Fall 2024 Special Topic: Environmental Theory

How can we talk about environmental crisis? What words can we use to represent the natural world—and human interactions with it? Is it possible to describe nature without cultural projections? How can language change vision, policy, action? In this course, we will grapple with the urgent need to articulate environmental issues by reading contemporary ecocritics who are inventing vocabularies to do so, such as Rob Nixon on “slow violence” and Stacy Alaimo on “trans-corporeality.” We’ll also read 19th-21st century nature writers, poets, and fiction writers who write about different environments from different perspectives, shaped in part by race, gender, and indigeneity, from Henry David Thoreau and Mary Austin to Rachel Carson, Barry Lopez, Joy Harjo, and Octavia Butler. We’ll explore ecofeminism, environmental justice, postcolonial ecology, and the concept of the Anthropocene.

Graduate students taking 897M will write a graduate-level research paper; those taking 897M for credit towards a Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies will also write such a paper and will focus their written work on women writers, ecofeminist theory, or gender and the environment.