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ENGL 234: |
Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
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Time, Space, and Ecology |
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| Winter 2010 |
| Instructor: Teresa Shewry |
| Meets on: T 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM SH 2714 |
| Prerequisites: Graduate standing |
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Content of the course will vary from quarter to quarter and these courses may be repeated for credit with consent of the chair of the departmental graduate committee.
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In this course, we will explore the ways in which writers, filmmakers, and theorists imagine and negotiate time and space as they try to gain critical grips on this moment of ecological and social upheaval. While space is currently of intense preoccupation in environmental literary studies, time, what Elizabeth Grosz calls “the central yet forgotten force that motivates and informs the universe, from its most cosmological principles to its most intimate living details,” is more marginal, quieter, and under-theorized. How can ecocritics find workable temporal templates through which to sketch the future givens as well as the uncertainties of problems such as climate change? How can they balance irregular and cataclysmic transformations as well as slow change through vast swathes of time? What forms of life do speculations and prophecies undermine or create in ecology and what is their relationship to loss, failure, and the past? What are the patterns in envisagement of the planet, and what are the implications of these various “planetary templates”? Specific topics that we will look at will include: time, space, and the other; national communities; global scale and the common; the future, loss and the past; deep time and cataclysmic, irregular time; narratives of progress; and utopian imagination. Given our concern for ecology, we will also pay attention to how inhuman and nonhuman forces appear and disappear in the measures of time and space provided by these materials.
Film screenings may include Sharkwater; Mononokehime [Princess Mononoke]. Literary texts may include work by: Tim Winton, Ben Okri, Louise Erdrich, Patricia Grace, Hone Tuwhare, Ursula Le Guin, and Mahasweta Devi. Theoretical readings may include Benedict Anderson, Johannes Fabian, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, Elizabeth Grosz, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Fredric Jameson, Achille Mbembe, Jennifer Wenzel, Dipesh Chakrabarty.
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