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Teaching
Green Romanticism
to Environmental
Studies Majors
Tilar
J. Mazzeo, Colby
College
This
essay considers the
complexities of teaching
a course on literary
Romanticism that is
also part of an interdisciplinary
Environmental Studies
program. Part of the
pragmatic challenge
of leading cross-listed
courses is that they
involve teaching students
and often a majority
of students whose
primary interests
are not in literature
but are in environmental
science or social
activism. As a matter
of pedagogy, then,
what does it mean
to teach Romanticism
outside the disciplinary
boundaries of English
studies? How
does one persuade
students, many of
whom are trained in
the sciences, that
poetry from a historically
remote period is a
vital and important
part of their education? Perhaps
most simply, it is
a matter of answering
what has become an
increasingly urgent
question: How does
Romanticism matter
in the contemporary
world? -
The
course that I discuss
at length in this
essay is a fourteen-week
cross-listed course
recently taught as
part of the Environmental
Studies major at Colby College. Like
all courses, this
seminar has a genealogy
that shapes its investments
and the pedagogical
approach that it reflects.
The course has its
origins in a general-education
class on the personal
essay and nature writing
that I taught in Seattle
at the University
of Washington in 1999.
As local events became
world events that
term, the World Trade
Organization came
to dominate much of
our discussion for
several weeks; among
my students were several
committed environmentalists
and at least one self-professed
anarchist. Ironically,
however, the syllabus
reflected—and
continues to reflect,
I think—my
own ambivalence about
teaching activism
and about the problematic
intersections of professorial
authority and personal
hypocrisy. (As a lapsed
vegetarian, as a devotee
of the senseless road
trip, as one who finds
sorting cans a tedious
exercise in landfill
futility, who am I
to argue that you
must change your life?) This
ambivalence was heightened
in the second incarnation
of this course, a
class on Romanticism
that engaged issues
of environmentalism,
which I taught in
Corvallis at Oregon
State University in
2000 to a positively
dreamy group of politically
enlightened and green-minded
students. As satisfying
as this was, we were
perhaps carried away
in that election year
by a Shelleyean sense
of the possible; far
too many of us confessed
afterward to voting
for Nader, and I wondered
once again about the
wisdom of teaching
environmentalism in
a politicized context.
-
The
Environmental
Studies focus
of the course
and the syllabus
was formalized
in 2002 when
it was offered
under the title "Green
Romanticism" and
was cross-listed
on an on-going
basis with
the
Environmental
Studies major at
the University
of Wisconsin
(Oshkosh),
then headed
by Bron
Taylor. The
course was
offered again
in the spring
of 2005
at Colby College,
also cross-listed
with the Environmental
Studies program.
For better
or for worse,
I remain
politically
ambivalent
about teaching
what I have
come to think
of as environmentalism-as-social-critique.
What I am
hesitant
about is an
approach
that asks
students
to locate
the problems
of environmental
abuse "out
there"—in
corporate
abuses,
in a broken
political
system,
in post-industrial
American
culture,
in the
choices
of other
people.
As a result,
it is probably
necessary
to observe
that my
course
as
presently
configured
focuses
on the
study
of Romanticism
and environmentalism
as an intently
introspective
and self-reflective
exercise.
And I try
to keep
the emphasis
on Romanticism
rather
than on
environmentalism,
even in
this cross-disciplinary
context;
Environmental
Studies
majors,
after
all, are
exposed
to
environmental
issues
in other
places
in the curriculum
but are
unlikely
to take
another
course
on
British
Romanticism.
However,
Romanticism
has to
seem relevant
to them
as well.
Thus,
the readings
and assignments
encourage
students
to think
about how
these texts
and ideas
intersect
with their
own experience
and with
they ways
in which
they choose
to live
in the
world
as individuals;
this is
Romanticism,
then, as
a personal
accounting,
as an opportunity
to reflect
on the
history
of environmentalism
and on
the role
of the
individual
within
it.
-
In
the absence of
a directly activist
pedagogy, I needed
to find other ways
to unify the course,
and, as I have
suggested, the focus
of the syllabus
is primarily historicist.
In
this class, we
study the Romantic
period as a moment
in Western cultural
history that was
concerned with
issues of the environment
and ecological
apocalypse, in order
to consider how
the literature
of the period has
shaped contemporary
expectations regarding
the nature and the
development of environmental
studies. The supplementary
course readings
are drawn from
primarily
historicist criticism
or from cultural
texts of the late
eighteenth and
early nineteenth
centuries. Because
many of the students
working in Environmental
Studies are pursuing
majors in Biology
or the plant sciences,
there is a particular
emphasis in the
course on the history
of resource management,
botany, and landscape
production. However,
while the course
readings are historicist,
the class assignments
consistently ask
students to reflect
upon the ways in
which Green Romanticism
intersects with
contemporary ecological
issues or experiences.
To this extent,
there is also an
emphasis on contemporary
cultural incarnations
of the Romantic
inheritance.
If
a historicist emphasis
structures the
implied argument
of the course, institutional
realities also had
an important effect
on the construction
of the syllabus.
The course was taught
on a fourteen-week
semester system,
and we met weekly
for three hours
in the late evening,
from six to nine
p.m. Scheduling
the course as a
night class was
connected to the
interdisciplinary
focus on the seminar;
science students
routinely had lengthy
laboratory sessions
scheduled in the
early afternoon,
making it difficult
for them to register
for a humanities
course offered at
any reasonable hour
or interval. As
a matter of praxis,
the three-hour
class meeting meant
having to schedule
student presentations in
the course; the idea
of my talking for
three hours, even
in the capacity of
vivaciously leading
discussion, filled
us all with horror.
Since in designing
the course I was committed
to engaging the expertise
and interest of students
from beyond English
studies and to making
the course as genuinely
interdisciplinary
as possible given
my own limited expertise,
student presentations
were not primarily
literature based.
-
These
presentations were
an important component
of the course.
Beginning in the
third week of the
semester, students
were asked to prepare
presentations that
discussed the ways
in which Romanticism
continues to shape
contemporary environmental
issues. Students
could work independently
or as a group,
according to their
desire, with the
understanding that
the time allotted
was ten minutes
per member. (i.e. a
group of three
students needed
to develop a unified
thirty-minute
presentation.) To
encourage rigorous
and interesting
presentations,
students were
required to advertise
their
presentation a
week
in advance to
the
rest of the class
via email and
were
told that the
function
of this advertisement
was to convince
the rest of us
that this was
going to be fascinating.
The dueling playbills
that emerged were
often quite funny
and created a
strong
sense of community
in the classroom,
at the same time
that they committed
students in advance
to impressing
their peers with
an intelligent
and engaging presentation.
To encourage good
work, students
were also required
to submit on the
evening
of their presentation
some prepared
written
or physical documentation—ranging
from a typed
outline
or a Power Point
presentation
file to classroom
handouts or,
in more unusual
instances that
term, an audio
CD or menu. Creativity
in the service
of conveying
serious
information was
strongly encouraged,
with some memorable
results. Students
talking about
the history of
vegetarianism
and the legacy
of Shelley's "Vindication
of Natural Diet" in
relation to
contemporary
meat production,
for example,
provided
the class with
a bibliography
of remarkably
grim "summer
reading" and
documentary
films on
the issue
of animal
production
and slaughter,
and, in conjunction
with information
on the scientific
and evolutionary
arguments
for and against
a
raw food
diet, talked
about the
relationship
between environmentalism,
the organic
movement,
and gourmet
marketing.
Another student
paired Romantic-period
landscape
paintings
with photographic
images drawn
from recent National
Geographic and Outdoor
Life magazines,
in order
to demonstrate
that the
iconography
of the
sublime
continues
to shape
our aesthetic
appreciation
of the
landscape
and wilderness. One
student
attempted
unsuccessfully
to build
an Aeolian
harp
but did
share
a good
deal
of research
into
the history
of the
instrument
and played
for us
instead
on his
guitar
his musical
rendition
of Blake's
introductory
poem
from Songs
of
Innocence,
which,
he
observed,
is
about
harps.
And,
of
course,
in
addition
to
these
whimsical
highlights,
there
were
the
requisite
presentations
on
the
importance
of
strong
forest
management
policy
(paired
with
the
readings
on
trees
in
week
ten),
on
the
perils
of
over-population
in
the
world
(paired
with
the
readings
on
enclosure
in
week
eleven),
and
on
the
changing
conventions
of
botanical
illustration,
drawn
from
field
notes
of
famous
scientists
(paired
with
the
readings
on
Erasmus
Darwin
in
week
five). These
presentations
were
pedagogically
successful
in
several
respects—perhaps
most
importantly
because
they
succeeded
in
engaging
the
students,
in
asking
them
to
draw
upon
their
own
expertise
in
different
disciplines,
and
in
bringing
energy
to
the
more
formal
class
discussion
that
followed.
Typically,
the student presentations
occupied the first
hour of the course
period, and we dedicated
the remaining two
hours of class to
discussing in detail
the assigned texts
on the syllabus. It
is a fundamental problem
in teaching Romantic
poetry, in my experience,
that few students—English
majors included—are
particularly confident
readers of verse. Environmental
Studies majors, a
number of whom had
primary training in
the sciences, were
understandably apprehensive.
As a result, when
the class discussion
focused on a poetic
text, as it often
did, we inevitably
began with an exercise
in paraphrase and
close reading. As
part of their preparation
for class, students
were asked to complete
a paraphrase of the
poem, which included
looking up any of
the words that they
did not recognize
and translating difficult
passages of the poem
into something resembling
the contemporary vernacular.
Most students encountered
some difficulty in
doing this successfully
at the beginning,
and we began discussion
by making sure that
everyone understood
the rhetorical position
of the text.
-
From
that point of departure,
we would proceed
by identifying and
describing the environmental
relationship defined
by the text. Studying
Coleridge's "Frost
at Midnight," for
example, we considered
the personification
of natural elements
such as frost
and fire in the
poem, and then
investigated how
the metaphor of
ministry amplified
this comparison.
What is the active
element in the
poem, we asked,
the narrator
or the natural
world? To
what extent does
the poem's final
blessing offer
the natural world
up as an object
to his babe? Is
the personification
of the landscape
actually a means
of taking agency
away from the
environment
by making it
the site of psychological
self-projection? What
are the environmental
implications
of the privileging
of the rural
over the urban
for which the
poem argues? Or
does it not
argue that at
all? As
a matter of
practice at
this point in
the class session,
my role was
to provide a
series of questions
that are sufficiently
open-ended
and provocative
enough to encourage
students to
go back and
look at the
text carefully
again, something
which applied
as equally to
prose works
as to poetic
texts. Thus,
when we discussed
Dorothy Wordsworth's
travel narrative, Recollections
of a Tour
Made in Scotland,
we considered
how she described
the natural
and constructed
environments
around her,
the institutions
or experiences
to which she
compared that
environment,
and the way
in which she
positioned
herself in
relation to
rural Scotland.
A question
of precisely
this sort,
circulated
electronically,
formed the
basis for the
periodic one-page
response papers
that students
were asked
to write in
advance of
class, as well.
-
In
these textual discussions,
the theme of rural
Romanticism recurred
frequently over
the course of the
term; for many of
the students, it
was one of the most
troubling aspects
of Romanticism's
relationship to
the environment
because the pastoral
values in which
these writers were
invested seemed
motivated by the
underlying economic
and cultural issues
that we studied.
However, because
our campus was located
in a rural area,
we extended our
discussion to the
idea of place at
a local level, and
one of the insights
that students came
to in the course
of discussion was
the problem of referring
derisively to rural
areas—including
the one in which
we all lived—as "the
middle of nowhere" or
the "sticks." By
asking students
to connect these
poems with their
own experience
and with the
metaphors they
employed to describe
their relationship
to the landscape
they inhabited,
I wanted them
to consider the
extent to which
they replicated
a similar relationship
to rural culture
and defined value
as a function
of use. One
of the questions
that occupied
us was the problem
of what it means
to say that a
place is "nowhere," and
we connected
this to the larger
context of the
North American
environmentalist
movement, frontier
utopianism, and
the tendency
of activist organizations
to privilege
as "somewhere" remote
areas that conform
to the aesthetics
of the sublime.
-
While
the second hour
of the class period
was typically dedicated
to textually generated
issues of this
sort, the final
third of the class
focused on placing
these literary texts
in relation to Romantic-period
historical documents
or on considering
them through the
critical lens of
an interpretive
essay. These readings
placed a text such
as Coleridge's The
Rime of the Ancient
Mariner in
dialogue, for
example, with
post-colonial
studies, and we
discussed the
ways in which
imperialism intersects
with environmental
and ecological
issues. In another
session, drawing
on essays by Buell
and Paley, we
considered the
apocalyptic anxieties
that public health
crises produced
for the Romantics
and compared those
to the recent
millennialism
of Y2K and to
the environmental
issues related
to movements toward
living "off
the grid" in
the face of
this anticipated
late twentieth-century
crisis. Perhaps
most importantly,
as the semester
came to a close,
these secondary
readings focused
increasingly
on arguments
for the continued
presence of Romanticism
in the modern
and post-modern
era, an argument
admirably assisted
by the recent
scholarship
of Lowy and Sayre.
Since part of
the implied argument
of the semester
was to demonstrate
to students the
relevance of
Romanticism for
analyzing and
understanding
their engagement
with Environmental
Studies and their
relationship
to the world
around them,
this positioning
was intended
as a way of ending
the semester
forcefully, and
the topic was
the focus on
their final examination
essay.
-
The
essay topics for
the midterm and
final examinations
reflect the larger
themes and the progression
of the course quite
neatly, in fact.
If the first part
of the semester
had a tendency to
allow students to
critique Romanticism—even
while recognizing
it as a radical
and in many ways
progressive philosophy—as
equivocally environmentalist,
the second part
of the semester
asked that students
articulate the abiding
presence of Romanticism
in the contemporary
world and in their
own expectations
regarding their
relationship to
the environment.
To this end, the
question for the
midterm examination
focused on the
sublime. On this
topic, I wrote:
Edmund
Burke has defined
the sublime as
'Whatever either
on good or upon
bad grounds tends
to raise a man
in his own opinion,
produces a sort
of swelling and
triumph that is
extremely grateful
to the human mind;
and this swelling
is never more perceived,
nor operates with
more force, than
when without danger
we are conversant
with terrible objects,
the mind always
claiming to itself
some part of the
dignity and importance
of the thing which
it contemplates.' This
definition would
seem to suggest
that the sublime
has little to do
with the appreciation
of natural objects per
se and
a great deal
to do with egotism.
The question is:
Can the sublime
(or the sublime
cycle) ever be
legitimately environmentalist? (And
what would that
be?) Or
does the sublime
always engage
the landscape
as a passive object
for domination,
use, or exploitation
by humans and
human culture? Respond
in a one-page,
single-spaced
essay, considering
the question
in the context
of Percy Bysshe
Shelley's "Mont
Blanc" and/or
Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's "The
Rime of the
Ancient Mariner.
This
question asks students
to consider one
of the central ideas
of the Romantic
period—the
sublime—in
relation to two
traditionally canonical
poems. However,
it also asks them
to consider these
elements in the
context of their
own thinking about
environmentalism.
The simple answer
to the question,
of course, is that
the sublime does
engage the landscape
as a passive object
for domination
and use. I
do not recall
a single student
offering a paper
that convincingly
argued anything
different, and
to this extent
the midterm requires
students to be
critical of the
Romantic ideology.
However, between
this point in the
term and the final
examination, students
also were generally
persuaded that
they evaluate landscapes
in aesthetic terms
that engage the
sublime, and they
were generally
persuaded that
Romanticism continues
to influence their
perceptions of
the natural world,
for better and
for worse. For
those who were
not already persuaded,
the final examination
question asked
them to make the
argument. The final
examination question
posed was:
Romanticism
has been recently
described as a philosophical
and aesthetic attitude,
internationalist in
scope, originating
in the late eighteenth
century but continuing
into the present.
If Romanticism is
an attitude, what
are its attributes? What
does it privilege? What
might be the value
of this attitude? Compare
one of the poems that
you have read in class
with one modern example
of "Romanticism" in
order to develop your
argument. Contemporary
Romanticism may be
broadly defined, and
you do not need to
focus on a modern
updating of a Romantic-period
work; you are at liberty
to find an otherwise
unrelated example
from which you can
extrapolate similarities
in attitude. You may
consider examples
that are written,
visual, oral, musical,
or otherwise multimedia.
Unlike
the midterm examination
question, the final
examination question
requires students
to do four things:
to define Romanticism
at the end of a course
on the subject; to
return one more time
to a Romantic-period
poem in order to construct
a close reading of
it; to identify and
to reflect upon one
example of Romanticism
in the world around
them and drawn from
their own experience;
and to do all this
looking through the
lens of Environmental
Studies and ecological
issues.
-
As
I said at the outset,
this is Romanticism
as self-accounting.
From an overarching
pedagogical perspective,
the implicit condition
of critiquing the
Romantics early
in the semester
is that the students
are asked at its
close to reflect
upon the ways in
which, as self-identified
environmentalists,
they are inheritors
of that tradition.
What I hope students
recognize in the
final weeks of the
term is the complexity
of coming to judgment.
Over the course
of the semester,
students are asked
to critique Romanticism
and then to identify
with it in a personal
manner, and what
I hope that they
will finally find
themselves wondering,
although one cannot
proscribe it, is
the degree to which
they are any more
successful at living
according to ecological
principles than
the Romantics were.
The point is not
to discourage the
effort. Quite the
contrary, part of
what I hope that
Romanticism teaches
them is that living
your life as best
you can by the
principles to which
you are most committed
is a form of activism
as well. This is
typically not a
hard sell. The advantage
of teaching Romantic
literature as part
of an Environmental
Studies program
is that the students
are generally quite
willing to think
about the relationship
between texts and
the material conditions
of experience. Indeed,
they frequently
demand it. And while
cross-listing Romanticism
and teaching the
subject outside
the disciplinary
boundaries of English
studies brings
with it a particular
set of complexities
regarding what one
can expect students
to know or, more
importantly, to
be interested in,
it brings with
in the very real
pleasure of discovering
that it is not such
a difficult thing
to believe that
the period continues
to matter in the
world.
[Go
to Class Syllabus]
[Go
to Class Assignments]
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