Spencer Robins
Contact Information
Biography
Spencer Robins is originally from New York City. He’s lived in Southern California for more than a decade, where he first taught creative writing to elementary schoolers with the Story Pirates, then literature and writing at UCLA, and now in the English Department at Saddleback. He earned his PhD in English at UCLA, where he studied the relationship between literature and the natural world. He especially loves the American novel, science fiction, nature writing, and the literature of California, but he’ll read anything interesting.
At Saddleback, Professor Robins teaches classes in both literature (including “Introduction to Literature,” “Honors Introduction to Literature,” and “Science Fiction and Society”) and composition (including English C1000, C1001, and C1001 Honors). His composition classes focus on self-reflection and student-directed research projects; take those if you want to think hard about your place in the world and pursue your own creative research projects into the communities you’re a part of. His literature classes use novels, stories, plays and poems to explore hard questions about the world; take those if you want to discuss great, challenging literature with your fellow students.
- PhD in English, University of California, Los Angeles (2024)
- MA in English, University of California, Los Angeles (2020)
- BA in Philosophy, Amherst College (2008)
- The Strange Primate: Sociobiological Storytelling in the Pop Anthropocene.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (2024); author.
- “The Coyote in the Cloud.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (2024); co-author.
- “The Supply-Chain Sublime: Spectacles of Unagency in Fictions of Planetary Economy.” Literature Compass (2023); author.
- LENS.cast, the podcast of UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies; lead producer.
- LA 2050, three-episode animated film project imagining ecopolitical futures for Los Angeles; writer.
All of Professor Robins’s composition classes are Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC). Readings and other materials are shared via Canvas. If you are interested in learning more about the materials in each class, please email Professor Robins at srobins13@saddleback.edu.
His literature classes are low-cost, too, but will usually require you to buy a novel or two (or find them at a library). But he thinks novels are great to have, and he hopes you’ll agree.