Van Noy

English 680 (Special Topics):

Literature and the Environment: Writing for an Endangered World
Fall 2003

The sociologist Ulrich Beck has said that “only if nature is brought into people’s everyday images, into the stories they tell, can its beauty and its suffering be seen and focused on” (qtd. in Buell 1). The success of environmentalism may depend less on some arcane new science or technology than on attitudes, images, narratives (Buell 1). This course takes its title from Lawrence Buell’s new book (2001) and it will follow it in structure, theme, and approach. Each week we will read a chapter from Writing for an Endangered World along with a primary text that falls under that topic.

Buell is the author of one of the first works of ecocriticism, The Environmental Imagination (1996). Ecocriticism investigates the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature. “As a critical stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land” (Woodlief). Environmental texts can reconnect readers with places or direct them to alternative futures. In this course, students should understand how environmental influences can influence the creative imagination, and, alternatively, how the power of those works can re-direct thinking about the environment, what it is and what it might be.

As we crisscross the U.S. landscape, we will move back and forth between genres (non-fiction, fiction, poetry), periods (19^th and 20^th century American writers), and cultures (both Native- and African-American).

Week	Topic and Readings
1 8/28	Greetings and Logistics. “Introduction” to WEW and to ecocriticism. View film, MindWalk.
2 9/4	Toxic Discourse: Addressing the Problem Don Delillo, “The Airborne Toxic Event” (selections from White Noise), selections from Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, selection from Terry Tempest Williams, “The Clan of the One Breasted Women (Refuge). “The Postnatural Novel: Toxic Consciousness in Fiction in the 1980’s,” Cynthia Deitering. See also the sections in this article on the “Literature of Place” about Delillo’s novel. And, if you can stand it, Ann Coulter on the (little known) connections between the French, deodorant, DDT, and global warming. David Orr at 8:00??
3 9/11	The Place of Place: The Importance of the Place Imagination selections from Haines; Silko; Abrams; Berry; Lopez, “The Literature of Place”; Eisley; Kingsolver.
4 9/18	Retreiving the Unloved Place John Edgar Wideman, Damballah. Selections from African American nature writers.
5 9/25	The Flaneur’s Progress: Re-inhabiting the City William Carlos Williams, Paterson (books I – IV)
6 10/2	Discourses of Determinism: Our Animal Selves Jane Adams, “A Modern Lear,”selections from naturalism: Jeffers, Wright, Norris, Dreiser, Dickens.
7 10/9	Watershed Aesthetics: Rethinking Boundaries William Least Heat-Moon, RiverHorse
8 10/16	Modernization and the Claims of the Natural World: Environmental Ethics and History Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (selections). The Bioregional quiz.
9 10/23	William Faulkner, Go Down Moses (selections) Due: close reading
10 10/30	Ecological Literacy: Scientific Illiteracy. Sprituality and Environmentalism Field trip/hike. Also, “Carpet Bagging Nature; Or, Why Ain’t There No Oneness ‘Round Here?” Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
11 11/6	Global Commons as Resource and as Icon: Imagining Oceans as Whales, Saving Megafauna (Or, Screw Willy, Free the Biota) Herman Melville, Moby Dick (selections; repeat, selections only) FYI, some info on the fact fish populations worldwide are in serious decline (also here). Due:  annotation (email so we may post them to a course page, like this)
12 11/13	The Misery of Beasts and Humans: Non-anthropocentric Ethics vs. Environmental Justice Linda Hogan, Power
13 11/20	Bringing Back Wonder: The Aesthetics of the Sublime selections from Thoreau, Powell, Cronon, Worster
14 12/4	Eco-composition Issues in teaching environmental writing, environmental activism.
Requirements: § Faithful attendance and discussion § A close reading of one of our primary texts (3-5 pages) and an annotation (1 if book, 2 if article or book chapter) of other ecocritical works (sample here, but add MLA notation) § Option of seminar paper or exam. Ideas for paper could include an extension of one of Buell’s chapters/topics (discussing a text he left out) or “adding” a chapter, such as the sublime, spirituality and environmentalism, etc. § Attend the October 14 reading by Heat-Moon

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