17324

WiSe 14/15: S-Introduction to Cultural Studies II:Literature and the Environment

Lenka Filipova

Kommentar

As an introduction into the environmental humanities, this course is organised around a basic question: what is nature? In his The End of Nature(1989) Bill McKibben argued that 'nature', as both an idea and a reality, has irrevocably changed in the last century, for the most part due to human practices. Processes such as globalisation, climate change, and human migration, among others, are shaping the physical world into something not familiar, making the concept of 'nature' hard to define. Together, we will explore how contemporary fiction and non-fiction writers, artists and thinkers have responded to changing ecologies and examine ways in which nature writing has evolved and is evolving from its origins in nature conservation and natural history. While looking at how environmental problems and the ideas of 'nature' are imagined, represented and dramatized in contemporary culture, we will be concerned with some of the key theoretical and conceptual questions underpinning the field of the environmental humanities. The course reading will include Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, Gary Snyder's A Place in Space, Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance and Ken Saro-Wiwa's A Month and a Day. We will also discuss two movies, Sean Penn's Into the Wild and Michael Madsen's Into Eternity, and works by visual artists such as Isaac Cordal. A course reader with short extracts from Kate Soper, Ursula Heise, Rob Nixon, David Harvey, Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty will be provided. Assessment: active participation in the class discussions and activities, two response papers, one final essay. Language: The course will be taught in English (level C1). Schließen

16 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Mi, 14:00 - 16:00 16 Termine

Mi, 15.10.2014 14:00 - 16:00

Dozenten:
Lenka Filipova