Literature & the Environment
Class Information
Instructor: Ronda, Margaret
CRN: 54907
Time: TR 3:10-4:30
Location: 207 Olson
Description
In this course, we will read widely in literature that engages environmental concerns, including nonfiction, poetry, science fiction, and realist narratives. We will be considering the development of ecologically-oriented themes and literary modes in texts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. What modes of interaction or disconnection between humans and their surroundings do these texts portray, and what assumptions guide these portrayals? The course will examine how literary works portray various forms of ecological crisis, from pollution and the nuclear threat to climate change and species extinction, and their engagements with frameworks of environmental justice. We will also consider the ways these texts might offer alternative imaginative models for ecological co-existence.
Texts
Cane, Jean Toomer
My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki
The Word for World is Forest, Ursula Le Guin
Oil on Water, Helon Habila
Corpse Whale, DG Okpik