English 184 - Spring, 2017

Literature & the Environment

Class Information

Instructor: Hsu, Hsuan L.
CRN: 71514
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50
Location: 146 Olson

Description

This course will consider a range of literary, critical, and theoretical texts that explore human relationships with the nonhuman environment. After considering nineteenth-century writings concerned with encountering and preserving the wilderness, we’ll turn to more recent works that consider forms of “nature” that have been altered by climate change, chemical pollutants, and radiation. In these stories of cyborgs, mutations, toxicity, and environmental risk, “nature” cannot be separated from human bodies and activities. The course will consider a range of genres—such as memoir, magical realism, science fiction, naturalism, and experimental poetry—that demonstrate how literature can engage with environmental issues beyond familiar modes of conservation and “nature writing.”

Grading

participating, attendance, and reading quizzes: 30%
short writing assignments: 10%
shorter (4-5pg) essay: 15%
longer (7-8pg) essay: 25%
final exam: 20%

Texts

Call of the Wild, Jack London
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
Watershed, Percival Everett
Well Then There Now, Juliana Spahr
Urban Tumbleweed, Harryette Mullen
Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi
The Word for World is Forest, Ursula LeGuin