Ecological Literacy: Economics, Education, English

A cluster of three courses in a 360° that focuses on understanding the natural systems that make life
on earth possible, and putting that understanding into practice. Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2014

“Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what
is economically expedient” (Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” A Sand County Almanac, 1948).



[All images on this page provided by students in the Ecological Imaginings ESem, Fall 2012]

Our semester's calendar
Our on-line conversation
Getting Acquainted...and Getting Organized
Instructions for Preparing Your Final 360° Portfolio

Being ecologically literate means means going beyond an appreciation of the science of earth systems, beyond the mastery of facts about the natural world and human impact on the environment. It means addressing the infamous “values-action gap,” by inviting students to learn about how complex systems work, and to explore the possibilities of their resilience and sustainability. It means acting thoughtfully ourselves for the well-being of the world, and it means conveying this understanding in insightful and inciting ways to others.

In this 360º we will explore three of the many different disciplinary languages of ecological literacy--those of economics, education, and literary expression--to prepare students for engaging in broader conversations and actions related to humanity’s stewardship of the environment. We will ask how the resources of each discipline, as well as the intersections among them, might help us experience the environment, and also how each one might expand that experience. We will experiment, too, with transforming the environment in a utilitarian way.

	ECON 136: Working with Economic Data (David Ross, MWF 10-11) Economists treat nature as providing environmental services that contribute to the production of goods and services that address human needs and desires. “Working with Economic Data” will focus on the measurement and valuation of those services as part of quantifying market outcomes.  Within the discipline, environmental harm is seen as a failure of the market. We will consider how economists measure the magnitude of this deviation from the ideal, and assess efforts to ameliorate the failure.
EDU 285: Ecologies of Minds and Communities (Jody Cohen, MW 11:30-1) Environmental education is too often split off not only from its felt source, but also from matters of social justice, thus reifying a divide between “human society and culture” on the one hand and “nature” or “the environment” on the other.  “Ecologies of Minds and Communities” weaves these strands together:  In order to elicit and develop diverse students’ ecological literacy, we will attend to “the distinctive features of students’ emotional and imaginative lives” (Judson), as well as to their community and cultural lives, including the raced, gendered, and classed dimensions of students’ experiences, concerns, and desires.
	ENG 2?? Ecological Expression: Re-creating our World (Anne Dalke, MW 2:30-4) To this shared project, the discipline of English literary studies will contribute an awareness of the limits and possibilities of representation, asking what is foregrounded, and what omitted, in each verbal, visual, aural or tactile re-presentation of the world. Asking, too, what might be imagined that has not yet been experienced, “Ecological Expressions: Re-creating Our World” will invite students both to create their own multi-modal representations of the spaces they occupy, and to re-create, in some way, the space that is Bryn Mawr.

To be considered for this 360°, students must have preregistered and submited a questionnaire.