Fall 2007
Dr. Irr
MW 5:10-6:30
This new course will explore the genre of creative non-fiction variously called nature writing, literature of the environment, or eco-lit. After studying Henry David Thoreau's enormously influential Walden, we will examine the various ways that contemporary writers have adapted Thoreau's techniques in order to capture the texture of their own responses to the outdoors. Many of the writers we will read have experimented with descriptive techniques in order be as faithful as possible to their observations, and others are especially concerned with the intersections between experience and erudition. Our primary mission in sorting through their stylistically various works will be to discover which sorts of writing seem adequate to different ecosystems (including urban ecologies). However, along the way, we will also be asking questions about the moral, political, and scientific content that drives literary responses to nature. In order to test the hypotheses we develop, students will be asked to keep a nature writing journal of their own, in addition to writing several conventional academic papers.
POSSIBLE READINGS:
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
Catherine Caufield, In the Rainforest
David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo
Carl Safina, Song for the Blue Ocean
Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology
LIKELY ASSIGNMENTS:
-Class participation
-nature writing journal, documenting one outdoor location throughout the semester
-three analytic papers
-possible extra credit activity: self-guided field trips to a) Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area, b) Walden Pond, or c) Harvard Natural History Museum, followed by a written description of the site.