and how they may be brought into conversation.
KeywordsPoetry,Eco-criticism,Climate emergency,Anthropocene,Environmental Humanities
Contacts
Course organiserDr David Farrier
Tel: (0131 6)50 3607
Email: David.Farrier@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Hope Hamilton
Tel: (0131 6)50 4167
Email: hope.hamilton@ed.ac.uk
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