Environmental History / Literature: Academic Requirements, Professional Outlook

Environmental History / Literature

Environmental History refers to the history of the environmental movement - its noted figures, important legislation, and impacts. Environmental Literature is, well, literature that incorporates environmental themes into traditional or non-traditional forms of writing.

The field is important because history and literature give us an important sense of how we got here and where we are going. From Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Thoreau's Walden to today's concepts of interconnected ecology, eco-feminism, and environmental justice, the environmental movement is a vast and interesting field. History and literature help to put the many issues in environmentalism into context.

The Academic Requirements

There are very few academic programs devoted solely to Environmental History / Literature - instead, the field is often found as a class within other majors, such as environmental studies, English writing and literature, or history. Students interested in the field should take a variety of environmental and writing classes.

Graduate students may have better luck tailoring their degree program towards Environmental History / Literature.

Here are some courses that we've seen:

Creative Writing
Contemporary Environmental Fiction
Ecofeminist Literature
Major American Writers
Wilderness and Literature
Nature Writing
Advocacy in Environmental Writing
Theorizing Ecocriticism
Exploration, Colonialism and the 18th Century
The Natural History of Modernism

Professional Outlook

The competition for jobs as a "writer" is fierce, and it is a challenging field to break into. Many writers start out writing for local magazines, newspapers, and websites. If you are trying to get into the field, try sending a few short pieces to environmental magazines and online magazines to get some publicity and recognition.

History majors can be writers, professors, museum curators, researchers, consultants…historians work behind the scenes in script-writing, historical reenactments, and more. Some historians are biographers, going "behind the scenes" to help us understand an important figure in the environmental movement.

Environmental Literature is related to Environmental Journalism/Communications as well as Scientific Journalism. Read more about Environmental Journalism and Communications here.

Here are some job titles that we've seen, including some of the organizations that offer them, all of which included a requirement for experience in Environmental History / Literature:

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Culture, emphasis on the environment in a global context (Colorado School of Mines)
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing/English (Eastern Washington University)
Editor-in-Chief (The Writings of Henry David Thoreau Project)
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies (University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh)

Environmental History / Literature: Academic Requirements, Professional Outlook