Ithaca College

Paul Hansom, Assistant Professor of English, will offer a brand-new Humanities-perspective course under the "Quest for a Sustainable Future" theme this coming spring. The course is entitled "Earth Works: Literature, Nature, and the Environment."  The course will also be offered under the "Mind, Body, Spirit" theme.  Both ICC designations are pending.

What follows is an excerpt from Professor Hansom's course description: What is the nature of nature? This class offers an exciting literary, cultural, and historical exploration into the idea of “nature” and the “natural.” While it may seem self-evident to us that nature is all of that stuff “out there” – trees, rocks, oceans, animals, you know what I mean – this class will explore how natural environments in literature are not simple, common-sense places, but are in fact dynamic cultural constructions that change over time. What do we actually mean by nature? How do we understand it as a place, as an object, or as a literary form? Might nature be nothing more than a unique human experience? As you can see, this class will raise many intriguing questions, and by examining the “eco-literature” embodied in novels, stories, poems, biographies, and non-fictions, our sense of the natural will be challenged, and hopefully, expanded. We will be helped on our journey by Thoreau, Wordsworth, Cather, Wolfe, Krakauer, Snyder – among many others.