American Literature & the Environment

ENGLISH 170SE Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What are the natural worlds that define America? How did these landscapes – the towering redwoods of California, the uncanny geysers of Yellowstone, the vast plains of Nebraska – attain their status as symbols of the American nation? How have racial and ethnic identities historically mapped onto landscape? And how do relationships with nature evolve across time and space, and now into an era of climate change? These are some of the questions our course will seek to answer. Across nearly four hundred years of American literature, writers have been responsible for shaping how we see American landscapes and, consequently, how we understand this nation. At the same time, writers have struggled with how to represent natural worlds and the human role within them. In our course, we will survey American literature from 1785 to today, migrating through a series of landscapes that have variously defined American identities and our relationships to nature: the wilderness, the west, the refuge, and the city. Our course will include works by Washington Irving, Thomas Jefferson, William Faulkner, Harriet Jacobs, Jack London, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Willa Cather, Zitkala-Ša, Walt Whitman and Karen Tei Yamashita. Students will complete both creative and critical assignments, and will have the opportunity to visit Walden Pond and the Harvard Herbaria.