ClassInfo

Regular Academic Session

 

For the last few decades, classroom conversations about global warming have hinged on the "but what can we do" reflex, prioritizing personal action (fewer hamburgers!) as a means of mitigating pending devastation. But if we could once afford to consider climate change as a "what if," 2017 has brought us squarely into the zone of "now" - bigger floods, bigger fires, bigger hurricanes, melting permafrost that flows like lava. New eras call for new imaginings, and in this third-level topics creative writing course, we'll look to works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry that grapple with what it means to be human in our age of man-made disaster. As we study what craft techniques authors have used to incite fear or hope in their work - and consider what the role of the author is in doing either of those things - students will produce both analytical and creative works that consider the questions: how did we get here, how should we live here, and what can the future bring? Possible readings include Claire Vaye Watkins Gold Fame Citrus; Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower; Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife; Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow; short stories from I'm With The Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet; selections from the anthology Coming of Age at the End of Nature: A Generation Faces Living on a Changed Planet, Elizabeth Kolbert's Sixth Extinction, and David Gessner's Tarbell Chronicles; and poetry collections such as Peter Balakian's Ozone Journal and Catherine Pierce's The Tornado is the World.

Regular Academic Session