Curriculum Vitae

It is increasingly the case that you will find a professor posting his or her curriculum vitae, which in the academic world are roughly equivalent to resumes, online. And for good reason, as they provide students, parents, colleagues, and others with an overview of an instructor’s credentials, publications, teaching, current research, and so forth. There is, however, a shortcoming to the traditional CV: while they may list a broad range of information, they offer little in the way of detail. So, I decided to flesh out this material on this site. By scrolling down or clicking on the categories, you will find a good deal more (and more up-to-date) information than typically resides on a print CV.

Books

Writing a New Environmental Era: Moving Forward to Nature. Ken Hiltner.

(Routledge, 2020).

This book has two parts. The first introduces an idea that may make little sense on first hearing: For the good of our planet and the life that lives on it, including human beings, we need to work at moving forward to nature, rather than longing to get back to it. As we shall see, the notion that human beings once lived at peace with nature is little more than a myth, a story repeated so often that we have come to believe it’s true. It’s not…

The second half of this book explores how the humanities can help by introducing what may seem like another nonsensical idea: that we can write the future into being. This may sound like the stuff of fiction. A character in a novel writes something down in her journal, only to discover the next morning that it has come to be… Although it sounds like fantasy, something of the sort can—and in fact desperately needs to—happen. Humanity’s many beliefs and practices, including those that impact the earth, its climate, and all its myriad forms of life, have been written into being over the centuries. Given that more than a few of these beliefs and practices are downright destructive in environmental and other ways, we now need to take up the formidable challenge of writing new, more environmentally sound and socially just ones. Seriously, we all need to get writing, now. If we succeed, our children will one day wake up in a better world that we have written for them. view book cover

from Writing a New Environmental Era

What Else is Pastoral? Renaissance Literature and the Environment. Ken Hiltner.

(Cornell University Press, 2011).

As a great deal of ink has been spilled on the question of representation, I do not presume to have anything new to add. Recalling the silent, gesturing Cratylus (whom I, like Plato, take very seriously), my interest is not in the representational, but rather the gestural, the fact that, when faced with the representational quagmire that has given pause to thinkers from Plato through and past Derrida, some poets and artists, especially those directing themselves to their surrounding environment, pointed us there too, rather than attempting to capture it on canvas, or between the boards of a book. Of course, they often (and often unavoidably) did that as well, but it is the gesture, and the preference of the gesture over the representation, that interests me most. As perhaps it should us all; for well over two thousand years we have largely neglected gesture while endlessly theorizing and making a fetish of representation. view book cover

from What Else is Pastoral?

Milton and Ecology. Ken Hiltner.

(Cambridge University Press, 2003; paperback in 2009; Kindle 2010).

When we, like Milton’s Eve (tempted by the thought of what we might become) forget, even for a moment, that we still need our roots to run deep into our place on Earth, what happens to the place? Milton’s answer is that it will surely suffer as Earth feels the wound of our uprooting…It is not only our place on Earth which suffers from our marginalizing of it, but as Eve laments when she is exiled from her place, it will also be felt by us as an unexpected stroke worse than death–a startling and altogether chilling prophesy on Milton’s part that is now being felt in innumerable places across the Earth. view book cover

from Milton and Ecology

Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. Edited and Introduced by Ken Hiltner.

(Routledge, 2014, Paperback 2014).

Having taught a range of courses in ecocriticism in recent years, ranging from graduate seminars to large lectures, I have repeatedly found myself in need of a collection of essays for my students containing seminal, representative, and contemporary work in the field. Unfortunately, no existing book fits the bill, though a few come close. The Green Studies Reader, for example, which Routledge published in 2000, is a strong candidate, as it contains a number of classic ecocritical writings.  However, as ecocriticism has in some sense been reinvented in the last decade, it lacks chapters on such essential and timely issues as environmental justice and globalization. Conversely, recent texts, such as Environmental Criticism for the 21st Century (Routledge 2011), which I coedited, speak to newer trends, but do little to chart the history and growth of the field. In response to this problem, Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader brings together a range of works that defined the field in its first few decades, as well as new writings that are helping to redefine it today. view book cover

from Ecocriticism

Environmental Criticism for the 21st Century. Edited and Introduced by Stephanie LeMenager, Tess Shewry, and Ken Hiltner.

(Routledge, 2011).

In 1967, in an essay on ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,’ Lynn White, Jr. opened with an anecdote, relating a conversation in which he disabused Aldous Huxley of the notion that Europe’s environmental crisis is a relatively recent phenomenon. As White would repeatedly make clear throughout the essay, such a belief is far from accurate…Given that White’s essay became enormously influential and controversial (largely because of its blistering indictment of Christianity on environmental grounds), it would have seemed that the time had come to radically reassess the long history of the West’s relationship to the environment. view book cover

from Environmental Criticism for the 21st Century

Renaissance Ecology: Imagining Eden in Milton’s England. Edited and Introduced by Ken Hiltner.

(Duquesne University Press, 2008).

With the publication of Thomas Moore’s Utopia in 1516, it may have seemed as if early modern England had found the place whereby its most optimistic of futures could be imagined.  But the truth is that there was already a serious contender for that role: Eden.  To a modern reader this may seem counterintuitive.  After all, isn’t edenic literature, like pastoral texts that posit a golden age, in some sense just the opposite of the utopian genre in that the concern is not with an imagined future but rather with a lost past?  While it is certainly true that both Eden and the golden age, which were frequently conflated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were imagined as lost paradises that existed at the dawn of human history, these topoi were also seen as places that might be regained in the future.  What made Eden of particular interest to early modern England was that, as a pristine garden, it captured the imagination of a country in the midst of an environmental crisis of unprecedented proportions. view book cover

from Renaissance Ecology

Book Chapters and Articles

Works in Progress

Forward to Nature (book)

On the Nature of Art (book)

“Dread in Paradise Lost”

“Is Paradise Lost?”

“Can Shakespeare Save the Planet?”

Popular Writing

Program notes for the opera Seven Angels (libretto by Glyn Maxwell), premiered July 2011, Royal Opera House, London.

Scholarly Talks 

Invited Speaker, “Looking Forward from Renaissance and the Environment,” Saint Mark National University, Lima, Peru, December 2016

Invited Speaker, “The World in 2050: Creating/Imagining Just Climate Futures,” UC Santa Barbara, October 2106

Invited Speaker, “Climate Change: Views from the Humanities,” UC Santa Barbara, May 2016

Invited Speaker, “Epic Geographies,” NYU, April 2016

Invited Speaker, “Why the Environmental Humanities Matter,” Stony Brook University, February 2015

Invited Speaker, ”Should We Welcome the Anthropocene?” UC Santa Barbara, October 2014.

Invited Speaker, “Nature: How Much Does It Matter?” Pomona College, September 2013.

Invited Speaker, ”Reconsidering Milton, Ecology, and Place,” Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, May 2013.

Invited Speaker, “Reading the Renaissance, Greenly,” Sarah Lawrence College, April 2013.

Invited Speaker, “Looking Forward, Environmentally,” Boise State University, April 2013.

“Paradise Lost 2.0,” 2013 Annual Renaissance Society of America Conference, San Diego, California, April 2013.

Invited Speaker, ”The Role of the Environmental Humanities in Our Future,” Princeton University, April 2013

Invited Speaker, ”Environmental Criticism: What is at Stake?,” University of Pennsylvania, April 2013.

Invited Speaker, “Forward to Nature,” University of Oregon, March, 2013

Invited Speaker, “The Two Cultures in Environmental Studies,” Princeton University, February 2013

Invited Speaker, “Abandoning the Past, Toward a New Environmental Ethic,” Rutgers University, December 2012

“Dread in Paradise Lost,” Tenth International Milton Symposium, Tokyo, Japan, August 2012.

Invited Speaker, “Putting Milton in the Cloud,” University of Alabama, March 2012.

Invited Speaker, “Renaissance Texts in the Age of Digital Production,” Harvard University, February 2012.

“Does Renaissance Ecocriticism Matter?” 2011 Conference on John Milton, Murfreesboro, TN, October 2011.

Invited Speaker, “Environmental Writing in Early Modern England,” Harvard University, April 2011.

“Sixteenth-Century Artisanal Practices and Baconian Prose,” MLA, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.

“Reading the Present in Our Environmental Past,” MLA, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.

“Renaissance Air Pollution,” 2010 Annual Renaissance Society of America Conference, Venice, Italy, April 2010.

“Milton and Environmental Justice,” 2009 Conference on John Milton, Murfreesboro, TN, October 2009.

“Does This Place, This Earth, Really Matter?” MLA, San Francisco, CA, December 2008.

“John Milton and Seventeenth-Century Environmental Debates,” Ninth International Milton Symposium, London, England, June 2008.

Invited Speaker, “What is Environmental Consciousness?” University of Oregon, February 2008.

“Is Paradise Lost? John Milton and the Contemporary Christian Debate Over Global Warming,” MLA, Chicago, IL, December 2007.

“The Renaissance Origins of Our Contemporary Attitude Toward Air Pollution,” 2007 Conference on John Milton, Murfreesboro, TN, October 2007.

“England’s First Levellers and Diggers,” MLA, Philadelphia, PA, December 2006.

Invited Speaker, “Environmental Protest Literature of the Seventeenth Century,” Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, February 2006.

“What Else is Pastoral?” 2005 Conference on John Milton, Murfreesboro, TN, October 2005.

“‘Belch’d fire and rowling smoke’: Air Pollution in Paradise Lost,” Eighth International Milton Symposium, Grenoble, France, June 2005.

Invited panelist, roundtable on “Ecocriticism and the Practice of Reading,” sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, Northeast MLA, Cambridge, MA, April 2005.

“Spenser, Empire and Ecology,” Conference on “Enemies of Empire,” University of Limerick, Ireland, June 2004.

“The Ecological Importance of Place in Paradise Lost,” The International Milton Congress, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2004.

“Toni Morrison’s Paradise and Exile in Paradise Lost,” 2003 Conference on John Milton, Murfreesboro, TN, October 2003.

“Reading Julian of Norwich Greenly,” Conference on “Early English Women Writers,” Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, May 2003.

“Con-fusing Paradise Regained,” Seventh International Milton Symposium, Beaufort, SC, June 2002

Panel Organizer (or co-organizer)

Conference Panels Organized or Co-Organized (also see Conferences Directed)

“John Milton: A General Session,” MLA, Chicago, IL, January 2014.

“Milton in the Long Restoration,” MLA, Chicago, IL, January 2014.

“Milton and Logic,” MLA, Boston, MA, January 2013.

“John Milton: A General Session,” MLA, Boston, MA, January 2013.

“Milton and Theatricality,” MLA, Seattle, WA, January 2012.

“Milton and Religion,” MLA, Seattle, WA, January 2012.

“John Milton: A General Session,” MLA, Seattle, WA, January 2012.

“Measure and Measurement in the Age of Milton,” MLA, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.

“John Milton: A General Session,” MLA, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.

“Space and Place in Donne and Milton,” MLA, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.

“John Milton: A General Session,” MLA, Philadelphia, PA, December 2009.

“Reading Milton,” MLA, Philadelphia, PA, December 2009.

Public Events

Invited speaker, “Food and the Future, and the Environment,” Princeton Food Salon, April 2013

Invited speaker, “The Role of the Past in Our Environmental Future,” D&R Greenway Land Trust, Princeton, April 2013

Invited speaker, “Green Careers,” Princeton Public Library, January 2013

Invited speaker, “Books of the Future,” TEDx Talk, May 2012

Invited speaker, “UCSB Reads,” Panel Discussion at the Santa Barbara Public Library, February 2012

Love and Cruelty: Scenes from Shakespeare Selected and Performed by Harvard’s English Professors, Produced by Ken Hiltner, Harvard, April 2006

Conferences

(Also see Panels Organized)

UCSB Conferences Organized

2016-17, “The World in 2050: Creating/Imagining Just Climate Futures: A Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference”

The most pressing existential issue of the 21st century for humanity as a whole is the increasingly grim reality of climate change and our entry into a new era in the history of humans and the planet well signified by the Anthropocene. The changing conditions of life on Earth lie at the center of a series of interconnected crises which include, among others, the precarity of the global economy, a widening deficit of political legitimacy, and cultures scarred by violence, from the most intimate interpersonal interactions to the most global realities of war-making. Unlike either the justifiably pessimistic critical discussions or the unrealistically optimistic policy approaches that increasingly confront (or ignore) each other around the climate crisis, this conference will depart from our present ground zero by adopting perspectives of the multiple possible states of the world in mid-century and work back toward the present in an attempt to imagine, envision, enable, and collaboratively find or create some of the pathways to a far better – or just less worse – outcome for humanity by 2050.

2015-16, “Climate Change: Views from the Humanities: A Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference“

This conference was unusual in two respects. First, because it approached the issue of climate change from the perspective of the humanities, rather than, as might be expected, from that of the sciences. Second, it was also more than a little unusual because of the conference format: it was an international academic conference with over 50 speakers from eight countries, yet it had a nearly nonexistent carbon footprint. Had this been a traditional fly-in conference, our slate of speakers would have had to collectively travel over 300,000 miles, generating the equivalent of over 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the process. This is equal to the total annual carbon footprint of 50 people living in India, 165 in Kenya. A conference that takes up the issue of climate change while simultaneously contributing to the problem to such a degree would be simply unconscionable. In contrast, we took a digital approach. Because the conference talks and Q&A sessions reside on this website (the talks are prerecorded; the Q&As interactive), travel was unnecessary.

2010-11, “The Future of Literary Studies, 1500-1800” Conference

In recent decades, scholars working in the early modern period have been at the vanguard of literary studies. To cite just one example, some of the earliest practitioners of New Historicism, such as Stephen Greenblatt and the late Richard Helgerson, worked in the early modern period. The question we are contemplating this year is simple: where is early modern studies headed? What’s next? Does the future lie in advancing or revisiting existing approaches, such as still newer historicism, or something different altogether? In addition to exploring this question theoretically, we are also interested in new pedagogical and critical practices.  The conference will take place on March 11-12, 2011 at UCSB and features a constellation of keynote speakers including Helen Deutsch (UCLA), Jean Howard (Columbia), Heather James (USC), Leah Marcus (Vanderbilt), Stephen Orgel (Stanford), and Clifford Siskin (NYU).

2009-10, “Limits of the Human” Winter Conference

Cloning, organ farms, the completion of the Human Genome Project, recombinant DNA, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and other manufactured life forms, all suggest that, depending on one’s point of view, the twenty-first century opens onto a horizon of radical possibilities for the future or cataclysmic end of what is meant by “human.” UCSB’s Early Modern Center Winter Conference, “Limits of the Human,” turns back to the early modern period to ask: before we were posthuman, how did we become human? How and why do early modern representations of hybrids, animals, monsters, anomalies, race, gender, and automata define what is human and separate out what is not? How do those things classified as non-human construct, reflect, or refract humanness? What innovations in technology, botany, labor equipment, law, and mathematical notation helped to calcify the boundaries of the human? How did Cartesian, Newtonian and Leibnizian systems of the world shape the conditions that Michel Foucault argues, “made it possible for the figure of man to appear”? In what ways were the “limits” always permeable, and how did they invite transgression and mutation? The EMC’s one-day interdisciplinary conference provides a forum to explore early modern literary and cultural responses to the issues and questions that helped delineate the limits of being human.The conference will consist of panel discussions, as well as keynote talks by Bruce Smith (Dean’s Professor of English, University of Southern California) and Richard Nash (Professor of English, Indiana University).

2008-09, Bliss-Zimmerman Spring Lecture

On May 15, Angus Fletcher will present a talk entitled “Poetry, Environment, and the Protected Circle of Wonder.” Fletcher is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York Graduate School, author of A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination. According to Jonathan Bate, “Angus Fletcher is a highly distinguished critic and his New Theory for American Poetry is an appropriately distinguished contribution to the new wave of literary theory that restores the imagination, the aesthetic, the emotions and the natural world to critical discourse.” Harold Bloom says, “Angus Fletcher and his work have strongly influenced the way I read poetry…His new book is the crown of his career: bold, original, brimming with imaginative energy on every page.”

2008-09, “Before Environmentalism” Winter Conference

In recent years, scholars have looked to the Renaissance and eighteenth century in order to better understand both the origins of our contemporary environmental crisis, as well as the emergence of modern environmental thinking. Works such as Robert Watson’s Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance and Gabriel Egan’s Green Shakespeare: From Ecopolitics to Ecocriticism, have brought early modern literary studies into current ecocritical debate. As these and other works make clear, environmental issues such as air pollution, toxic waste, increased urbanization, deforestation, wetland loss, and radical changes in land use were surprisingly timely in Early Modern England, routinely making their appearance in the literature of the day. Indeed, by the time Milton was writing Paradise Lost it was already known that respiratory illness from urban air pollution was second only to the Plague as the leading cause of death in London. The EMC’s one-day interdisciplinary conference will provide a forum to explore early modern literary and cultural responses to the environmental issues that preceded, and indeed gave shape to, modern environmentalism.

The conference will consist of panel discussions, as well as keynote talks by Carolyn Merchant (Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley) and Jill Casid (Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Visual Culture Studies Program, University of Wisconsin).

2008-09, Early Modern Center Fall Colloquium

This year’s EMC Fall Colloquium will feature speakers Professor Robert Watson and Professor Beth Fowkes Tobin, both of whom will present work that illuminates this year’s theme, “Before Environmentalism.” The Colloquium will take place in the McCune Conference Room in the HSSB at UCSB from 1:00-4:00.

Robert N. Watson is a Professor of English at UCLA, and author of Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance (Pennsylvania UP, 2006), named the Best Book of Ecocriticism of 2005-2006 by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. He was the winner of the 2006 Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Prize for the year’s best book in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, by the editors of Studies in English Literature. Professor Watson’s presentation for this EMC event is entitled “The Ecology of Self in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.'”

Beth Fowkes Tobin is a Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the author of Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 (Pennsylvania UP, 2005) and Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Duke UP, 1999). Professor Tobin’s presentation for the Colloquium is entitled “The Duchess’s Shells: Natural History Collecting, Gender, and Scientific Practice.”

2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, EMC Undergraduate Conferences

These conferences are a forum showcasing outstanding undergraduate work on the early modern period.

Princeton Conference Organised

2012-13, “The Environmental Humanities in a Changing World.”

When environmental studies programs first began appearing in American universities over forty years ago, interest in the subject came almost exclusively from the sciences. Today, however, the situation is very different, as concern for environmental issues has now also swept across the humanities, impacting the study of literature, art, music, history, religion, philosophy, and much, much more. Moreover, poets, novelists, photographers, playwrights, performers, and a variety of additional artists are now producing works reflecting and commenting upon our present environmental situation. This two-day conference not only brings together leaders from a range of fields in the environmental humanities, but also prominent artists producing work with environmental import. The goal is to both provide succinct overviews of these fields and introduction to this art, as well as to consider how these various approaches can work together for the future of our planet.

Harvard Conferences Organized

2003-04, “The Worldly Earth: An Ecological Conference”

In Old English our word “world” (weorold) originally meant an “age (old) of humanity (weor).” As such, a world is a human culture situated historically upon the planet earth; it is not the earth itself. In recent decades, the Humanities have been sweepingly reinvented by way of critical approaches focusing on contexts that are–in precisely this original sense–largely “worldly.” Though the fact that culture has come out of the margins of academic discourse is no doubt positive, what effect might this fascination with our worlds have on the earth? For example: Does a worldly critical approach, which returns traditional pastoral art to its historic context, work positively to reveal that these representations of the earth are far worldlier than we might have ever imagined? Or, alternately, does this privileging of the worldly neglect, perhaps even obscure, the manner by which place directly informs art? And just why are we so interested in our worlds alone; are not the very practices that we share also shaped by the earth? On the subject of shared practices, just how do human worlds rest upon the earthly places we inhabit; softly, gently following every contour, or boldly, land-scaping the earth into an image of that world? In short, with these questions and others, this conference considers how fascination with the worldly–now the common interest influencing methodologies across the Humanities–has impacted the earth.

2004-05, Renaissance Colloquium

UCSB Courses

(Note: Student feedback on these courses can be found here.)

Fall 2017, Eng 22 Intro to the Environmental Humanities

This large lecture is a revised version of Eng 22 (Intro to Literature and the Environment, see below) that now provides a general introduction to the environmental humanities.

Fall 2017, Eng 122EA Environmental Activism and its Rhetoric

See below description.

Summer 2017, INT 133B What’s Wrong with the World? How Do We Fix It?
 Perspectives and Solutions from the Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences.

Co-taught with a sociology professor, this course investigates the future, asking what might the world look like in the year 2050? What will be the state of climate change? What will schools, cities, agriculture, jobs, nations, energy sources, technology, political systems, international relations, the global and local economy, and much more look like? How will people make sense and meaning of their world? What future worlds can we foresee from where we are now, ranging widely and wildly from the awful to the utopian? How will we get to the better worlds we hope to be living in? Starting with the current political, economic, cultural, and climate crises of Earth and humanity, we consider alternatives to the present system — sustainable development, degrowth, transition towns, resilience — and our roles in building a far better world by 2050. We will also consider the ways that climate change is being fiercely debated on the public stage through a careful look at the rhetoric of these debates.

Summer 2017, Eng 122EA Environmental Activism and its Rhetoric

See below description.

Summer 2017, Eng 122CC The Rhetoric of Climate Change

See below description.

Winter 2017, Eng 122EA Environmental Activism and its Rhetoric

This course is an experiment. It begins with the assumption that the causes of global climate change are indeed anthropogenic (i.e. human caused). Consequently, solutions will need to come from human beings as well. The difficulty is not only that a broad swathe of Americans deny that our climate is changing, even if this is acknowledged, the causes and solutions to the problem are being fiercely debated on the public stage. It has also, sadly, become a political issue dividing our nation. This course will carefully look at the rhetoric of these debates. Together, we will piece together and analyze contemporary political and environmental discourses to begin addressing this rhetoric.

Winter 2017, INT 33G Brave New World? Perspectives on Gene Manipulation

Co-taught with a molecular biologist, this course considers the moral and environmental implications of gene manipulation.

Fall 2016, Eng 122CC The Rhetoric of Climate Change

See below description.

Fall 2016 Eng 22 Intro to Literature and the Environment

Starting with one of the West’s earliest texts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, this course explores the literary history of the natural world. This course is a revised version of Eng/ES 122LE that now meets the requirements of the UCSB General Education program.

Winter 2016, Eng 122CC The Rhetoric of Climate Change

Debates about global climate change put into conflict science, politics, and our narrative practices. This is perhaps unsurprising given that climate science (which utilizes complex modeling techniques to analyze temporally and globally diffuse data sets) rhetorically constructs both catastrophic and inhabitable futures. This course will examine these rhetorics and utilize literary methodologies to investigate their imagined futures. To do so, we will begin with a brief survey of both scientific and cultural representations of climate change. This opening will prepare us to investigate a particular strain of the climate change debate: denialism. Rather than surveying arguments against climate change, we will analyze some of the tropes most frequently used in denial literature. The goal is not only to understand the implicit narrativization of climate change, but to assess how humanistic methodologies can contribute to these debates and contribute to imagining different futures.

Fall 2015 Eng 22 Intro to Literature and the Environment

See below description.

Summer 2015 Eng 22 Intro to Literature and the Environment

See below description.

Spring 2015 Eng 22 Intro to Literature and the Environment

See below description.

Fall 2014, Eng 199/99 The Rhetoric of the Anthropocene and Climate Change

Scientists have suggested that the earth has recently entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, which has been caused by sweeping changes that human beings have brought about on the planet, climate change being the most notable. At first glance, the Anthropocene may seem to be something that can only be studied by scientists; however, scholars from across the humanities are trying to understand the human implications of the Anthropocene, such as how it will change our lives, values, and understanding of our place on the planet, as well as why so many individuals are currently denying that it and climate change are real. Throughout the 2014-15 academic year, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center will be bringing a range of experts from across the country to the UCSB campus to consider the Anthropocene from the perspective of the humanities. A unique undergraduate course has been created around this talk series. This course – which is the first of its kind and which will be taught across the Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters of the 2014-15 academic year – will allow a small group of students to attend these talks, meet with the speakers, and take part in post-talk discussions, which will be led by the Director of UCSB’s Environmental Humanities Center, Professor Ken Hiltner.

Summer 2014, Engl 162 Milton 

See below description.

Summer 2014, Engl 101 English Literature: the Medieval Period to 1650

See below description.

Spring 2014, Engl 198

Honors Seminar.

Winter 2014, Engl 162 Milton 

This course considers a range of Milton’s works, including Paradise Lost (arguably the finest long poem in the English language) and Paradise Regained. Just for fun, we will look at excerpts from two popular series of books influenced by Paradise Lost: The Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials.

Fall 2013, Engl 101 English Literature: the Medieval Period to 1650

See below description.

Fall 2013, Eng 22 Intro to Literature and the Environment

This course surveys nearly 5000 thousand years of literature in order to explore the literary history of our relationship with the earth, as well as to better understand our current environmental beliefs. This course is completely open-access, including lectures, the Course Reader, and additional material (website; online discussions).

Summer 2013, Engl 101 English Literature: the Medieval Period to 1650

See below description.

(Note: for 2012-13, see Princeton Courses.)

Summer 2012, Engl 101 English Literature: the Medieval Period to 1650

This course is an introduction to the first eight hundred years of English literature from the Anglo Saxon beginnings to the 1645 edition of Milton’s Poems. After surveying some very early works, such as the Dream of the Rood, we will read Beowulf, one of the greatest epics in the English language, in Seamus Heaney’s exquisite translation. From there we will move to excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales before concluding in the Renaissance with Milton and Marvell. Throughout the quarter we will be considering just what these texts can tell us about the cultures that produced them, especially their attitudes toward gender, politics, religion, and the environment. What, for example, might “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” tell us about the position of women in Chaucer’s England? Similarly, does the Dream of the Rood, which is–quite remarkably–told in part from the perspective of a tree, tell us anything about how nature and the natural world was imagined?

Spring 2012, Engl 162 Milton 

In this course we will consider a range of Milton’s works, including Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Just for fun, we will also be looking at excerpts from two popular series of books that were profoundly influenced by Milton: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (who was in fact a Milton scholar at Oxford) and His Dark Materials, especially The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman. (Incidentally, “His Dark Materials” is a quote from Paradise Lost.)

Spring 2012, Engl 231 Milton and His Contemporaries

In addition to providing a comprehensive introduction to Milton’s poetry and prose, this graduate seminar also covers most of the seventeenth-century works on the First Qualifying Exam for Renaissance

Fall 2011, Engl/ES 122LE Introduction to Literature and the Environment

This course is an environmental survey of Western literature. In much the same way that feminist critics are interested in literary representations of gender and women, environmental critics explore how nature and the natural world are imagined through literary texts. As with changing perceptions of gender, such literary representations are not only generated by particular cultures, they play a significant role in generating those cultures. Thus if we wish to understand our contemporary attitude toward the environment, its literary history is an excellent place to start. While authors such as Thoreau and Wordsworth may first come to mind in this context, literary responses to environmental concerns are as old as the issues themselves. Deforestation, air pollution, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism have all been appearing as controversial issues in Western literature for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. Starting with an excerpt from one of the West’s earliest texts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, this course will explore the often-ignored literary history of the natural world. This course satisfies the requirements of the Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment (USLE) and is cross-listed with the Environmental Studies Department.

Fall 2011, Engl/ES 100LE Honors Seminar for Engl/ES 122LE

An honors tutorial designed to enrich the lecture experience of Eng/ES 122LE (above) for particularly motivated students.  Includes additional readings, more extensive study of the reading list, and supplementary writing.  Cross-listed with the Environmental Studies Department.

Fall 2011, Engl 165RD How to Read a Book

This course is a survey of literary theory.

Spring 2011, Engl 165EM What Else is Pastoral? Renaissance Literature and the Environment

Of all the different ways of writing, pastoral may be the most versatile–as well as most misunderstood and overlooked. Pastoral can be lighthearted fun (as in Shakespeare’s As You Like It), scathing, subversive, and dangerous political allegory (as it was for poet Edmund Spenser), astonishingly beautiful nature writing (such as the description of Eden in Milton’s Paradise Lost), or any number of other forms. In fact, pastoral can take nearly any shape: a play, a lyric poem, an epic, a novel, even a song or film. In this course we will be tracing this remarkable mode of writing from its earliest beginnings to its height in the Renaissance and 18th century, while also considering how it is still very much at work in the world today. (Course Homepage)

Fall 2010, Engl/ES 122LE Introduction to Literature and the Environment

This course is an environmental survey of Western literature. In much the same way that feminist critics are interested in literary representations of gender and women, environmental critics explore how nature and the natural world are imagined through literary texts. As with changing perceptions of gender, such literary representations are not only generated by particular cultures, they play a significant role in generating those cultures. Thus if we wish to understand our contemporary attitude toward the environment, its literary history is an excellent place to start. While authors such as Thoreau and Wordsworth may first come to mind in this context, literary responses to environmental concerns are as old as the issues themselves. Deforestation, air pollution, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism have all been appearing as controversial issues in Western literature for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. Starting with an excerpt from one of the West’s earliest texts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, this course will explore the often-ignored literary history of the natural world. This course satisfies the requirements of the Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment (USLE) and is cross-listed with the Environmental Studies Department. (Course Homepage)

Fall 2010, Engl/ES 100LE Honors Seminar for Engl/ES 122LE

An honors tutorial designed to enrich the lecture experience of Eng/ES 122LE (above) for particularly motivated students.  Includes additional readings, more extensive study of the reading list, and supplementary writing.  Cross-listed with the Environmental Studies Department. (See Engl/ES 122LE Homepage)

Winter 2010, Engl 165EM Early Modern Limits of the Human

Cloning, organ farms, the completion of the Human Genome Project, recombinant DNA, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and other manufactured life forms, all suggest that, depending on one’s point of view, the twenty-first century opens onto a horizon of radical possibilities for the future or cataclysmic demise of the human. Our course takes the 2009-2010 Early Modern Center Theme, “The Limits of the Human,” to turn back to the early modern period and ask: before we were posthuman, how did we become human? How do early modern representations of monsters, anomalies, race, gender, automata define what is human and separate out what is not? What innovations in technology, botany, labor equipment, law, and mathematical notation helped to calcify the boundaries of the human? How did Cartesian, Newtonian and Leibnizian systems of the world shape the conditions that Michel Foucault argues, “made it possible for the figure of man to appear?” In what ways were the “limits” always permeable and did they invite transgression and mutation? We will use this course as a forum to explore these and many other questions relevant to  the historical formation of the category: human. (Course Homepage)

Fall 2009, Engl 236 Theories of Literature and the Environment

Environmental criticism, also known as ecocriticism and “green” criticism (especially in the UK), is a rapidly emerging field of literary study that will be crucially important in upcoming decades, especially as our present environmental crisis unfortunately worsens. In the first half of this course we will explore how the relationship between human beings and the environment has been imagined in the West, especially as it appears in the works of Heraclitus, Anaximander, Thales, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus, Aurelius, Augustine, Aquinas, Montaigne, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, James, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Levinas, Foucault, Patocka, Derrida, and Agamben. Withal, we will be considering how these attitudes toward the environment influenced writers such as Theocritus, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Thomson, Wordsworth, Thoreau, and so forth. The second half of the course will consider works from modern ecocritics (beginning in the 1960s and ’70s with Lynn White Jr., Leo Marx, Carolyn Merchant, Keith Thomas, and Raymond Williams, and ending with the ongoing explosion of interest in the field in the 21st century) with an eye to directly applying this theory to the reading of texts.

Fall 2009, Engl 197 Theories of Literature and the Environment

This is an honors undergraduate version of the graduate seminar Eng 236 (see above).

Fall-Spring 2009, Engl 595EM Early Modern Center Colloquium

Extending over three quarters, this tutorial gives graduate students interested in literature from the period 1500-1800 an opportunity to discuss and workshop their current research.

Winter 2009, Engl 122EN Introduction to Literature and the Environment

This course is an environmental survey of Western literature. In much the same way that feminist critics are interested in literary representations of gender and women, environmental critics explore how nature and the natural world are imagined through literary texts. As with changing perceptions of gender, such literary representations are not only generated by particular cultures, they play a significant role in generating those cultures. Thus if we wish to understand our contemporary attitude toward the environment, its literary history is an excellent place to start. While authors such as Thoreau and Wordsworth may first come to mind in this context, literary responses to environmental concerns are as old as the issues themselves. Deforestation, air pollution, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism have all been appearing as controversial issues in Western literature for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. Starting with an excerpt from one of the West’s earliest texts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, this course will explore the often-ignored literary history of the natural world. This course satisfies the requirements of the Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment (USLE).

Winter 2009, Engl 100EN Honors Seminar for Engl 122EN

An honors tutorial designed to enrich the lecture experience of Eng 122LE (above) for particularly motivated students.  Includes additional readings, more extensive study of the reading list, and supplementary writing.

Winter 2009, Engl 231 Milton and Ecology

In addition to providing a introduction to Milton’s poetry and prose, as well as covering most of the 17^th-century works on the First Qualifying Exam for Renaissance, this course (not surprisingly) approaches Milton’s major works ecocritically.Winter 2009 Engl 231 Milton and Ecology

Fall-Spring 2008, Engl 595EM Early Modern Center Colloquium

Extending over three quarters, this tutorial gives graduate students interested in literature from the period 1500-1800 an opportunity to discuss and workshop their current research.

Spring 2008, Engl 122EN Introduction to Literature and the Environment

This course is an environmental survey of Western literature. In much the same way that feminist critics are interested in literary representations of gender and women, environmental critics explore how nature and the natural world are imagined through literary texts. As with changing perceptions of gender, such literary representations are not only generated by particular cultures, they play a significant role in generating those cultures. Thus if we wish to understand our contemporary attitude toward the environment, its literary history is an excellent place to start. While authors such as Thoreau and Wordsworth may first come to mind in this context, literary responses to environmental concerns are as old as the issues themselves. Deforestation, air pollution, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism have all been appearing as controversial issues in Western literature for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. Starting with an excerpt from one of the West’s earliest texts, The Epic of Gilgamesh, this course will explore the often-ignored literary history of the natural world. This course satisfies the requirements of the Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment (USLE).

Spring 2008, Engl 100EN Honors Seminar for Engl 122EN

An honors tutorial designed to enrich the lecture experience of Eng 122EN (above) for particularly motivated students.  Includes additional readings, more extensive study of the reading list, and supplementary writing.

Spring 2008, Engl 162 Milton and Ecology

When confronted with the description of a literal dark cloud of air pollution hanging over Coketown in Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times, many readers are immediately persuaded not only that our current environmental crisis has its roots in the nineteenth century, but that it was clearly making its appearance in the literature of the day. However, turn the clock back two centuries, to Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, and many of the same readers are remarkably resistant to the notion that the roots of the crisis could reach back so far–at least with respect to issues such as urban air pollution. Nonetheless, air pollution, acid rain, deforestation, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism were all issues of great concern in Renaissance England. In this course we will consider a range of Milton’s works, including Paradise Lost, against the backdrop of these environmental issues. Just for fun, we will also be looking at excerpts from two very popular series of books that were profoundly influenced by Milton: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (who was in fact a Milton scholar at Oxford) and His Dark Materials, especially The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman. (Incidentally, “His Dark Materials” is a quote from Paradise Lost.) This course satisfies the requirements of the Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment (USLE).

Winter 2008, Engl 101 English Literature: the Medieval Period to 1650

This course is an introduction to the first eight hundred years of English literature from the Anglo Saxon beginnings to the 1645 edition of Milton’s Poems. After surveying some very early works, such as the Dream of the Rood, we will read Beowulf, one of the greatest epics in the English language, in Seamus Heaney’s exquisite translation. From there we will move to excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales before concluding in the Renaissance with Milton and Marvell. Throughout the quarter we will be considering just what these texts can tell us about the cultures that produced them, especially their attitudes toward gender, politics, religion, and the environment. What, for example, might “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” tell us about the position of women in Chaucer’s England? Similarly, does the Dream of the Rood, which is–quite remarkably–told in part from the perspective of a tree, tell us anything about how nature and the natural world was imagined?

Winter 2008, Engl 236 Theories of Literature and the Environment

Environmental criticism, also known as ecocriticism and “green” criticism (especially in the UK), is a rapidly emerging field of literary study that will be crucially important in upcoming decades, especially as our present environmental crisis unfortunately worsens. In the first half of this course we will explore how the relationship between human beings and the environment has been imagined in the West, especially as it appears in the works of Heraclitus, Anaximander, Thales, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus, Aurelius, Augustine, Aquinas, Montaigne, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, James, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Levinas, Foucault, Patocka, Derrida, and Agamben. Withal, we will be considering how these attitudes toward the environment influenced writers such as Theocritus, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Thomson, Wordsworth, Thoreau, and so forth. The second half of the course will consider works from modern ecocritics (beginning in the 1960s and ’70s with Lynn White Jr., Leo Marx, Carolyn Merchant, Keith Thomas, and Raymond Williams, and ending with the ongoing explosion of interest in the field in the 21st century) with an eye to directly applying this theory to the reading of texts.

Winter 2007, Engl 165MP Renaissance Pastoral

Of all the different ways of writing, pastoral may be the most versatile–and most misunderstood and overlooked. Pastoral can be lighthearted fun (as in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which we will be reading), scathing, subversive, and dangerous political allegory (as it was for poet Edmund Spenser), astonishingly beautiful nature writing (such as the description of Eden in Milton’s Paradise Lost), or any number of other forms. In fact, pastoral can take nearly any shape: a play, a lyric poem, an epic, a novel, or even a film. In this course we will be tracing this remarkable mode of writing from its earliest beginnings to its height in the Renaissance, while also considering how it is still very much at work in the world today.

Winter 2007, Engl 197 Metaphysical Poets

A generation after Shakespeare, a group of brash young poets boldly set out to reinvent English literature. Arguing that poetry had become boring and bloated—an endless, mindless repetition of classical references and tired themes—they attempted to shock the world with something entirely new. And shock it they did. When writing about love, for example, they not only penned some of the most beautiful poetry that has ever been written, but they did so openly and audaciously: in a single poem John Donne not only unflinchingly gave our words “sex” and “ecstasy” their modern meanings, but forever yoked the two. This course will introduce the major themes of the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Vaughan, and others.

Fall 2006, Engl 122EN Ecocriticism and the Writing of Nature

This course is an ecological survey of Western literature. In much the same way that feminist critics are interested in literary representations of gender and women, ecological critics (or simply “ecocritics”) explore how nature and the natural world are imagined through literary texts. As with changing perceptions of gender, such literary representations are not only generated by particular cultures; they play a significant role in generating those cultures. Thus if we wish to understand contemporary America’s attitude toward the environment, its literary history is an excellent place to start. While authors such as Thoreau and Wordsworth may first come to mind in this context, literary responses to environmental concerns are as old as the issues themselves. Deforestation, air pollution, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism have all been appearing as controversial issues in Western literature for thousands of years. Starting with an excerpt from one of the West’s earliest texts, The Myth of Gilgamesh, this course will explore the often-ignored literary history of the natural world.

Fall 2006, Engl 231 Milton and His Contemporaries

In addition to providing a comprehensive introduction to Milton’s poetry and prose, this course also covers most of the seventeenth-century works on the First Qualifying Exam for Renaissance

Princeton Courses 

Fall 2012, English/Environmental Studies 386, Literature and Environment.

Beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the West’s earliest texts, this course surveys nearly 5000 thousand years of literature in order to explore the literary history of the relationship we have with our planet, as well as to better understand our current environmental beliefs. (Course website)

Spring 2013, Environmental Studies/English 388, Theories of Literature and Environment.

Environmental criticism, also known as ecocriticism and “green” criticism, is a rapidly emerging field of literary study that will be crucially important in upcoming decades, especially as our present environmental crisis unfortunately worsens. This course explores a range of works from modern environmental critics, beginning in the 1960s and ending with the ongoing explosion of interest in the field in the 21st century. (Course website)

Harvard Courses 

Spring 2006, Major British Writers II

An introduction to the study of British literature from the early 18th century to the present.

Spring 2006, Major British Writers I

A survey of English literature that includes Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, Mystery plays, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Lanyer, Herbert, Vaughan, Herrick, Marvell, Milton and others.

Fall 2005, Milton: Major Poetry and Prose

A comprehensive study of Milton’s career. We will concentrate on his poetry (lyric, dramatic, and epic) but will also pay close attention to his major prose tracts. Paradise Lost will receive extended treatment.

Spring 2005, Metaphysics of the Metaphysical Poets

A course on the major lyric poets of the 17th century, Donne, Jonson, Herbert, and Marvell. What is the relation between poetry and philosophy, between lyric expression and permanent order? In the seventeenth century, medieval notions of order gave way before the rise of science and of early modern philosophy. One result of these changes was the emergence of a new individualism in poetry.

Fall 2004, Major British Writers I

An introduction to the first eight hundred years of English literature through the reading of major works from the Anglo-Saxon beginnings to Shakespeare’s plays and Paradise Lost.

Individual Teaching 

I often volunteer to work with students on a variety of independent projects, sometimes more than a dozen per year. These projects have proven especially rewarding—in many respects even more so than my regular teaching—as they allowed me to individually mentor especially dedicated students.  My philosophy on individual projects is simple: if a student is dedicated enough to take on (and stick with) the extra work of an independent study, I am happy to work with them. All Independent Teaching is at UCSB and extends over at least one term.

My father was a furniture-maker, a woodworker. Like the children of many artisans, I was informally apprenticed into the trade at a very young age, about the time I started school. Consequently, I simultaneously experienced two approaches to learning. Although it did not register with me at the time, over the years I slowly came to realize (especially after reading a range of theorists from Martin Heidegger to Michael Polanyi and Pierre Bourdieu) that the knowledge taught in the classroom is very different than that possessed by the artisan. The latter exists largely – sometimes only – in practice, through practice.  As a consequence, being mostly bodily, it is more a “knowing how,” a savoir faire, than the sort of intangible, movable knowledge that theorists have been pondering and prizing since Plato. Perhaps nowhere is the difference clearer than in the process whereby one learns to know how to perform a skill, such as cutting a dovetail joint in wood. As a child, I watched as my father performed this skill dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times before ever attempting it myself.  In fact, it was years before I was even permitted to pick up a dovetail saw. Instead, I slowly took the process in; even more slowly, I learned the skill of handling a saw in simpler joints.

It was not until some years later when I started college (where I began reflecting on the process of education itself) that I surprisingly noticed an instructor attempting something akin to apprenticeship in the classroom. Rather than attempting to teach any sort of particular knowledge about the texts at hand, she modeled how she read these books, encouraging students to learn how to do the same. While the work of reading is, of course, very different than that of working wood, I quickly saw a parallel here, noting the merits of apprenticing students into the skill of active reading and reflection, rather than just attempting to teach ideas contained in, or facts about, the text at hand.  Of course, as teachers, we do that as well, but I have come to realize that teaching how to read is in many respects as important as teaching what we read. My goal is to teach both.

Regarding how I go about that, I often create handouts containing very detailed study questions, which students are required to work through, either on their own or in small groups, in preparation for class.  For example, in my undergraduate course on Milton, I put together a dozen worksheets (one for each book of Paradise Lost), each containing ten or fifteen detailed questions, which generally move chronologically through the text, often referencing specific lines of the epic.  The idea is to have students, either working individually or in a group (depending on how I have structured that particular course), directly wrestle with important passages in the text, as well as key ideas.  For example, I have found that it is far more effective to ask questions about gender in Paradise Lost after students have first looked to relevant passages, as they then develop ideas and opinions that are firmly grounded in the text.

Newer technology can also help here. Course websites, for example, are an excellent way to not only aggregate course material (such as assignments and syllabi), but can also allow the course to take place partly online. Blogs in particular can considerably enrich the classroom experience.  For example, in a number of my courses I have students break into small teams of two or three in order to prepare a joint presentation. A few days in advance of the actual classroom presentation, the team posts a written version of it to our course blog.  Every other member of the class then comments on the entry online.  By the time class rolls around, discussion tends to be very lively, as everyone in the course has had time to engage with, and even debate online, the ideas at hand.

It is also worth noting that both in my writing and research, I stress inclusiveness.  Nearly every course that I teach includes works by women (such as 17th-century writers Aemilia Lanyer and Katherine Philips) and working-class writers (like Milton’s contemporary Gerrard Winstanley), as well as non-canonical texts like ballads.  I also believe that it is useful to consider certain texts, such as the Faerie Queene, from a postcolonial perspective and additional vantage points, such as that of environmental justice, which takes into account factors like race, gender, and class. Nonetheless, although I teach texts as cultural artifacts that provide windows into these issues, I also stress that they are aesthetic objects to enjoy.

Finally, one of the reasons that I find this profession so rewarding is that few endeavors reward an investment of time like teaching. A fifteen-minute meeting with a student, for example, takes an embarrassingly small amount of time, yet those few minutes provide a wonderful opportunity to get to know students, their interests, and their reasons for taking (as well as concerns regarding) the course, as well as to get feedback on what’s working and what’s not. Even more importantly, it is one of the first steps in establishing an important relationship that may last for a number of courses, or even years or decades.

Non-University Service 

(Also see Panels Organized and Conferences Directed)

Non-University Organizations

2010-15, Secretary of the Milton Society of America

In 2010, I accepted a five-year appointment as the Secretary of the Milton Society of America. It was a bit of a daunting job, especially as the former MSA Secretary (the late Albert Labriola) served in the post for 35 years, but I very much enjoyed helping to lead the Society, which has over 500 members from over ten nations, into its seventh decade. A range of scholars, including C. S. Lewis, Merritt Hughes, Northrop Frye, and Stanley Fish, have been members over the years. One of my first projects was authoring a long overdue website for the MSA

2008-10, Member, Executive Committee, Milton Society of America

2011-Present, Board Member, Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies, Duquesne University Press

2006-Present, Member, Modern Language Association

2012-Present, Member, Renaissance Society of America

Selected Refereeing

Presses

Oxford University Press

Cambridge University Press

University of Toronto Press

Duquesne University Press

Routledge

Journals

Milton Studies

Milton Quarterly

Environmental Humanities

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment

Bronte Studies

Outside Reviewer for Tenure and Promotion Cases

Various

UCSB Service 

(Also see Conferences Directed)

2015-16

Director, Environmental Humanities Initiative

Director, Literature and the Environment at UCSB

Co-Coordinator, Critical Issues in American Series

Supervisor, King Promotion Case

Member, Undergraduate Committee

2014-15

Director, Environmental Humanities Initiative

Director, Literature and the Environment at UCSB

Chair, Hiring Committee for literature and the environment position

Campus Sustainability Champion

Member, Undergraduate Committee

2013-14

Member, Undergraduate Committee

Supervisor, Shrewy Promotion Case

Member, Hiring Committee for 18th Century position

Member, Hiring Committee for the Dehlsen Chair in Environmental Studies

Member, Graduate Division Central Continuing Fellowship Awards Committee

2012-13

On Leave of Absence as a visiting professor at Princeton University

2011-12

Member, Undergraduate Committee

Supervisor, Shrewy Promotion Case

2010-11

Director of Graduate Studies, English Department

Chair, Graduate Steering Committee

Chair, Graduate Admissions Committee

Member, English Department Administrative Committee

Director, Early Modern Center at UCSB

Director, Literature and the Environment at UCSB

Coordinator, Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment

Coordinator, Early Modern Undergraduate Specialization

Member, Graduate Division Central New Admits Fellowship Awards Committee

Supervisor, Cook Promotion Case

2009-10

Director of Graduate Studies, English Department

Administratively, one of the most challenging of my duties at UCSB was as Graduate Chair (a.k.a. Director of Graduate Studies, DGS) from 2008-11, which, while enormously gratifying, was made difficult by widespread budget cuts throughout the UC system. I am pleased to report that the program continued to thrive during that time, in part because we aggressively and successfully competed for a variety of funding, which allowed us to bring exceptionally qualified students to UCSB by offering especially desirable admission packages at a time when many Ph.D. programs were reducing theirs. During my time as DGS, I put together some advice for Ph.D. candidates.

Member, English Department Administrative Committee

Director, Early Modern Center at UCSB

Director, Literature and the Environment at UCSB

Coordinator, Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment

Coordinator, Early Modern Undergraduate Specialization

Supervisor, Shrewy Promotion Case

2008-09

Director, Early Modern Center at UCSB

From 2008-2011, I was Director of UCSB’s Early Modern Center (EMC). I very much enjoyed the challenges that came with taking the EMC into its second decade as an internationally recognized center for early modern studies. Full information on the EMC’s projects, initiatives, and events can be found at our website, which we gave a major overhaul during my first year as EMC Director.  

Director of Graduate Studies, English Department

Member, English Department Administrative Committee

Director, Literature and the Environment at UCSB

Coordinator, Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment

Coordinator, Early Modern Undergraduate Specialization

Member, Hiring Committee for Renaissance Drama position

Member, Graduate Division Central New Admits Fellowship Awards Committee

Coordinator, Graduate Colloquium in Literature and the Environment

2007-08

Director, Literature and the Environment at UCSB

Ever since arriving at UCSB, quite a bit of my energy has gone into helping to introduce one of my greatest passions, ecocriticism, to the campus. From 2007-11, I was the inaugural Director of our Literature & Environment Initiative. During that time we created a “Theories of L&E” list for our First Qualifying Exam (click here for the history of this list), an Undergraduate Specialization in L&E, as well as a range of additional programing and events. While proud of all our accomplishments, I take greatest delight in the fact that the classes in which my students and I approach a variety of familiar texts from an ecocritical perspective have been well received at UCSB.

Coordinator, Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment

Coordinator, Graduate Colloquium in Literature and the Environment

Member, Hiring Committee for Literature and the Environment position

Member, Graduate Division Central Continuing Fellowship Awards Committee

Member, Making Publics Group

Member, English Department Graduate Committee

2006-07

Co-Coordinator, Hannah Arendt Reading Group

Member, Making Publics Group

Member, English Department Graduate Committee

Princeton Service

(Also see Conferences Directed)

2012-13, Contributed to the development of the Environmental Humanities website.

Harvard Service 

(Also see Conferences Directed)

2005-06

Chair, Graduate Advisory Committee to the English Department

Member, Renaissance Colloquium

Member, Humanities Center Advisory Committee

2004-05

Chair, Renaissance Colloquium

Member, Graduate Advisory Committee to the English Department

Member, Humanities Center Advisory Committee

2003-04

Member, Renaissance Colloquium

Member, Humanities Center Advisory Committee

2002-03

Member, Renaissance Colloquium

Degrees & Appointments 

Degrees (B.A., M.A., A.M., Ph.D.)

Harvard University, English, Ph.D., 2006

Ph.D. Dissertation: “Renaissance Ecology: Environmental Consciousness and Crises in English Literature.”

Dissertation Committee: Barbara Lewalski (Chair), Stephen Greenblatt, and Gordon Teskey.

Harvard University, English, A.M., 2004

Rutgers University, M.A., 2002

M.A. Thesis: “The Ecological Importance of Place in Milton’s Poetry.”

Thesis Advisor: Diane McColley.

Rutgers University, B.A., 1992

Academic Appointments

2013-Present, Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, UC Santa Barbara

2012-Present, Professor, Department of English, UC Santa Barbara

2012-13, Princeton University, Joint Appointment

Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities, Princeton Environmental Institute

Visiting Professor, Department of English

2008-2012, Associate Professor, Department of English, UC Santa Barbara

2006-2008, Assistant Professor, Department of English, UC Santa Barbara

2004-06, Teaching Fellow, Department of English, Harvard University

Honors & Awards

Named Co-Coordinator of the Critical Issues in American Series, 2015-16

Nominated for UCSB’s University-Wide Distinguished Teaching Award, 2014-15.

UCSB Sustainability Champion, 2014-15

Nominated for UCSB’s University-Wide Distinguished Teaching Award, 2013-14.

Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities, Princeton University, 2012-13

Nominated for UCSB’s University-Wide Distinguished Teaching Award, 2012-13.

Instructional Development Grant, UCSB Office of Academic Programs, 2012-13.

Faculty Research Grant, UCSB Academic Senate, 2009-10.

“Outstanding Professor,” UCSB Residence Halls Association, 2007-08.

Faculty Research Grant, UCSB Academic Senate, 2007-08.

Bowdoin Prize, “The Not-So-Green View from Cooper’s Hill,” 2004-05.

Finalist for Harvard’s University-Wide Joseph R. Levenson Teaching Award, 2004-05.

Harvard’s Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (three-time consecutive recipient)

Fall 2005, Milton

Spring 2005, Metaphysics of the Metaphysical Poets

Fall 2004, Major British Writers I, from Beowulf through Milton

Conference Grant from Harvard University’s Humanities Center, sponsored in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2003-04.

Harvard’s English Prize Fellowship (four-time consecutive recipient)

2005-06

2004-05

2003-04

2002-03

Rutger’s Alumni Award for Most Distinguished Scholar, 2002.

Rutger’s James Sanderson Award for “The Most Outstanding Graduate English Paper” (two-time recipient)

2001-02

2000-01

Websites 

Websites Authored

Environmental Humanities Center

KenHiltner.com

Milton Society of America (www.miltonsociety.org; now updated by the MSA Communication Officer)

Literature and the Environment at UCSB (now incorporated into the Department Website; original site nonoperational)

The Worldly Earth at Harvard University (now nonoperational)

The original Renaissance Colloquium website at Harvard University (now nonoperational)

Select Course Websites Authored

Intro to Literature and the Environment 

Theories of Literature and the Environment 

Pastoral

Early Modern Limits of the Human

Websites Overhauled

UCSB’s Early Modern Center in 2008-09.

Personal

Prior to becoming an English professor, Ken Hiltner made his living as a furniture maker. As a second-generation woodworker, he received commissions from five continents and had collections featured in major metropolitan galleries. He currently lives in Santa Barbara in a little old house, in the midst of a large garden, with his wife and daughter, and their dog Penny.