Postgraduate Course: Green Thoughts: Contemporary Environmental Poetry (ENLI11283)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | 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, 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.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| 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 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% course essay (4,000 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:
- produce effective close readings of contemporary environmental poetry
- understand and evaluate a range of key concepts in the environmental humanities and eco-critical studies
- produce clear, well-evidenced arguments that respond to the course themes
- 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
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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.
skilled communicators
The course will address some emotionally challenging topics, such as climate change, and students will be asked to reflect on how to address these issues with clarity and sensitivity. |
| Keywords | Poetry,Eco-criticism,Climate emergency,Anthropocene,Environmental Humanities |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr David Farrier
Tel: (0131 6)50 3607
Email: David.Farrier@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hope Hamilton
Tel: (0131 6)50 4167
Email: hope.hamilton@ed.ac.uk |
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