How can we imagine a more “ecocentric” way of being in this disastrous age of global warming? What do we have to “see” truly in man's relation to the environment to maintain the delicate but crucial natural balance between all organisms and the Earth? How can textual and visual works of art help with that awaking act of “seeing”? In response to the above questions, this seminar seeks inspirations from Henry D. Thoreau’s Walden and Chi Po-lin’s Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above, a 2013 film which documents Taiwan in aerial photography to underscore the need for environmental reforms. This seminar, on the one hand, investigates what Thoreau has seen through his observations on the environment of Walden in the mid 19th Century. It brings to the fore the rich nourishment of Thoreau’s insights of man's relation to nature. In light of “the transparent eye-ball” in R. W. Emerson’s Nature, it further