Dr. Larry McCauley
Monday/Thursday 12:30pm-1:50pm
Ecocriticism, begins with a theoretical orientation towards the ways in which relationships between humans and the earth are constructed, imagined, codified, and perhaps subverted in literature. This course takes a global perspective, looking at both American texts and texts from several other cultures, but more importantly expands its purview to consider how ecocriticism has developed in conjunction with other critical approaches. Thus we will begin with key ecocritical concepts but also learn to integrate into our analyses thinking from the fields of ecofeminism, environmental justice, disability studies, and transcorporeality. Texts include Frankenstein (Shelley), Prodigal Summer (Kingsolver), My Year of Meats (Ozeki), Potiki (Grace), and Animal¿s People (Sinha). As a LIT 499, the course builds toward the culminating project which is to write a theoretically and critically informed ecocritical analysis of a selected text or texts.