ENGL 265 A
Introduction to Environmental Humanities:
The West and the Western
Winter 2024
Instructor: Alex McCauley, apmccau@uw.edu
Class Location: CDH 110A, TTh 10:30 – 12:20 pm
Office hours / Office location: PDL A2J, TTh, 3 – 4 pm
Course Description
There are two core components to the environmental humanities: our relationship to nature, and the stories we tell about our relationship to nature. Already this sounds unhappy. When it comes to nature, there are so many unhappy relationships and stories: global warming, earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts, mass slaughter and extinction. You get the drift.
Ideas and representations of nature are old and familiar topics in the humanities but, given our apocalyptic context, they are insufficient. A grounding premise of the environmental humanities is that there is probably something wrong in treating intellectual inquiry as an insulated experience that never touches the world. Books up here, depleting aquifers down there. So while the course demands intellectual work, part of the point is to find and practice methods of inquiry that connect disciplinary thought and cultural artifacts to the rest of our lives and the rest of the world.
That’s all pretty abstract. The vehicle for our discussions will be the Western, which is a genre that forefronts the land. It brings together a lot of other concerns related to the environment: extraction, violence, dispossession, racism, migration and colonization—and all the fantasies and narratives used to justify or protest these practices. Whiskey, coffee, and big hats fit in somewhere. History is also some of the point, since a historical approach can reveal the sources of our current disaster and help us understand ecological problems with fresh terms. That said, you don’t need to arrive with any special understanding of the environment, the humanities, literature, history, interpretation, the west, or the Western in order to succeed. It’s enough to be curious and pay attention.
A lot of paying attention means reading and talking together about our texts. Reading itself is work, and there will be plenty of it here. If you don’t think about reading as necessary work, you will run into problems!
Texts (Available at University Bookstore)
- Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (ISBN: 978-0-19-885604-7)
- C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills is Gold (ISBN: 978-0-525-53721-2)
- Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (ISBN: 978-0-14-018440-2)
- Debra Magpie Earling, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (ISBN: 978-1-57131-145-0)
Short readings will be available online. And you’ll need to find a way to watch Prisoners of the Ghostland in Week 5.
Please bring your copy of our current text to class each day.
Contact
The best way to get ahold of me outside of class is my email or Canvas message. Avoid writing from your personal (rather than UW) accounts, because the aggressive spam filter will sometimes disappear messages from external addresses.
You’re welcome at office hours. The best ways to get to my office are Padelford’s A-Wing elevator and the A-Wing staircase. (That’s the part of the building closest to Hall Health.) Otherwise, you will be trapped on an infinite plane of office horrors. It works better if I know in advance that you’re coming. If the hours don’t work for you, send me a message and we will figure out a better time.
Course Assignments and Assessment
Response Papers: In the weeks without essays, you’ll submit brief pieces of writing that respond to that week’s material while connecting to broader concerns. There are six total opportunities, but you only need to complete five to receive full credit (each is worth 5% of the final grade.) That means one free skip.
Essays: You’ll write three essays. They’re short (3-4 pages.) These essays will not be literary analysis from start to finish, but they’re expected to have core components that offer interpretive analysis of our texts. Interpretation can look like a lot of different things, but the point is to work with detail, analyze carefully, risk being wrong, and offer a context for why you care. It also means clarifying how what you see in a text is different than what someone else might see, and why that difference matters.
You’ll have a chance to revise either the first or second essay, if you want. The revised grade replaces the original grade. That revised grade won’t be more than 0.3 over the original – a full letter grade.
Essays over a week late will receive a 0.
Participation: I will periodically distribute sample essays that we will read together in class and then workshop. If you’re present, you’ll receive credit by writing and submitting a few comments on the sample essay. At other times, I’ll solicit more general written notes in class that you can submit for credit. These are graded purely on completion. Each workshop or set of questions counts for 2% of your final grade (it maxes out at 20%).
Grading criteria will be described in each assignment prompt, but all grades will be on a 4.0 scale.
Grading breakdown: Essay 3 25%
Essay 2 15%
Essay 1 15%
Response Papers 25%
Participation 20%
Course Policies
Please don’t come to class if you feel sick. It’s helpful to let me know, but sometimes drafting a message is more work than it’s worth when you’re sick. But it would help to let me know if being sick means missing multiple class sessions.
Students are required to follow the University’s COVID-19 Face Covering Policy at all times when on-site at the University, including any posted requirements in specific buildings or spaces. If a student refuses to comply with the policy, the student can be sent home (to an on or off-campus residence). Student Conduct offices are available for consultations on potential violations of student conduct if needed. University personnel who have concerns that a student or group of students are not complying with this policy should speak with their supervisor, a representative of the academic unit, or report it to the Environmental Health & Safety Department.
You have a life, other classes, hobbies, jobs, pandemonium, and various external obligations. Sometimes, even after hard work, a paper doesn’t come together in time. In acknowledgement of these realities, I will accept one late essay per student over of the course of the quarter. If you plan to make use of this policy, mail me prior to the time the assignment is due. This automatically shifts the due date by three days (including weekends)—no questions asked, no explanations necessary. All other assignments must be turned in on time. Turning in more than one assignment late will result in deductions to your participation grade.
Plagiarism, or academic dishonesty, is presenting someone else's ideas or writing as your own. In your writing for this class, you are encouraged to refer to other people's thoughts and writing--as long as you cite them. As a matter of policy, any student found to have plagiarized any piece of writing in this class will be immediately reported to the College of Arts and Sciences for review.
If you find yourself tempted by plagiarism, save us all a headache and send me a message instead.
Using AI software to generate an essay that you represent as your own thinking is plagiarism. The content it produces is also very low quality, and you don’t want to claim it.
If you have any concerns about the course or your instructor, please see the instructor about these concerns as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking with the instructor or not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies: Stephanie Clare, sclare@uw.edu. If, after speaking with the Director, you are still not satisfied with the response you receive, you may contact English Department Chair Anis Bawarshi, (206) 543-2690.
If you need accommodation of any sort, please let me know so that I can work with the UW Disability Resources for Students Office (DRS) to provide what you require. This syllabus is available in large print, as are other class materials. More information about accommodation may be found at http://www.washington.edu/students/drs/.
In other words, if you have a relationship to learning that I should be aware of – let me know.
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Faculty Syllabus Guidelines and Resources. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form available at https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/.
Assignment Schedule Due Date
Weeks 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9: Short Responses Fridays, 6pm
Week 4: Essay 1 1/26, 6pm
Week 7: Essay 2 2/16, 6pm
Finals Week: Essay 3 3/11, midnight
Our Reading Schedule
Week 1
1/2 Break – No Class
1/4 First Things
Week 2 (121 Pages)
1/9 Doyle, 1-58, Harper
1/11 Zhang, 1-56
Week 3 (111 Pages)
1/16 Doyle, 59-111
1/18 Zhang, 57-116
Week 4 (89 Pages)
1/23 Burton, City of the Saints
1/25 Zhang, 117-186
Week 5 (68 Pages)
1/30 Prisoners of the Ghostland
2/1 Zhang, 187-255
Week 6 (143 Pages)
2/6 Grey, 1-79
2/8 Zhang, 256-320
Week 7 (110 Pages)
2/13 Grey, 80-146
2/15 Earling 1-54
Week 8 (132 Pages)
2/20 Grey, 147-209
2/22 Earling, 55-125
Week 9 (123 Pages)
2/27 Grey, 210-280
2/29 Earling, 126-179
Week 10 (94 Pages)
3/5 Roy, “Power Politics”
3/7 Earling 180-244