"At the Pond": Environmental Imaginaries

The idea of the environmental imaginary presupposes a close relationship between writing and one’s surroundings. It suggests, for example, that a text’s setting – its nonhuman environment – is not simply a framing device, but rather, that the relationship between the characters and their surroundings is important to understand a text’s broader ethics. Starting from such an understanding, in this class, we will focus on American literature and culture since the Romantic period. In our readings, and in tune with ongoing discussions in ecocriticism, “nature” or “the environment” will however not be limited to the idea of an untouched wilderness, but we will also include, for example, debates about the redemptive reuse of formerly industrial spaces and the interconnectedness of social precarity and environmental (in-)justice.

Readings will include Henry David Thoreau, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, Juliana Spahr, and others. A reader will be made available before the start of the seminar.

Please purchase the novel American Rust (2009) by Philipp Meyer.