Allen, Nicholas
T 12:45 PM
Park Hall 0061
ENGL6830: THEORY TOPICS (45806)
Allen, Nicholas
T 12:30 PM
Park Hall 0061
Readings in Recent Environmental Literature and Criticism
Description
This course will explore concepts of the anthropocene, climate breakdown and the non-human in a series of recent literary texts and criticism, with a focus on land and seascapes. Authors will include Kathleen Jamie, Emily St John Mandel, Rachel Carson, Amitav Ghosh, Jeff Vandermeer, Philip Hoare, Richard Powers and others.
We will read a diverse range of criticism in relation to the texts, and your interests, a selection of which is cited at the end of the syllabus.
There will be wide scope to create diverse research projects in response to our readings and conversations. I will invite you, individually or together, to create a landscape project at small scale that will last for the semester. This project will proceed from ecological attentiveness to a specific place, which you will visit regularly. You are free to choose where this may be, or what kind of place it is. The area can be as small as you find meaningful and I invite you to think about the influence of all forces on this micro-landscape, human, weather, animal and otherwise. You may submit this project as part of your final paper, or in full.
I have created this class with meeting in person in mind. That may change and I will talk with you if we need to make rearrangements for online meetings. Please also know that if you have any issues about meeting in class, for health or any other reason, I am happy to accommodate you however I can.
The syllabus includes three research days in which you will be able to read, work on your projects, or talk with me individually, as is your preference. You will see that I have listed the readings as ‘from …’. I will share selections in advance so that you are not required to buy all the course texts.
Meeting
My email is the easiest way to reach me outside class, na@ uga.edu.
You are welcome to schedule a meeting in person through Winnie Smith, wsmith78@uga.edu. My office is in the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, 1260 Sth Lumpkin Street.
Assessment
We will discuss the different options available to you when we meet. All students will undertake the landscape project, which can become the basis of a full, or a partial, final assessment, depending on your interests. Part of a chapter towards your dissertation, an essay or some other creative research work can also meet the course requirements.
Schedule
25th August Introductions and aspirations
1st September Rachel Carson, from The Edge of the Sea
8th September Steve Mentz, from The Ocean
15th September Tim Robinson, from Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage; art by Dorothy Cross
22nd September Research Day Journal work
29th September Kathleen Jamie, selected poems, and from Surfacing
6th. October Amitav Ghosh, from The Great Derangement
13th October Midterm Emily St Mandel, from Station Eleven
20th October Jeff Vandermeer, from Borne
27th October Research Day Journal Work
3rd November Ursula Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest
10th November David Haskell, from The Forest Unseen
17th November Richard Powers, from The Overstory
24th November Research Day Journal Work
1st December Richard Powers, from The Overstory
8th December Last class
15th December Papers/ Journals/ Projects Submitted
Critical Readings
This is a fraction of the reading we could do and is intended to serve as a set of first steps towards our conversations. We will map these texts more closely to our in class reading when we meet. If you have any texts that you would like me to include please let me know.
There are many good ideas for readings and potential projects at https://www.asle.org/teach/sample-syllabi/ I found this very helpful in preparing this syllabus and encourage you to browse the website as we progress through class.
Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism
Gillis, The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History
Dale Jamieson & Bonnie Nadzam, Love in the Anthropocene
Camille Dungy, ed., Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades
Imre Szeman & Dominic Boyer, Energy Humanities: An Anthology
Clare Walker Leslie, Nature Journal: A Guided Journal for Illustrating and Recording Your Observations of the Natural World
Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways
Shelley Streeby, Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism
Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self
John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, in About Looking
Buell, Lawrence. “The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Criticism.” The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination
Cohen, Michael P. “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique.” Environmental History 9.1
Gaard, Greta. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism. Ed. Rachel Stein
Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology
Ingram, Annie Merrill, Ian Marshall, Daniel J. Philippon, and Adam W. Sweeting, eds. Coming into Contact: Explorations in Ecocritical Theory and Practice
Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona. “A Genealogy of Ecofeminism.” The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy
Armitage, David, Bashford, Alison and Sivasundaram, Sujit, Oceanic Histories
Baderoon, Gadeba, ‘The African Oceans – Tracing the Sea as Memory of Slavery in South African Literature and Culture’, Research in African Literatures (40: 4, Winter 2009)
Blum, Hester, ‘Terraqueous Planet: The Case for Oceanic Studies’, The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century
Brannigan, John, Archipelagic Modernism: Literature in the Irish and British Isles, 1890-1970
Cohen, Margaret, The Novel and the Sea
Flannery, Eoin, Ireland and Ecocriticism: Literature, History, and Environmental Justice
Gange, David, The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel
Hofmeyr, Isabel, ‘Provisional Notes on Hydrocolonialism’, English Language Notes (57:1, April 2019)
Land, Isaac, ‘Tidal Waves: The New Coastal History’, Journal of Social History (40:3, Spring 2007)
Mathieson, Charlotte, ed., Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present
Mentz, Steven, At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean
Miller, Peter, ed., The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography
Pocock, J. G. A., The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History
Rozwadowski, Helen, Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans
Slovic, Scott, Rangaran, Swarnalatha, and Vidya Sarveswaran, eds., Ecocriticism of the Global South
Steinberg, Philip, The Social Construction of the Ocean