ENVR205

What does it mean to live sustainably in place? This course investigates possible answers to that question by considering lives in place: particular stories, particular places, and multiple forms of storytelling about human relationships to the more than human world. From nature writing to poetry, memoir, documentary, film, and the novel, humans (the "storytelling animal") demonstrate ways of living that enable us to reflect on the virtues, values, vices, and trade-offs of those lives. Keystones in this consideration include modernity and tradition, technologies of change, voices and points of view, animal agency, eating as agricultural act, consumption, and creativity. Students consider both classic and emerging texts and artists from a variety of periods and cultures, examples of humans' ongoing experiment in living on Earth.