Spring 2024 Special Topic: American Studies Seminar: Rock, Paper, Scissors: Vital Materialism in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Film

The course will offer a myriad of theoretical approaches to reading and thinking about our human lives in a connected and networked world. We will answer questions such as What does it mean to be human in the Anthropocene? If we know that humans impact the environment, what impact do plants, rocks, minerals, and the cosmos have on us? What is the relationship among biopolitics, technology, geology, and the cosmos? Theoretical readings in new materialism, vital humanism, and feminist posthumanism will inform our discussions of the following possible texts and films: Ozeki’s My Year of Meats; Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun; selections from Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World and Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass; Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down; Tamaki and Tamaki’s graphic narrative Boundless; McGuire’s graphic narrative Here; articles by T. Grandin on architectural design for animals; Reggio’s film Povaqquatsi—Life out of Balance, among others. Theoretical readings might include those by Rosie Braidotti, Karen Barad, Elizabeth Grosz, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Vicki Kirby, Mel Y. Chen, Stacey Alaimo, and Manuel DeLanda.