English 242 is intended to encourage and develop practices of critical interpretation in the reading of fiction. In this course we will work with fiction, spanning nearly 50 years from approximately 1900 to the mid-twentieth century, in order to examine the relationship between the physical environment and the political, social and economic practices of an industrializing U.S. A central concern of our class inquiry will be the social construction of nationhood, the national imaginary, and the relationship between nationalism and dominant conceptions of environmental degradation, resource-extraction, preservation and sustainable human/non-human interaction.
We will attempt to formulate a critical approach to fiction and the environment through investigating the ways that nature has been portrayed, in novels and short stories, in relationship to the nation form and its socio-economic power structures. The following are several questions that will drive our critical inquiry: What do fictional representations of nature tell us about the relationship between society and the physical environment? What role has the socially constructed meaning of Nature played in the national myth of the American Dream, expansionism, and U.S. exceptionalism? And, finally, what opportunities, and limits, do we discover in the project of privileging fiction in an analysis of these cultural meanings and practices?
English 242 is a ‘W’ credit course and students will write two 5-7 page papers (each with required opportunity for revision after instructor comments) over the course of the quarter.
Possible texts include:
Jack London, The Call of the Wild (1903)
Charles W. Chestnutt, “Po’ Sandy” and other stories from The Conjure Woman (1899)
Willa Cather, O Pioneers (1913)
Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), selections from American Indian Stories (1921)
Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River”
William Faulkner, “The Bear” (1940)
Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)