Course Highlight: Environmental Children's Fiction and Film

With a cup of peppermint tea, I do my homework under the maple tree and among the stalks of lavender in my yard. When a robin flits by, I’m reminded of the same bird in The Secret Garden, a childhood favorite which I’ve had the delight of re-reading and analyzing for class.

My yard has been the backdrop of many of my written responses in ENG 304: Environmental Children’s Fiction & Film, which I’ve been taking remotely this summer.

The message of the course? You don’t have to go somewhere special to engage with nature.

Assignments range from writing ecological journal entries, to analyzing children’s texts, and discussing the connection between Ecofeminism and childhood portrayals of environmental issues. The course has wrapped up for the summer, but you can register for it in the fall. ENG304 also counts as a mission course, satisfying the SEE (sustainability and the environment) education requirement which all Chatham undergraduate students must complete.

I asked the professor of the course, Anissa Wardi P.hD, some questions about the structure of the class, and the literary and ecological theories behind the assignments:

Q: Is there a specific connection between children’s fiction, film, and the environment that inspired the course? What can students learn from revisiting books & movies from their childhoods?

My friend and former colleague, Dr. Bruckner, created this class years ago because she was concerned that we are raising generations of children who are largely cut off from the living world. There is a beautiful book called The Lost Words: A Spellbook by Robert Macfarlane that was inspired by the changes to The Oxford Junior Dictionary. In the newer editions, words concerning nature (i.e. acorn anddandelion) were removed because they were not being used enough by children. The Lost Words restores these ecological terms in poetry, prose, and artwork, and in so doing Macfarlane signals their continuing importance. I believe the class does similar work. We are looking at children’s picture books, literature, and film that showcase the living world in a variety of ways and questioning whether exposure to these kinds of texts engenders ecological literacy. I believe that we protect what we love, so instilling these values in children from a young age hopefully will inspire them to become good stewards of the earth.

Q: The first time I read about Ecofeminism in children’s literature was in this class. Why is the ecofeminist approach important to the way we engage with the green spaces in our communities & in our lives?

Speaking in broad strokes, ecofeminist theory holds that the domination of women and the exploitation of nature are intertwined and understands both in the context of patriarchy. The English department offers an upper-level seminar on Ecofeminism, so I would encourage anyone who is interested in this area to take this course. The theory is capacious and encourages us to rethink relationships between the human and nonhuman world.

Two books on the ENG302 syllabus. Photo Credit: Irina Bucur

Q: What is the benefit of studying sustainability through the humanities? What makes this class different from other English or SEE classes?

There is increased interest in ecological questions across many academic disciplines, including disparate fields such as business, food studies, and English. I believe that our class is different than many other literature courses because we pay particular attention to the environmental dimensions in texts and consider what kind of cultural work those representations are doing. As ecocritics, we do not segregate environmental concerns from other pressing social issues, but recognize how issues of race and gender, for example, are linked to environmental concerns.

Q: This class asks students to choose their own green space to observe over time. What was the purpose of including interactive assignments such as this one?

Ecocriticism is a material theory and, as such, it is important that we physically engage in the living world. I hope that during this exercise students put their books down, walk away from their computers and put their phones aside just to be in nature. Like the Ted Talk we watch in class, “Nature is Everywhere, We Just Need to See It,” I do not believe that we need to go to a national park, a cultivated garden, a seashore, or even a city park to be engaged in the living world. This is really a mindfulness exercise that asks students to visit a location of their choosing throughout the semester, and by completing various journal entries get to know that area a bit better. Students routinely tell me that this is their favorite part of the course.

Q: Many of the assignments and discussion posts ask students to analyze characters who are “containerized.” Do you think we have been containerized over this past year and a half? What can this class teach us as we emerge from the pandemic?

As parents, we love our children and want to keep them healthy and safe and unfortunately that often leads to children largely being separated from the living world, playing in restricted outdoor areas, or even being kept indoors for most of the day, which Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods characterizes as containerizing children. I have learned the importance of letting kids freely engage in the ecological world from my lived experience. From the time my son was quite young, he was drawn to nature—insects, dirt, puddles, birds, icicles, plants, seeds etc. Although I was engaged in scholarship on memory, home, and the environment, I didn’t really understand how important it is for kids to freely interact in the ecological world until I watched the way my son—and now my daughter—tactilely connect with nature.

I think the pandemic has actually encouraged people to be outside more. Since we were unable to be with people indoors during the pandemic, many of us found solace in nature. Several people I know took up activities like gardening and hiking and I would imagine that those activities will continue.

Q: As we’ve learned in your class, fantasy and magical realism are often imbued in children’s environmental texts. In response to this, I’d like to pose an imaginative question: What do you imagine or hope that Rachel Carson, Chatham alumna, conservationist (and Ecofeminist!) would say about this course?

What a lovely question! As a child, Rachel Carson was an avid reader and writer of stories. In fact, she was an English major at Chatham before switching to Biology, so I hope that she would support the work that we are doing in our class. When I think about Carson’s writing, such as her essay, “A Sense of Wonder,” or her book, The Sea Around Us, I am struck by the beauty of her prose. Her powerful words communicate so effectively her environmental philosophy.

Q: What is your favorite green space? Additionally, what environmental children’s book have you enjoyed returning to in your adult years and analyzing as a professor?

My favorite green space is my yard. We read in class a selection from Scott Russel Sanders book, Staying Put: Making Home in a Restless World and I am very much in line with him regarding the value of home. I believe in being rooted to a place and creating a landscape of home and memories, so I enjoy just being in the yard and garden with my family and friends.

You don’t need a green thumb to enjoy Environmental Children’s Fiction and Film— just a desire to explore the green spaces near you and reconnect with some children’s classics.

By taking this Chatham mission course, you’ll fulfill a SEE credit, and grow a sense of wonder (and literary relish) about the ecosystems at your fingertips.