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

english.291: environmental literature and film
Spring 2010|TR 8:20-9:40|JAC 110
office.hours: MW 3:15-4, TR 9:45-11
or by appointment

schedule (click here to view)

course.description

This course will offer a window into literature and film that takes as their primary subject the natural world and our relation to it. Drawing on ecocriticism, environmental studies, science studies, and material feminism, we will consider how writers and filmmakers have reflected on such issues as gender and ecology, postmodernist landscapes, environmental justice, technoculture, consumerism, urban space, toxic bodies, food and agriculture, frontierism, global climate change, and 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 relationship and responsiblities to human and more-than-human environments.

grade.breakdown

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

4 papers (5-7pp; 15% each) 60%
preparation and participation 20% (attendance, discussion, in-class assignments, etc)
final exam 20%

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. The more you contribute in a positive way to the course, the better your grade will be. Please keep this in mind.

papers

On four occasions during the semester, students will be asked to examine carefully one focused aspect of a text we have been reading and discussing. The purpose of these focused and precise essays, 5-7 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, a formal element, or a political issue. Students will be asked to write thesis-driven, focused, precise, informed, and controlled papers with ample support and, where appropriate, outside research.

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 meets twice a week, students who have in excess of 6 absences cannot pass the course. Frequent absences, even when they fall short of this absolute limit, will adversely affect your preparation and participation grade. Lateness to class counts as one half of an absence.

texts

Edward Abbey. Desert Solitaire.
Margaret Atwood. Oryx and Crake.
Don DeLillo. White Noise.
Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild.
Kurt Vonnegut. Galapagos.

Grizzly Man (film)
Manufactured Landscapes (film)
Safe (film)

Selected handouts to be purchased by students as a course packet

schedule (click here to view)