Fall 2024 - ENGL 202 B100
The Environmental Imagination (3)
Class Number: 4528
Delivery Method: Blended
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Sep 4 – Dec 3, 2024: Mon, 10:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
BurnabyOct 15, 2024: Tue, 10:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
BurnabySep 4 – Dec 3, 2024: TBA, TBA
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Michelle Levy
mnl@sfu.ca
1 778 782-5393
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Prerequisites:
12 units or one 100-division English course.
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Explores how literature and language imagine the natural world and engage with environmental and ecological crisis. Topics may include ecocriticism: eco-poetics; approaches to the natural world; local, imperial, and Indigenous ecologies. May be further organized by historical period or genre. Breadth-Humanities.
COURSE DETAILS:
Women Writing Nature
This course explores a wide range of writing by women on the environment. From life writing to environmental activism, mountaineering to falconry, mythology to botany, we explore how women have engaged with the natural world over the last two hundred years. Beginning with Dorothy Wordsworth's famous Grasmere Journal, a daily account of her life in the Lake District in England, we move briskly forward to read several of E. Pauline Johnson's Legends of Vancouver, her retelling of Coast Salish legends, first published between 1909 and 1912, followed by Nan Shepherd's mountain memoir, The Living Mountain, based on her experience hill walking in the Scottish Cairngorms, written during WW II but not published until the 1970s. We then consider the first wave of environmental activism, crystallized in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a series of essays published in the New Yorker in 1962 that exposed the dangers of widely used synthetic pesticides. We then move forward to writing from our current century, with personal accounts of how women have interacted with nature, as well as explorations of the human impact on the environment, for better but far too often for worse. We read a range of genres and styles, from Helen Macdonald's memoir of training a hawk to overcome grief at her father's death to Lauren Groff's novel of survival and adventure, Vaster Wilds. Throughout, we will be considering the feminist implications of women's writing about nature.
A tentative reading schedule is included below.
Please note: this is a blended course. In-person classes (lecture and tutorial) will be held six times in the term, on the following dates:
Sept 9, 23; Oct. 7, 28; Nov. 18; Dec. 2. You are expected to make every effort to attend all of these in-person meetings. All other course materials and activities will be offered in canvas, chiefly in the form of audio lecture recordings, online discussions, and other learning activities.
Please purchase the three books listed below (The Living Mountain, H is for Hawk and Vaster Wilds) from your favourite bookseller or borrow them from a library; all other reading materials will be provided through online links or via canvas.
Tenative Reading Schedule
Sept 9: Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journal
Sept 16: Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
Sept 23: Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
Sept 30: (National Indigenous Day) Pauline Johnson, selected Legends of Vancouver; Robin Wall Kimmerer, selections from Braiding Sweetgrass
Oct. 7: E. Pauline Johnson, selected Legends of Vancouver; Robin Wall Kimmerer, selections from Braiding Sweetgrass
Oct 14: (Thanksgiving) Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Oct 21: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring / Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Oct 28: Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Nov 4: Suzanne Simard, selections from Finding the Mother Tree; Elizabeth Kolbert, climate crisis writing from The New Yorker
Nov 11: (Remembrance Day) Lauren Groff, Vaster Wilds
Nov. 18: Lauren Groff, Vaster Wilds
Nov. 25: Jamaica Kincaid, "The Disturbances of the Garden" / BBC Podcast “The Meaning of Trees”
Dec. 2: Jamaica Kincaid, "The Disturbances of the Garden" / BBC Podcast “The Meaning of Trees”
Grading
- Writing Journal 25%
- First Essay/Project 20%
- Second Essay/Project 25%
- Attendance/Participation (in person) 10%
- Participation/Activities (remote) 20%
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
ISBN: 085786183
Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
ISBN: 0143194674
Lauren Groff, Vaster Wilds (the paperback version will be published in September, 2024)
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Department Undergraduate Notes:
IMPORTANT NOTE Re 300 and 400 level courses: 75% of spaces in 300 level English courses, and 100% of spaces in 400 level English courses, are reserved for declared English Major, Minor, Extended Minor, Joint Major, and Honours students only, until open enrollment begins.
For all On-Campus Courses, please note the following:
- To receive credit for the course, students must complete all requirements.
- Tutorials/Seminars WILL be held the first week of classes.
- When choosing your schedule, remember to check "Show lab/tutorial sections" to see all Lecture/Seminar/Tutorial times required.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html
RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION
Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.