English EVH 200 - Winter, 2024

INTERDISCIPLINARY READINGS IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES

Class Information

Instructor: Miller, Elizabeth
CRN: 25370
Time: R 12:10-3:00pm
Location: 120 Voorhies

Description

Introduction to Environmental Humanities

EVH200 is the core seminar for graduate students from various disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and beyond with an interest in pursuing the Designated Emphasis in Environmental Humanities. In this class we will discuss key issues, themes, questions, and debates in the environmental humanities through discussions of classic and new readings in the main fields that have contributed to EH scholarship. In addition to close engagement with specific texts, we will think about the history of the field and the interrelationships between its various elements and about the most significant questions in current research. By the end of the seminar, we hope you will be able to situate environmental scholarship in your home discipline within the environmental humanities and connect it to work carried on in other fields.

This course will be co-taught by Professors Suzana Sawyer (Anthropology) and Elizabeth Miller (English).

Grading

Attendance and active participation
5 short reading responses
Lead 1 class discussion (in groups of 2-3)
Course syllabus for an imagined class in EH
Presentation of course syllabus
Final writing project

Texts

?Gas Guzzling Gaia, or: A Prehistory of Climate Change Denialism?, Leah Aronowsky
The Nutmeg?s Curse (selections), Amitav Ghosh
A Book of Waves, Stefan Helmreich
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
[new honeybee book, title TBA], Jake Kosek
Fossil Capital (selections), Andreas Malm
Extraction Ecologies (selections), Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change , Adriana Petryna
The Small Matter of Suing Chevron (selections), Suzana Sawyer
Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (selections), Victor Seow
?Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom", Sylvia Wynter
other assorted short pieces