The environment in fiction is often discussed as a backdrop or "setting" that complements or reinforces characterization. This seminar will instead foreground this traditional background and explore the kind of narrative work it performs in various literary or nonliterary works from the Caribbean. What ideological work does the environment (natural, nonhuman or urban) perform in the text? In what ways is this representation helpful as a consciousness raising mechanism at a time when climate change is one of our top concerns as a species? Alternatively, is the representation of the environment obfuscating issues that should be more salient? If so, how? Rather than look outward to the ways in which textual representation portrays the actual environment, this session therefore asks how the fiction impacts our understanding of a reality it may not be as faithful to as it first appears.