English 254 - Winter, 2020

20th Century British Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Miller, Elizabeth
CRN: 76971
Time: T 3:10-6:00
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Later British
Focus: Interdiscipline, Method

Description

Empire, Environment, and British Literature, 1900-1940

This course will approach early-twentieth-century British literature through the lens of postcolonial ecocriticism. We will read texts set in London and provincial England as well as texts set in South America, Africa, India, and the Arctic, and we will consider British imperialism in its formal as well as informal registers -- extending into histories of investment, infrastructure, and resource exploitation. Our secondary readings will cover topics such as ecological imperialism, environmental racism, the Anthropocene, and global extractivism, as well as critical methods and approaches such as world ecology, modernist studies, literature and science, and the energy humanities. Our primary texts encompass various modes of literary prose, from impressionism and psychological realism to adventure romance, fantasy, and speculative fiction.

Grading

Seminar paper, individual presentation, participation in discussion

Texts

The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Purple Cloud , M. P. Shiel
Green Mansions , William Henry Hudson
Sultana?s Dream, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
The Machine Stops, E. M. Forster
Sons and Lovers , D. H. Lawrence
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Voyage in the Dark , Jean Rhys
The Road to Wigan Pier , George Orwell
The Hobbit , J. R. R. Tolkien