ClassInfo

CSCL 1101: Introduction to Literature

Literature of Human and Nonhuman Environments

This course takes "the environment" as one of its central term - not just the "environment" as we have likely come to think of it - as a topic of political dispute, protest, and contestation, and as a site of nature, wilderness, or the outdoors - but as the location of an internal world as distinct from an external one, a human world as distinct from an inhuman one, a living world as distinct from a non-living world. In this sense, literature on the environment is as old as literature itself, beginning (according to scholars) in 20000 BC with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In this course, we will consider a variety of works of literature that offer different perspectives on human and nonhuman environments, keeping in sight a fundamental tension between how human beings see and use each other and how they see and use the environment. We'll look at literature that reflects on human, animal, and plant life on a damaged planet as well as literature that explores how the past, present, and future come to reside in certain places. Questions to be considered: How does literature work? How does literature as a mode of education work to produce ways of thinking and knowing about the world that differ from education as biology, history, or mechanical engineering? How does literature tell the story of how ideas about human life and the environment come about in either individual or collective consciousness? How does thinking about the nonhuman environment challenge ideas about what it means to human, to be an author, or a character, or a speaker, or a figure who can be represented in literature? How do literary works make a place for the past, for what has been lost or irreparably damaged?

CSCL 1101 introduces students to the activity and methodology of literary interpretation. Students will develop skills in critical reading, literary analysis, and interpretation. One of the main goals of this class is that students will be able to think about interpretation as a politically, socially, and aesthetically meaningful act. We will also consider various concepts involved in literary interpretation, including estrangement, genre, diction, analysis, and narrative. We will consider a range of functions ascribed to literature, including the ways that it tries to reflect on, repair, revise, or revolutionize the social and historical processes of colonialism, capitalism, and the nation-state. Writing that reflects on these relationships leads to thorny and complex issues, including the relationship between gender politics and poetic inspiration, the problem of how literature works through the colonial past, and the centrality of writing in experiences of exile and national, ethnic, racial, and cultural identity.

An important note on the readings: This is not a historical survey course; it does not attempt a comprehensive summary of literary periods or attempt to be representative of the major or canonical works of a given period or culture. The selected texts raise interesting questions about our central consideration - human and nonhuman environments. In light of this, careful reading and independent thinking will be valued above all. Please also note that because much of human history in relation to the environment involves damage and destruction, many of the works we read will be difficult and will deal with difficult subject matter.