ENGL 153 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Snowboarding, Ecocriticism

• School: UBC Okanagan, UBC OK
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL 153
• Professor: George Grinnell

Document Summary

The natural environment is crucial for our existence yet how we understand it and its role in our lives varies tremendously. Nature is seen as something we need to survive, to be harvested and sold for profit, something spiritual something that wishes to test out mettle or do us harm, something in jeopardy, something pure or spoiled. Stories we tell about nature affect how we understand what we mean by this term and how we live with/against nature. Ecocriticism is interested in the stories we tell about nature and how cultural narratives shape how we think about the environment as well as our place within it. Often interested in storied places and how our understanding of some spaces have been significantly shaped by the stories we tell: example: Captures big white in kelowna which features an isolated snowboarder where in actuality, it is not as empty and has many people who are most likely learning rather than experienced.