127010 KO Critical Readings in Literature (2023S)

The Earth is on fire. But not everyone is burning at the same pace: some people and places have been exposed to consequences of environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change for centuries, while others can still afford the privilege of healthy and safe living conditions – at least for now. In this course, we will examine how the impending climate disaster as well as the long history of environmental violence and exploitation have been present in the literary imagination of selected North American authors from late 20th century until today. The readings will include poetry, prose, drama, nonfiction, and short theoretical texts authored primarily by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) authors from the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean.
The questions we will be asking in this course include: What are the entanglements of climate change, environmental destruction, capitalism, and racism? How does our identity and positionality – including factors such as race, gender, sexuality, class, (dis)ability, etc. – influence our understanding and experience of ‘nature’ and the environment? When we talk about the end of the world, whose world do we mean? What is environmental justice (EJ) and how is it different from environmentalism? And what is the role of literature in the face of climate and environmental injustice? In our search for answers, we will be applying the following concepts: ecocriticism, ecofeminism, dystopian and speculative fiction, cli-fi, ecopoetry, ecological grief, climate anxiety, environmental (in)justice, environmental racism, climate justice, sacrifice zones, slow violence, extractive capitalism, racial capitalism, Environmental Humanities, Anthropocene/Capitalocene/Plantationocene.

Upon completion of this course, students should:

• be familiar with selected literary works by North American authors and able to explain how the themes of environmental justice and/or climate change are at play in these texts;
• be able to situate the literary texts covered in class in their sociohistorical and cultural context, explain how these texts are in conversation with said context, and how the author’s social and cultural positionality mediates the text and its context;
• understand and be able to explain theoretical approaches such as ecocriticism and ecofeminism; genres such as ecopoetry, climate fiction, dystopian literature, speculative fiction, literature of environmental justice; concepts such as environmental and climate (in)justice, climate grief/anxiety, slow violence, sacrifice zone, extractive/racial capitalism, Anthropocene, among others;
• understand and be able to explain how factors such as race, gender, class, nationality, (dis)ability, etc. affect our access to, perception, and definition of ‘nature’ and ‘environment,’ to provide relevant literary or real-life examples of this;
• develop a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the role of literature as it operates at the intersections of aesthetics and politics, artistic imagination and social critique, form and content, and be able to explain how a particular text integrates its artistic and political functions;
• be able to apply the knowledge obtained in this course to formulate their own informed opinions and arguments about social and political issues related to environmental (in)justice and climate change, and effectively support them with relevant evidence;
• display an increased fluency in academic research, critical thinking, and academic writing, including skills such as conducting library and database research, critical engagement with various literary and cultural texts, formulation of insightful and original theses on topics related to the contents of the course, and eloquent substantiation of their theses and opinions with textual evidence as well as secondary sources obtained through research.