Environmentalism and Ecocriticism—The Cultural History of Trees.  This seminar will examine tree as they function in human technological practices, in our culture, and as source of food. We will study how trees figure in current debates about the environment, including tree structure and forest composition, trees and the law, arguments about plant intelligence, and sustainable food production in an era of environmental degradation. Not content with just reading about trees, we will also do some harvesting. In coordination with an Atlanta non-profit, we will help harvest urban trees, preparing the food for distribution to a food bank. Some texts we will study include Thoreau on wild apples, Michael Pollan, and the newly published novel The Overstory by Richard Powers.