Dr. Castellano 3 credits

J.M. Coetzee’s fictional character Elizabeth Costello claims that poems about non-human life draw us into “feeling our way to a different kind of being-in-the-world.”  This course will examine the environmental imagination in a wide variety of literary genres: poetry, fiction, memoir, and drama. The first part of the course, “Wilderness,” will analyze the great wilderness debate.  After encountering the emotional engagements and activism of Robinson Jeffers, Annie Dillard, and Dave Foreman, we will critically examine the concept of wilderness as an ideology. Does the ideal of wilderness enable the continued destruction of urban or “ugly” spaces?  And has the photographic and literary representation of wilderness become pornographic as it objectifies an ideal that bears little resemblance to its increasingly embattled reality?  A second unit on “Animals and Animality” examines the limitations and capabilities of imagining animal life as well as the impact of human activities on wild animals, including endangered species.  We will also investigate the biopolitical management of farm animals and companion animals in novels and poetry by J.M. Coetzee, Lydia Millet, and Ted Hughes.  The final unit, “Environmental Justice,” considers the environmental maxim, “we all live downstream.”  Even though this statement contains some truth, our unit will focus on how some groups of people—immigrants, people of color, and the poor—experience disproportionately greater consequences of mountain-top removal, industrial pollution, nuclear testing, and global warming.   This class counts towards the English major and towards Environmental Studies and Environmental Science minors. 

Back to Courses

Web Manager: Rose Gray
Web Design: Brad Frost Web
Privacy Statement