Putting History at the Core: History and Literature in Environmental Studies

Abstract

curricular offerings into the humanities, their first stop is often environmental literature, particularly classics such as Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Brilliant and compelling, such readings can be easily integrated into a science-based curriculum as a taste of the romantic, moral, and ethical foundations of modem environmentalism. If environmental studies students read only a few books in the humanities, these are certainly good ones to pick. Within some environmental studies programs, however, environmental literature has become an entire course or even a program of its own. At Middlebury College, Environmental Studies (ES) majors have for decades benefited from excellent coursework in American environmental literature and religion, traditionally Middlebury's strengths in the environmental humanities. The program's environmental literature course has long been a course, required of all ES majors. American environmental history, on the other hand, is the new kid on the block, eagerly sought and entirely welcome, but only recently considered essential to an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies. There are compelling reasons, however, to put environmental history as well as literature at the core of an environmental studies