LIT 3622 Spring 2023 Sperling

This course will examine largely contemporary key moments and approaches to the study of environmental literature and culture primarily in the U.S. context. Beginning around the 1960s, we will read four novels as well as watch film, read poetry, and examine parallel artistic works to think ecocritcally across historical moments and media. To do this we will study theories of environmentalism and sustainability, learn about the energy humanities and the blue and green humanities, as well as theoretical formations like posthumanism, the Anthropocene, ecofeminism, new materialism, and the concept of the racial capitalocene, as just a few examples. We will study multiple ecocritical methodologies that are available to us as cultural critics in an ongoing time of climate change, and look to the possibilities that ecocriticism and environmental literature may hold for projects of environmental justice and activism in our own communities.