Students will learn about Greece and Rome through their landscapes: how the land shaped ancient cultures, and how human action in turn altered the environment. We will consider agricultural practices such as growing crops and herding animals, other ways of exploiting the environment such as fishing, hunting, and mining, and the emergence of new technologies; we will also think about how practical needs and cultural forces interact.

Introduction to environmental literature. What complicates the representation of nature in our languages? What strategies have writers around the world used to evoke ideas of beauty, wilderness, the pastoral, climate, and catastrophe? Primary texts of fiction, non-fiction, sound, and film. Emphasis on critical analysis, writing exercises, and reading methods.