Historical Overview of Environmental Literature 🌎

Question 1

List these these three historical movements in chronological:
Romantic, Transcendentalist, Enlightenment

Answer 1

Enlightenment, Romantic, Transcendentalist

Question 1

What is the word to describe an imagined place or state where everything is perceived to be perfect, including social and economic conditions?
hint: this is one of two key features of environmental literature

Answer 1

utopia

Question 2

What is the word to describe a society in which there is great suffering and injustice especially in relation to how people are treated by others and by their governments?

Answer 2

dystopia

Question 3

Consider these example texts: “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, “Ecotopia: The Notebooks” by Ernest Callanbach, “Pacific Edge” by Kim Stanley Robinson, “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Psalm for the Wild-Build” by Becky Chambers.

Are these examples of utopian environmental literature or dystopian environmental literature?

Answer 3

utopia

Question 4

Consider these example texts: “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick, “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi, “The Fifth Season” by N.K. Jemison, “The Marrow Thieves” by Cherrie Dimaline, and “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Are these examples of utopian environmental literature or dystopian environmental literature?

Answer 4

dystopia

Question 5

What historical movement in literature occurred during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the midst of and in response to a period of change and upheaval in England, continental Europe, and the Americas?

Answer 5

Romantic movement

Question 6

During the Romantic movement, many writers were responding to the _____________ of the previous century’s Enlightenment and looking for a more spiritually healing way of being in the world.

Answer 6

rationalism

Question 7

Why was poetry so important during the Romantic movement? Why was it appreciated?

Answer 7

• believed that poetry could elevate the human soul and inspire people toward a more just and beautiful world
• poets highlighted social injustices in their poetry, attempted to give voice to those marginalized by society
• made to be accessible to all people, rather than written in elitist and highbrow terms

Question 8

In what historical movement in literature did writers and artists prioritize imagination and found the natural world to be a vast beacon of freedom, stress the importance of individual freedom, and advocate for aiding humankind?

Answer 8

Romantic movement

Question 9

Where did the Transcendentalist movement originate?

Answer 9

New England in the United States

Question 10

In what literary movement during the 19th century did writers emphasize alternative ways of living, advocated for women’s right to vote, better conditions for workers, individual freedom, and other humanitarian causes?

Answer 10

Transcendentalist movement

Question 11

What is Unitarianism?

Answer 11

German transcendentalists who had earlier influenced the English Romantics, Plato’s philosophies, and mysticism

Question 12

Where did the Romantic movement originate?

Answer 12

England

Question 13

What is the concept of “Over-Soul”?

Answer 13

the idea that all souls are linked to one another and that individuals contain he divine inside themselves

Question 14

What Transcendentalist writer wrote about the concept of the Over-Soul?

Answer 14

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Question 15

What were the three main influences of American Transcendentalism?

Answer 15

1. Unitarianism (German transcendentalists)
2. Idea of divine “Over-Soul” present in each person
3. Asian belief systems (especially Indian religions–influenced from works in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Sufism)

Question 16

Who were two of the most renowned Transcendentalists who were great friends, members of the same literary movement, and were abolitionists who believed in self-reliance and the relationship between soul and nature?

Answer 16

Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson

Question 17

What is the idea of self-reliance?

Answer 17

idea that individuals should trust their intention over conforming to social standards

Question 18

What was the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first published essay that espoused his belief that man and nature were infinitely linked and that the divine could be found in nature?

Answer 18

“Nature” (1836)

Question 19

What are the names of the two pieces of writing that Henry David Thoreau is best known for?

Answer 19

1. his treatise on simple living, “Walden” (1854)
2. his essay on “Civil Disobedience” (1849)

Question 20

Who was known for being a naturalist and advocate for the National Parks system?

Answer 20

John Muir

Question 21

Who was known for being a famed conservationist and author of the important essay “The Land Ethic” (1949)?

Answer 21

Aldo Leopold

Question 22

List some values/things that John Muir advocated for and pursued throughout his career?

Answer 22

• lobbied for the establishment of Yosemite National Park, and other national parks
• wrote articles about the damage done by domesticated livestock
• wrote about national parks, spanning more than ten volumes of nature writing
• encouraged people to view nature and the parks as sacred spaces for spiritual nourishment

Question 23

How were Aldo Leopold’s views on the natural environment different than John Muir’s?

Answer 23

He also believed that nature was of spiritual value, but he also acknowledged the land as a resource: aggrieved at the pace and content of conservation education, disparaged the national focus on economic motives for conserving the landscape, found it insufficient

Question 24

What concept did Aldo Leopold introduce in which he advocated for soil, water, plants, and animals?

Answer 24

Land Pyramid

Question 25

What instrumental environmental science book written by Rachel Carson signified an era of environmental awakening in American literature and society?

Answer 25

“Silent Spring” (1962)

Question 26

Who wrote “Silent Spring”, which was an instrumental environmental science book that signified an era of environmental awakening in American literature and society?

Answer 26

Rachel Carson

Question 27

On what environmental issue was Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring” especially concerned about?

Answer 27

the dangers of the chemical DDT (threats to human biology)

Question 28

What were Barbara Kingslover’s ecological narratives centered on?

Answer 28

environmental destruction and effects on rural Americans
*emphasis on rural Americans

Question 29

Nnedi Okorafor is a self-identified Najiamerican author who wrote what novel that was set in modern-day Lagos, Nigeria and looks at climate change as a phenomenon through the perspective of people living in a large, bustling city?

Answer 29

Lagos, Nigeria

Question 30

The environmental justice movement took hold in the 1980s with the formation of what organizational group?

Answer 30

Northeast Community Action Group (NECAG)
- they were a coalition of local residents fighting against placing a landfill within 1,500 feet of a local public school in Warren County, North Carolina

Question 31

What year was the National Park system established?

Answer 31

1916

Question 32

From what larger (human rights) movement did the environmental justice movement stem from?

Answer 32

Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s

Question 33

The environmental justice movement was started by individuals, primarily _____________, who sought to address the inequity of environmental protection in their communities.

Answer 33

people of color

Question 34

What was the effect of the rise of the environmental justice movement on ecological literature?

Answer 34

Literature began to reflect the environmental movement’s period shift toward ecological justice beyond simple awareness

simple awareness –> ecological justice, asking ethical questions about human activities’ effect on natural systems

Question 35

Who was Vandana Shiva?

Answer 35

• an Indian writer who is a part of the anti-GMO movement
• physicist, ecologist, and environmental author, her nonfiction works center around the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food systems
• argues against the privatization of natural resources

Question 36

How did Vandana Shiva’s writing help shape global perspectives?

Answer 36

• shifted perspectives on Indian women farmers
• critiqued Green Movement
• critiqued idea of biopiracy (companies can patent seeds, in effect owning them as intellectual property)

Question 37

Who coined the term “Cli-Fi” in 2008, referring to climate fiction?

Answer 37

journalist and climate activist Dan Bloom

Question 38

What is climate fiction or Cli-Fi?

Answer 38

genre typically set in the future and concerned with the Earth’s changing climate
- modern Cli-Fi concerned with the intersections among capitalism, income inequality, food production, water rights, and other interrelated issues surrounded key concepts in global climate change

Question 39

What is petroculture?

Answer 39

teaching climate change in humanities disciplines

Question 40

Who is the author of the 1992 novel “Parable of the Sower” which depicted what might happen if no one came to the environment’s defense, resulting in extreme inflation, rampant Californian wildfires, pollution, etc.?

Answer 40

Octavia E. Butler

Question 41

Who was Stephanie LeMenager, and what did her work focus on?

Answer 41

• teaches courses with the goal of helping students think through what climate change means and how to respond to it
• writes about petroculture and environmental literary criticism

Question 42

What did Amitav Ghosh’s work focus on?

Answer 42

primarily a novelist, and also literary criticism: encouraged writers to make climate a central theme in fiction so that society can imagine better ways to meet is challenges

Question 43

What is the Solarpunk genre?

Answer 43

climate fiction that inspires hope