Fresh Leaves: Practicing Environmental Criticism
door maternal grandfather, who taught me to distinguish a beech tree from a birch, to plant potatoes, and to welcome the tree frogs' spring chorus with awe and delight. More likely, the recognition ar rived not from childhood pleasures or reading Henry David Tho reau but from something as quotidian and cumulative as exhaustion from years of commuting from New Hampshire to Boston for work as an adjunct, sucking exhaust fumes on Route 128. Over the last fifteen years, I have become increasingly commit ted to what many believe must be our central concern: the abatement of climate change and the preservation of the planet. The challenge for literary studies is to make an environmental perspective fun damental far beyond the discipline, to avoid making ecocriticism merely another interpretive system.1 I repeatedly ask, How can I most effectively move from recognition to responsibility and enable my students to do the same? How meaningful is traditional literary analysis in a world at risk? How can (and should) scholars in litera ture and language use their often privileged positions to contribute to the urgent project of global sustainability? How can I most effec tively define activism? How can I practice what I teach? The account below identifies some challenges to practicing environ mental criticism and my solutions (not all successful). Beginning with conceptual frameworks, I turn to specific accounts of pedagogy and stu dent responses, moving finally to broader professional considerations. KAREN L KILCUP is president of the So ciety for the Study of American Women Writers and professor of American litera ture at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her recent publications include Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (MLA 2007; with Paula Bennett and Philipp Schweighauser) and "'I Like These Plants That You Call