Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced seminar in literary, critical, and/or cultural theory. May be repeated if a different topic is taught, though students who obtained credit for English 465W prior to Summer 2015 may not take this course for further credit. Students with credit for ENGL 465 may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

The Earthly Refuge: Borders of the Human

In this course we have two main objectives: first, we will attempt to theorize the geopolitical border, or what philosopher Achille Mbembe refers to broadly as “borderization,” as manifest in processes of keeping out and keeping in, and how such processes are implicated in definitions of the human and human rights; and second, we will theorize the conceptual borders between the human and the more-than-human worlds. What are the effects of the border writ large in a world of constant mobility, globalization, and planetary ecological crisis? Can we define and protect human rights without considering the definition and potential rights of the more-than-human relations human life depends upon? Our readings pair theoretical texts with relevant poetic works, beginning with scholar and poet David Herd’s writing on human rights and the border as a mechanism of “expulsion,” then turn to Mbembe’s wide-ranging philosophizing on “borderization” and human/more-than-human entanglement, which we will read alongside Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah’s recent book [ … ], ending with a range of writings on the more-than-human and the vaguely-bordered spaces of interspecies encounter, including selections from Edward Casey and Michael Marder’s Plants in Places, Gilles Clément’s Manifest of the Third Landscape, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, and César Rodriguez-Garavito’s More Than Human Rights, all of which are paired with Cecily Nicholson’s book of poetic exploration of an abandoned New Westminster island in From the Poplars.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Students will improve their knowledge about key aspects of contemporary critical and cultural theory, including migration studies and the environmental humanities. 

Students will improve their critical writing abilities through a laddered series of linked assignments.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

David Herd, Writing Against Expulsion 
Achille Mbembe, Brutalism

Both of these texts are available on-line via SFU Libraries.

Other supplementary readings will be provided by the instructor.

Please purchase the poetry books listed below under "required reading."

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: