Spring 2022

ENVS-102-401

Kathleen Morrison

W 1:45-4:45pm

As our planet's climate changes, it is imperative to understand the basic structures of the earth system and our connections to these, past, present, and future. The goal of this course is to help students develop an integrated understanding of climate change, linking the fundamental science - from the microscopic to the global scale - to human actions and possible futures. This team-taught course brings together approaches from environmental science, social sciences, history, and policy. Beyond providing basic climate and environmental literacy, we will also explore current and projected impacts of change, including changes to human life and biodiversity as well as other physical and biological systems. The complexity and significance of planetary change demands new ways of thinking and new approaches that transcend traditional boundaries; for that reason the course will be co-taught by instructors from the natural sciences (Joseph Francisco), social science and humanities (Kathleen Morrison), and policy (Melissa Brown Goodall). We will use the foundation provided by the two first parts of the course to address potential responses and solutions to the current crisis. The course will be divided into three units: 1. Science: what are the chemical and physical drivers of our changing climate, and what are the biological, health and environmental implications so far. 2. Impacts: how human activity has affected environments and climate so far and how climate change is currently impacting society, nature, agriculture, health, cities, and the most vulnerable communities. 3. Solutions: the roles of policy, business, agriculture, planning, and personal choices. The course is open to undergraduate students of all disciplines. While the reading and weekly assignments will be specific to the module, students may define a capstone project that reflects their academic interests.

 

This course fulfills Social Science Approaches to Environmental Inquiry or Natural Science Approaches to Environmental Inquiry elective.

Spring 2022

ANTH-311-401

Campbell Grey

MW 1:45-3:15pm

Disasters occupy a powerful place in our imagination. Stories of floods, plagues, earthquakes and storms excite and horrify us, and communities mobilize their resources quickly in response to these events. In the ancient Mediterranean world, disasters could take on potent meaning, indicating the anger or disfavor of the gods, acting as warnings against certain courses of action, or confirmations of individuals' fears or suspicions about the world in which they lived. In this course, we explore the evidence for some disasters in the ancient Mediterranean world, the ways in which contemporaries reacted to those disasters and interpreted their causes. This project is, of necessity, multidisciplinary, involving textual, archaeological, geological, and comparative materials and drawing on methodologies from history, political and archaeological science, and the emerging field of disaster studies. In the process, we will gain an appreciation of the social structures of communities in the period, the thought-world in which they operated, and the challenges and opportunities that attend a project of this sort. No prior knowledge of Ancient History is required, although it would be useful to have taken an introductory survey course. Texts will be discussed in translation.

 

This course fulfills Social Science Approaches to Environmental Inquiry or Arts & Humanities Approaches to Environmental Inquiry elective.

Spring 2022

ENGL 102-601

Sherif Hasan Ismail Muhamed

MW 5:16-6:45pm

Literary studies has become one of the most active areas of the “Environmental Humanities.”  This course will introduce you to some of the main concerns of that increasingly important field.   We will consider the ways that literature helps us think about human relationships to environments, natures, places, animals, weather events, and the planet.  We will develop a historical perspective on how literary and philosophical traditions such as romanticism, transcendentalism, naturalism, and postmodernism mediate different understandings of the environment. We will also focus on contemporary environmental questions and problems, exploring the role of literature in our present ecological crisis, especially regarding climate change and environmental justice.  We will analyze literary texts, situate them in context, discuss and interpret diversely, and reflect on our own preconceptions about our relationship to the nonhuman world.  To engage deeply and thoughtfully with texts, we will avail ourselves of several philosophical and critical approaches, such as new materialism, ecofeminism, critical animal studies, and ecocriticism. Through reading, discussion, and research, students will enhance their environmental awareness, deepen their sense of place and sense of planet, and develop their critical reading and writing skills.

Our readings will include poems by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Camille Dungy; prose nonfiction by Henry David Thoreau, Annie Dillard, and Edward Abbey; narrative fiction by such writers as Alice Walker, Leslie Marmon Silko, Amitav Ghosh, Jesmyn Ward, Don DeLillo, and Jeanette Winterson; and a range of theoretical and critical texts that will facilitate our engagement with the course readings. Most of our readings will be fairly short, rarely more than 120 pages a week.

You will need to purchase some books in hard copy or in digital format, but many of our reading materials will be available on the course site on Canvas. Everyone is expected to read the assigned texts and think about what they have read before coming to class.

Course requirements include weekly discussion posts on the course blog, one oral presentation with class discussion, a research paper, and a creative project (with various options, including nature or place writing, fieldnotes, and creative engagement with the reading materials). No previous knowledge or experience with literary analysis is required.

Attendance is mandatory. If absence from a particular class meeting is unavoidable, you should consult with me in order to discuss makeup work.

Final grades will be based on weekly discussion posts (20%), presentation and leading class discussion (20%), research paper (30%), creative project (20%), and performance in class discussions (10%). Cheating or plagiarism will result in an F for the class.

This course fulfills Arts & Humanities Approaches to Environmental Inquiry requirement.

Spring 2022

ENGL 010-305

Knar Gavin

M 5:15-8:15

In Worlding Otherwise, we’ll tend our impulses toward ecological forms of literary expression. This class is about writing as communing, or, as Stephen Collis puts it, “what all life does” — “the radical sharing of the means and materials of existence.” Light research, archival exploration, and engagements with manifestos from social movements are a few methods of textual encounter that might animate our writing practices. You’ll be encouraged to document, imaginatively reinhabit, and remediate places and histories of concern. If there are particular social, environmental, or political urgencies that have been beckoning to you, follow them — and then pull them onto the page! And for those who feel driven to write spaces of refuge into existence, this workshop will hold space for that refuge-making.

Kaia Sand has suggested the possibility of forming “a small society around the poetic act.” We’ll embrace this notion as we work within and press beyond traditional genres (poetry, memoir, and fiction among them) to attend to publics, histories, and environments of concern. Reading and writing together as a small, temporary society, our workshop will invest care and curiosity into each text’s operations on the level of theme, style, form and content. We’ll also think about the ecological and social horizons that emerge in our writings: what sorts of social worlds and modes of ecological relation might we choreograph, script, and prefigure in our stories, poems, and mixed-genre experiments?

Course requirements include comradely participation, regular short assignments, and a final portfolio. Many assignments are genre-flexible: this flexibility is designed to retain space for experimentation, exploration, and documentary practice. Writers we will read include Susan Briante, Renee Gladman, Rebecca Solnit, C.S. Giscombe, and Mark Nowak.

This course fulfills Arts & Humanities Approaches to Environmental Inquiry requirement.

Spring 2022

ENGL 255-301

Barri J. Gold

MW 3:30-5pm

Coalbrookdale by Night is an 1801 oil painting by Philip James de Loutherbourg. The painting depicts the Madeley Wood Furnaces.

The Death of the Sun: Energy, Evolution & Ecology in Victorian Fiction
Two Victorian ideas--energy and evolution--form the basis of modern ecology. But among Victorians, these concepts fueled and were shaped by the hopes and fears, anxieties and aspirations of a nation coping with change. Fears regarding the death of the sun competed with deeply held beliefs about conservation as well as with the hope for unlimited progress. This course explores the ways Victorian literature wrestled with and helped shape the way we understand ourselves and the natural world. Authors read include Tennyson, Wells, Dickens, Hopkins, Gaskell, as well as contemporary ecocritics such as Lawrence Buell, Kate Soper, Heidi Scott and Timothy Morton.

This course fulfills Arts & Humanities Approaches to Environmental Inquiry requirement.

Spring 2022