Dr. Jennifer Atkinson is an Associate Teaching Professor of environmental humanities at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her seminars on Eco-Grief & Climate Anxiety have been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic, Washington Post Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, the Seattle Times, Grist, the Washington Post, and many other outlets. Jennifer is author or The Existential Toolkit for the Climate Crisis: How to Teach in a Burning World (co-edited with Sarah Jaquette Ray), a book that offers strategies to help young people navigate the emotional toll of climate breakdown. She regularly collaborates with youth activists, psychologists, climate scientists and policy makers beyond the university to lead seminars on climate and mental health. Her podcast Facing It also provides tools to channel eco-anxiety into action. Currently, Jennifer is coordinating a team of interdisciplinary scholars and activists from around the world in examining the role of despair and hope within the Climate Generation, as featured on the website "An Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators” (a project supported by a grant from the Rachel Carson Center in Munich). Jennifer is also the author of Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy and Everyday Practice, a book that explores garden literature as a "fantasy genre" where people enact desires for social justice, joyful labor, and contact with nature. Her writing on the history of gardening in hard times has been featured on programs like NPR, The Conversation, and Earth Island Journal. Jennifer holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago, and lives in Seattle where she’s taught at the University of Washington since 2010.
Teaching
I’m an Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Washington, Bothell, where I teach in the field of Environmental Humanities. I believe that developing a more sustainable relation to the natural world is both a science and an art, so my teaching emphasizes the intersections between environmental studies and literature, philosophy, storytelling, film and the visual arts.
Integrative learning is core to my teaching as well. Studies in literary analysis and environmental ethics are enhanced by service learning and other field experiences throughout the Seattle and Puget Sound region. When they're not analyzing cultural texts in the classroom, students spend time outdoors and reflect on experiential/embodied relations to our more-than-human world.
My teaching also addresses the intersections of racial justice, privilege, trauma, colonialism, and power in climate change and its solutions. Students examine the psychological burdens experienced by different groups and consider how race, gender and economic inequality shape the emotional toll of climate disruption. When teaching about existential threats like our climate and biodiversity crises, I also work to address the emotional impact this material has on students themselves. Processing and applying difficult information about climate injustice can give rise to emotional, psychological and intellectual challenges that are too seldom made explicit in our teaching. Yet educational research shows that growing rates of hopelessness, guilt, nihilism and despair among young people compromises their ability to think critically or respond creatively. It can ultimately lead students to shut down and withdraw rather than engage in climate solutions. My classes offer a space to confront those feelings head on: I provide strategies for students to develop the affective, psychological, and existential skills they need to take up and sustain this difficult work over the long haul without becoming overwhelmed.
About Dr. Atkinson’s Teaching
Spotlight: Jennifer Atkinson supports the processing of anxiety from climate change
Channeling environmental anxiety into action to address pressing climate and environmental crises influences Dr. Jennifer Atkinson’s numerous pursuits and achievements. Her career centers on the intersections between mental health and climate science, as she seeks to help others process their anxiety surrounding the constantly evolving environmental crisis the world faces.
Our Home in the Forest
Our Home in the Forest, a class at the University of Washington Bothell, stretches the boundaries of what constitutes a classroom. Not content to study nature at a distance, the faculty leaders and their students went from learning in a typical 900-square-foot room with white walls and carpet flooring to a 326-acre forest, rich with opportunity.
A first-year student takes field notes in Atkinson’s class “Our Home in the Forest”
Bringing together culture and ecology
“Successfully addressing today’s environmental challenges will take more than just scientific knowledge,” said Atkinson. “It also requires us to look at the stories, images, values and associations shaping our behavior toward nonhuman nature.”
A retrospective on the biggest stories of 2020 at the University of Washington
2020 was a year we will never forget: a pandemic that upended our lives, killings that sparked a nationwide movement to fight racism, a devastating wildfire season and a tumultuous election. Even as we faced tragedy and sought to end inequities, we also shared moments of joy and curiosity, pride and hope. And we were sustained by the enduring power of education and the unwavering strength of the UW community.
Scroll on for glimpses of the diversity and depth of experiences across the UW in 2020 — the faculty who inspired us, the front-line workers caring for our health and safety, and the moments that brought us all together.
Turning Angst Into Environmental Activism
“In the three years Jennifer Atkinson has been teaching her popular Eco-Grief and Climate Anxiety seminar, she has had more and more students, educators, and activists asking her how to help students cope with feelings of environmental loss. Don’t expect them to uncouple their intellects from their emotional lives, she advises, as students wrestle with existential threats like climate disruption and mass extinction…”
From left: Javier Carrasquero, Jennifer Atkinson, Jaime Fajardo. UW Bothell
Looking back and ahead
“Mentoring first-generation and immigrant students has been the highlight of my teaching career. When they return as alumni to speak to younger students, you see a living example of education’s transformative power. As a society, it’s our obligation to ensure that every student who wants to go to college has the access, resources, and support. That’s really the foundation of our work toward equity and social justice in this country.” - Jennifer Atkinson
Acknowledging eco-grief and climate anxiety
In 2018 Atkinson’s seminar on Eco-Anxiety became one of the first college courses of its kind in the U.S. “Within environmental studies we ask students to grapple with some really devastating material,” she said. “It’s very rare that anybody provides them with tools or resources for managing the anxiety and grief that material awakens.”
Dealing with the emotional impact of climate change
“Dwelling on our feelings can seem like an extravagance as the fires close in,” Atkinson said. “But the problem is when we try to jump straight to the final step without first processing the emotional toll of all this lost beauty and life, we're bypassing the very insights that motivate us to save what we love.”