English 375:
American Literature and the Environment
American Literature and the Environment considers the ways writers and artists have imagined the North American environment: the country and the city, the “natural” and the constructed, the inhabited and the abandoned. We’ll discuss representations of trees, forests, deserts, mountains, cities, cemeteries, houses, shopping malls, highways, subways, derelict buildings, and the secret places known only to children and the homeless. We’ll think about the way places change through the seasons and over geologic spans of time. And we’ll consider the inhabitants of different kinds of places: from “charismatic megafauna” in panoramic landscapes to the baroque colonies of microbes that inhabit our bodies.
Like Koyaanisqatsi, a mesmerizing film we’ll watch at our first meeting, this seminar will attempt to alter our spatial and temporal modes of perception through defamiliarization. The “natural” will become fantastic, and the mundane immanent with hidden meaning. What if changes in the built environment—the ones we’ve barely noticed—tell us more about the trajectory of our civilization than market-tested political disinformation? What if trees sprouted feathers instead of leaves? And the ground grew hands instead of grass? What if meditation changed our sense of time, and we could see trees and vines strangling each other for light and water while mountains melt away like heated butter? What if nature is really more like the Museum of Jurassic Technology and Alburtus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities than your biology textbook for all its technical insight and practical applicability? As John Stilgoe says in our first reading: Outside Lies Magic.
But this magic has a dark side, and the outside world can be terrifying as well as sublime: urban disintegration, global warming, nuclear apocalypse, the destruction of the landscapes that make us who we are, and, with that destruction, the insidious contamination of our bodies from fetal malformation to premature death by cancer. What is in that water you are drinking? As nature goes, so goes the human body. And the future looks grim just as the past (the pastoral?) seems increasingly ideal, and, by the end of the course, we’ll know more about what it means to be thinkers, writers, adventurers, survivors, teachers, and eco-warriors in a time of radical environmental disruption.
To that end, we’ll read about one book each week. Some of
these books will be deep and complex, some of them brisk and adventuresome.
Some will be self-consciously literary; others will emphasize the relation
between texts and images and texts and the physical world. Of course, we’ll
read some of the most famous and influential works of American environmental
writing: Thoreau’s Walden, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great
American Cities. We’ll
reconsider Whitman’s Leaves of Grass,
among other works, through the
ecocritical lens of Lawrence Buell (“godfather of the movement” and my grad-school
mentor). We’ll read several more recent
contributions to the tradition of environmental writing such as Terry Tempest
Williams’ Refuge, John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire, and Wendell Berry's great novel, Jayber Crow. We'll consider the strange textuality of trees with Audubon Field Guide in hand, as well as the astonishing work of Thomas Pakenham. We’ll explore the photographs and writings of
the urban adventurer Camilo Jose Vergara as he explores American Ruins, and, following his lead—and that of the authors of Invisible Frontier—we’ll learn about the
new urban exploration movement (bring rope and flashlights). I’ll also introduce
you to my recent work on nineteenth-century memorial landscapes (i.e., old, ruinous cemeteries). And, of course, you will do some environmental exploration
and meditation of your own.
The class meets once per week on Wednesday evenings for lecture, film screenings, group discussion, adventures, and writing exercises. These exercises may include learning how to describe things like tarantulas, peacock feathers, and mastodon bones with technical accuracy and style; searching the Hope campus for unnoticed and mysterious places; and learning how to hear and smell and feel. As Wavy Gravy, the sixties guru, said, the real trick is to “Be Here Now.” In addition to reading, the course requirements include attendance of all classes, weekly brief writing exercises and peer reviews, three substantial contributions to the online discussion board, and a 15-page paper (or the negotiable, hybridized equivalent in images, video, audio, and/or Web site development) on your semester-long environmental explorations (e.g., “Subterranean Hope College,” “From Winter to Spring on the Lake Michigan Beach,” “A Hundred Years in Prospect Park”).
“American Literature and the Environment” will provide you with an introduction to the main currents of American ecocriticism, and it will give you motivation, models, support, and feedback for creating a substantial work of environmental writing, largely of your own devising. The course usually appeals to students of literature, creative writing, and the sciences, as well as to social activists and outdoor adventurers—we get an unusual mix, so you don’t need to worry if your route to the class seems indirect or circuitous. Weirdness—up to a point—is an advantage. The course will not assume any previous knowledge of ecocriticism or environmentalism, but, assuming your commitment to the work, it will pave the way for a deeper understanding of both. And, quite honestly, I hope it will change your life. Four credit hours.
