ENGL 200 C: Reading Literary Forms

This course will examine the idea of “the natural environment” in the late twentieth century, and more specifically, the way literary texts (both fictional and non-fictional) represent human relationships with that environment. More specifically, we will examine some key ways conversations about the environment are moving to cover expanding geographic, cultural, and philosophical terrain. Three or four key ideas will guide the reading we do in this course:

1. What qualifies as natural? To what extent is the idea of “the natural world” socially constructed?
2. With that in mind, how does human presence figure into the natural? How do representations of human inhabitation reflect cultural values and understandings of the environment?
3. How can these discussions take into account the breadth of cultural positions across the planet and the ways in which those cultures do not experience “the global environment” in the same ways?
4. To what extent do humans control their environment? Is that control equally distributed among human beings and cultures?

Course Texts:
Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Ernest Hemmingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Leslie Marmon Silko – Ceremony
Karen Tei Yamashita – Through the Arc of the Rainforest
Course Packet (to be picked up at Ave Copy Center)