Fall 2024 Detailed Description:

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 19^th-21^st 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.

Writing intensive. Satisfies a post-1800 literature requirement for English majors. In fall 2024, this class fulfills a DH (Digital Humanities) requirement for the TBD major. ENGL 736 is an approved elective for the Sustainability Dual Major. Undergraduate students taking this class for Women’s and Gender Studies credit will write papers that focus on women writers or on gender and the environment. Graduate students taking 897N will write a graduate-level research paper; those taking 897N 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. Finally, ENGL 736 is a good choice for honors work. If you are an Honors-in-Major English student and would like to take this as an honors course, please talk to me during the first week of class.

This course satisfies the Literature after 1800 requirement for English Majors. 

This course satisfies one of two Post-1800 Literature requirement for English LIterature, English/Journalism, English: TBD, English/Law 3+3 Majors. 

This course may count as one of two Literature courses taken at the 600/700 level for English Teaching majors. 

This course satisfies the DH Component requirement for ENGL:TBD majors. 

This course may be taken for Capstone credit by general ENGLISH majors following requirement guidelines in place prior to Fall 2023. Fill out a Capstone Declaration form (available in the main English office,  Ham Smith 230F) if you wish to declare it as Capstone. 

This course satisfies the Literature before 1800 requirement for English majors following degree requirements activated in Fall 2023. 

This course counts as one of two Pre-1800 Literature courses for English Literature, English:TBD, English/Journalism, English/Law 3+3 Majors. 

This course may count as one of two English Literature courses taken at the 600/700 level by English Teaching majors. 

This course may be taken for CAPSTONE credit by English/Law, English/Journalism and English majors following degree requirements in place prior to Fall 2023. Pick up a Capstone Declaration Form in the main ENGL office (HS 230F) if intersted in this option. 

Fall 2024 Special Topic: "Climbing the Empathy Wall": Race in Contemporary American Literature 

“An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person,” writes Arlie Russell Hochschild in her study Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, “one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances.” This course asks, “How can we climb that empathy wall?” Through very contemporary literature—published from 2015 onward, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays, graphic narratives, media images and other pop culture—we will discuss what health, wealth, environment, education, and justice mean for BIPOC (biracial, indigenous, people of color) and for poor whites. Possible texts; Orange’s Vanishing Stars; Munoz’s The Consequences; Ward’s Let Us Descend; selections from Castillo’s How to Read Now: Essays; Potts’ The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America; selected poems by Ocean Vuong, Tayi Tibble, and/or Erin Marie Lynch; Huang’s Disorientation; Jacobs’ graphic narrative Good Talk; and selected chapters from Irving’s Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race and Hochschild’s Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right.

In Fall 2024 this course satisfies the Race, Gender & Postcolonial Studies requirement for English Majors following degree requirements activated in Fall 2023.

This course may be taken for CAPSTONE credit by English Majors following degree requirements in place prior to fall 2023. Pick up a Capstone Declaration Form in the main ENGL office (HS 230F) if interested in this option. 

This course satisfies the Capstone requirement for English Literature Majors. 

This course satsifes the Race & Racial Theories requirement for English: TBD, English Teaching, English/Journalism, English/Law 3+3 Majors.