123422 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA American / North American Lit. Studies (2024S)

The aim of Environmental Humanities, as proposed by philosopher Val Plumwood, is to “(re)situat[e] humans in ecological terms and non-humans in ethical terms” (Environmental Culture 8-9). Combining insights from disciplines such as literary and cultural studies, history, philosophy, and anthropology with those from natural sciences, Environmental Humanities examines how we relate to our local and global environments and urges us to ‘think ecologically.’ In contrast to what Dana Luciano dubs the “inhuman humanism” of the currently dominant Western civilization, ecological thinking construes the world not in terms of discrete entities and oppositions but, rather, as an interactive web of relations. When we see ourselves as a part of – rather than apart from – more-than-human communities, we develop a sense of moral responsibility and an ethics of care towards that which both is and is not us.

But how does one begin to think ecologically? In the face of planetary climate crisis, understanding our fundamental interconnectedness with everything and everyone else seems more urgent but also more difficult than ever. In this course, we will practice our ecological imagination with help from authors who invite us to look at the world with alertness and awe, to cultivate a sense of (sometimes troubled) kinship with our human and nonhuman others, and to learn how to live after the end of the world from those who have lived through it already. While most of these authors write from North America, their family and cultural roots reach back to Africa, Asia, Europe, and Turtle Island before it was ‘America.’ We will read poetry, scholarship, and nonfiction that refuses to draw sharp lines between memoir and ‘nature writing,’ philosophy and science, and art and activism; we will also look at works of speculative fiction, film, and digital projects.