Eco-Poetry

Graduate / Professional

Ecocriticism focuses on the relation between literature, culture, and the nonhuman world. This seminar introduces students to a variety of theories in the environmental humanities (such as material ecocriticism, critical plant studies, decolonial ecocriticism, the Blue Humanities, econarratology, etc.) that relate the environment and the nonhuman world to literature and ask how these theories can be used or questioned when studying the poetry of Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Authors queried range from Homer, Hesiod, and Sappho to Theocritus, Lucretius, Virgil, and Nonnus. This seminar is taught in conjunction with the Departmental Colloquium (“Classics and the Environmental Humanities,” co-organized by P. LeVen and E. Valdivieso in 2026–2027). F 9:25am-11:20am