Introduction

Abstract

Ecocriticism has been preoccupied with pedagogy since its inception. Teaching undergraduates environmental theories and literatures is the central kind of ‘activism’ to which busy humanities academics can aspire, and arguably the most effective too; and furthermore, with a few prominent exceptions, ecocriticism in the USA and the UK began in ‘teaching-led’ universities and colleges, and has historically found little favour in the research-focused ‘elite’. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, the primus inter pares of ecocriticism journals, initially maintained a regular pedagogical section as part of its mix of scholarly articles, creative writing and narrative scholarship, and the first anthology of ecocritical material was Frederick Waage’s Teaching Environmental Literature: Materials, Methods, Resources (Modern Language Association 1985). As Waage’s selection indicated, the approaches to teaching endorsed by what Lawrence Buell has called ‘first-wave’ ecocritics were predominantly place-based, emphasising the role of direct experience of nature combined with close reading of American nature writing (Buell 2005, pp. 17–28). Ideally, the real location of learning would be concentric with the one described in the text. Thus Nebraska encircled Hal Crimmel’s student readers of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia much as Dublin might environ (while extending far beyond) the Ulysses enthusiast retracing the footsteps of Harold Bloom (Crimmel 2003).