jeanne.hamming
english.dept.
centenary.college
jhamming@centenary.edu
313.JAC
318.869.5082
v.card

english.201.a: literature and the environment
Fall 2004|10246|MWF|12-12:50|JAC 111
office.hours: MWF 10-10:50, TTH 11:30-12:30
(and by appointment)

schedule (click here to view)

course.description

This course will offer a window into the sub-canon of American writing that takes as its primary subject, the natural world. Taking our cue from Lawrence Buell and starting with Henry David Thoreau, we will consider how writers have reflected on new conceptions of humankind's relationship to nature. Some specific issues addressed in our readings will include: ecocriticism, gender and ecology, postmodernism, technoculture, consumerism, urban space, frontierism, and ecological apocalypse.

course.goals

to contextualize and reflect on "literature of the environment" within the larger canon of American literature.

to gain a working understanding of how we define "nature" and to examine how nature figures in literary and cultural works.

to examine how writers and thinkers have addressed environmental issues over the years.

to identify and reflect on key issues and concerns expressed in literary and cultural texts.

to reflect, in personal ways, on our own relationship to the environment and to literature about the environment.

to enjoy what we read.

grade.breakdown

All assignments must be completed in order to pass this course.

3 papers (3 pp) 30%
preparation and participation 20% (in-class writings, quizzes, journal, etc)
midterm exam 20%
final exam 30%

Note: While more difficult to quantify than other graded components, course preparation and participation (in class and out of class) is crucial to our having a fun, engaging, and enlightening experience. Figured into your p&p grade are attendance, attentiveness to assignments, and attitude. Please keep this in mind.

<click here to print a grade report sheet>

papers

On three occasions during the semester, students will be asked to examine carefully one narrow aspect of a text we have been reading and discussing. The purpose of these focused and precise essays, no more and no less than 3 full pages in length, is to hone students' abilities to grapple with one limited topic of interest, whether that topic be a rhetorical strategy, a narrative trope, a single image or set of images (motif), a sustained theme, or a formal element. Students will be asked to write thesis-driven, focused, and controlled papers.

attendance

Please note the English Department Policy on Attendance: to be eligible to pass an English course, a student may miss no more than three times the weekly number of class meeting, regardless of the reason for these absences. This means that for classes like this one that meet three times a week, students who have in excess of nine absences cannot pass the course. Frequent absences, even when they fall short of this absolute limit, will adversely affect your grade. Lateness to class counts as one half of an absence.

texts

Reader: Lorraine Anderson, et al. Literature and the Environment.
Edward Abbey. Desert Solitaire.
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pioneers.
Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild.
Neal Stephenson. Zodiac.
Selected handouts to be purchased by students

schedule (click here to view)