I would highly recommend taking any course offered by Professor Carruth. She is extremely organized and delivers engaging lectures each week; she cares deeply about student wellbeing; and she assigned a wide variety of readings, which kept the course interesting over the quarter. Moreover, her grading is fair (even generous) and the workload is not too bad.

I would take this course again in a heartbeat.

Professor Carruth is by far the most incredible professor I have had the pleasure to learn from during my four years at UCLA. Her clear passion for environmental literature and environmentalism in general is palpable and infectious. This is not an in-depth, upper division literary theory class but rather a survey of concepts in environmental literature. Yet professor Carruth manages to make literary principles and concepts core elements of the class while simultaneously maintaining an incredible level of accessibility to the numerous students from majors/disciplines other than English that may be taking this class. She makes the importance of intersecting scientific understandings and cultural or humanities understandings of the environment and climate change a central part of the class without alienating those who may not be highly engaged with those topics. It is impossible to get through this class without learning at least a little something about just how wide the environmentalism field is. Professor Carruth also does an incredible job of addressing issues that all too often are ignored when tackling environmental problems: environmental justice and racial disparities, native land claims, the separation of nature and culture, and what one of the authors we study in the class calls "environmentalism of the poor," or the alternative approaches to environmentalism that exist beyond the Western sphere of thinking.

Finally, Professor Carruth showed a level of care, understanding, and support to her students in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that truly melted my heart. She clearly understood how hard all of that was for her students, regularly acknowledged these difficulties and made herself available for discussion about it, and was more than fair in her flexible adjustment of class assignments (including making the final exam completely optional). In addition, during the last week of class, she made a point to address the protests about the wrongful murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police that had begun to sweep the nation. This all speaks to her character not just as an educator, but as a human being. And for that I will always deeply admire her.

So, if you are wondering whether or not to take this class, the answer is a resounding HELL YEAH!!!!!

English M30 with Professor Carruth is about how the natural world is portrayed in media and literature. We were assigned articles each week and read three books: Through the Arc of the Rainforest by Karen Tei Yamashita, Thunder & Lightning by Lauren Redniss, and Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith. The course consists of 2 short essays, 3 group projects, and some extra credit quizzes. The workload is fairly manageable, and Professor Carruth was very helpful this quarter in accommodating the class. This quarter, lectures and discussion were all done over zoom. The lectures are recorded. The discussion sections were great, because it gave us a chance to talk as if we were all in the same room together. The essays were open ended and allowed for a lot of creativity. Overall, I really enjoyed this class!

Professor Carruth is amazing! She really cares about the students and tries her best to make it a great learning experience. Really accommodating with everything going on this quarter as well.
I really liked this class and the material we went through, very eye opening. We went through 2 books, a couple of poems, some articles, and some movies/documentaries, but they were not boring at all! The assigned reading assignments are all very engaging and at a very reasonable amount.
There are a three group projects throughout the quarter and we stay in the same group (I enjoyed this but some might not like this). We also write two short papers and there was an optional final exam. She also offers extra credit! Very possible to do great in this class if you put in the effort.