LW411 Man Vs. Wild and Other Stories We Tell 3CR

Droughts scorch the Middle East and the American southwest. Wildfires rip across Indonesia. Rising sea levels are already beginning to swallow up island nations, and warming waters are decimating ocean life. As the effects of climate change wreak havoc on human societies and ecosystems across the globe, they also shine an increasingly bright spotlight on how human beings think about and interact with the natural world. This class will explore changing attitudes toward nature over several centuries, including, and especially, the present day. We will discuss the role that writing and art have played in shaping our understanding of the natural world over time (with possible selections from Genesis, Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, Charles Darwin, and Henry David Thoreau). We will also explore how writers, artists, and filmmakers are confronting the representational challenges posed by climate change today (possible readings include Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Thief; Indra Sinha, Animal’s People; Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Earth; selections from Bill McKibben, Stacy Alaimo, William Cronon, bell hooks, E.O. Wilson, and Eduardo Kohn; films such as Racing Extinction, This Changes Everything). Over the course of the semester, you will undertake research on an interdisciplinary project that investigates a site of human-nature interaction of your choosing, traces its impact on the world, and explores creative ways to express this impact. You will receive feedback on this project in beginning, intermediary, and final stages, and it will include both written and creative components. We will have several exciting opportunities to broaden our perspectives on this topic. First, this course will be participating in the interdisciplinary Sustainability Studio in the DMC, through which we will be opening several of our classes to the public. Second, we will meet multiple times over the semester with Professor Nava’s summative elective course, which approaches many of the issues we will be addressing from a scientific perspective that will deepen our humanistic one.

Prerequisites: LW-200

Seminar

Spring