Ecological Imaginings

English 313, Bryn Mawr College
Cross-listed in Environmental Studies
and Gender and Sexuality
Anne Dalke, Fall 2012
MW 1-2:30, English House I
Our on-line conversation

“Every text is a dialogue open for further comments from
other points of view. There is no conclusion” (Michael
McDowell, “The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight”).

Beginning with an assumption that the environmental crisis is a crisis of the imagination, this course is offered as an invitation to re-think the evolving nature of representation, with a focus on language as a link between natural and cultural ecosystems. Our orientation will be systemic, structural, and adaptive, as we study the emerging biological and social systems within which we all live, with a particular attention to linguistic interaction and diversity, or what is known as "the ecology of language."

We will start in the field of "critical ecolinguistics," by attending to the words we chose and the shape of the sentences we construct. We will then work our way up to the level of essays and stories that express the shaping action of humans in the environment, with a particular attention to the modes most used by women, as representative voices of both "ecoliterature" and "ecofeminism." We will conclude with various forms of "ecocriticism," as we reflect more broadly on the ways others have written, and how we ourselves might write about matters of ecological concern: What does the ever-growing body of "greenwriting" and "greenspeaking" look-and-sound like? Are non-anthropomorphic stories possible? How fully can we imagine--and represent--humanity as part of a larger ecological community? What aesthetics might be most effective, as humans attempt to hear, and voice, the world in which we live, and which we alter by doing so? What genres and traditions of writing might be recuperated, while other symbolic constructions need to be more thoroughly questioned?

We will make our own weekly observations of the world in which we live, work and imagine, and bi-monthly forays into the world beyond the campus, seeking a variety of ways of expressing our ecological interests. We will also read classical and cutting edge ecolinguistic, ecofeminist, ecocritical and ecoesthetic theory, along with a wide range of exploratory, speculative, and imaginative essays and stories.

Prerequisites:
students must have registered as a minor in Environmental Studies, as a
concentrator in Gender and Sexuality Studies, or as a major in English.

Course Requirements
Weekly:
1) 1 hour alone, outside observing (@ 3 different sites over the course of the semester)
2) 1 hour writing/posting an account of your observations
3) 1 hour responding to others’ postings (including class notes)
4) 3 hours reading
5) 3 hours of classes (most-if-not-all will be held outside)
Monthly:
more extended (3 pp, 6 pp, 9 pp.) on-line reflections
End of semester:
12 new pp. of work, in an e-portfolio that
gathers together and reflects on the whole

Learning Goals:
Shared, dialogic, critical thinking about broad and specific environmental questions, through closely observing and reflecting on the natural world; reading and interpreting written, visual and material texts; finding effective ways both of expressing and acting in response to ecological concerns.

Reading Schedule
I. Invitation into the field
Day 1 (Wed, Sept. 4):
Introduction
Wendell Barry, The Silence.
Wolf scene from Fantastic Mr. Fox, dir. Wes Anderson (2009).
Timothy Eagen, Nature Deficit Disorder, The New York Times (March 29, 2012).
Jay Parini, "The Greening of the Humanities," The New York Times Magazine (October 29, 1995): 52-53.

Fri, Sept. 7: Web event #1 (3 pp.)--Take a Thoreauvian walk, and
reflect on-line about what you experienced while doing so.

Day 2 (Mon, Sept. 10):
Thoreau, "Walking" (1862); rpt. http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html

Days 3-4 (Wed, Sept. 12-Mon, Sept. 17):
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Day 5 (Wed, Sept. 19):
Marilyn Waring, "If Counting was the Limit of Intelligence." Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth. Second Edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 224-241.

Fri, Sept. 21: Web event #2 (3 pp.)-- Take a Solnitian walk, and
reflect on-line about what you experienced while doing so.

II. Ecolinguistics: chosing our words, shaping our sentences
Day 6 (Mon, Sept. 24):
[selections from] Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised Edition. New
York: Oxford UP, 1985.

What are our keywords? ("place," "nature," "environment," 'home," "housekeeping," "economics," "ecology," "deep ecology," "ecosystem," "ecocentric," "egocentric," "biocentric," "anthropocentric," "speciesism,"  "growthism," "interrelationship," "interaction," "interdependence," "diversity," "adaptation,"  "sustainable," "green," "ruderal"...?) What are their definitions, meanings, histories, etymologies --and future use value?

Day 7 (Wed, Sept. 26):
[selections from] Raymond Williams. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Day 8 (Mon, Oct. 1):
[selections from] David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Andrew Goatly, “Green Grammar and Grammatical Metaphor, or Language and Myth of Power, or Metaphors We Die By." Fill, Alwin and Peter Muhlhausler, eds. The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology, and Environment. Continuum, 2001.

Day 9 (Wed, Oct. 3):
Mary Schleppegrell, “What Makes a Grammar Green?” A Reply to Goatly. The Ecolinguistics Reader.

III. Ecoliterature: Selecting our modes of address
Day 10 (Mon, Oct. 8):
Gary Snyder, "Unnatural Language" and "Language Goes Two Ways."  A Sense of Place: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds. New and Selected Prose. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1995. 163-180.

Joseph Meeker, "The Comic Mode." The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. New York,: Scribner's, 1972.

Day 11 (Wed, Oct. 10):
Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction." Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. Grove/Atlantic, 1986.

Paula Gunn Allen, "Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale." The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. 222-244.

FALL BREAK (Oct. 12-21)

IV. Ecofeminism: Women revising the world
Days 11-12 (Mon, Oct. 22-Wed, Oct. 24):
Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain. 1903; repub. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.

Fri, Oct. 26: Web event #3 (6 pp.)--What is your under-
standing now of ecolinguistics and ecoliterature?

Days 13-14 (Mon, Oct. 29-Wed, Oct. 31):
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. 1962; rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Day 15 (Mon, Nov. 5):
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. South Burlington, Vt.: WGBH Boston Video, 2008, 1993. 55 minutes.

Day 16 (Wed, Nov. 7):
[selections from] Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. 1980; rpt. New York: Harper, 1990.

Day 17 (Mon, Nov. 12):
Blind Field Shuttle with Carmen Papalia

Day 18 (Wed, Nov. 14): Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society. New York: Anchor, 1996.

Days 19-20 (Mon, Nov. 19-Wed, Nov. 21):
Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World. New York: Pantheon, 2008.

Thankgiving Break (Th, Nov. 22-Sun, Nov. 25)

Sun, Nov. 25: Web event #4 (9 pp.)--What is your understanding now of ecofeminism?

Day 21 (Mon, Nov. 26):
Michael Pollan, "Weeds are Us." Second Nature: A Gardener's Education. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1991.

Jamaica Kincaid, "Alien Soil." The New Yorker (June 21, 1993).

Evelyn White, "Black Women and the Wilderness." Literature and the Environment:  A Reader on Nature and Culture. Ed. Lorraine Anderson et al. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.

V. Ecocriticism: Further reflections
Day 22 (Wed, Nov. 28):
Michael Cohen, “Blues in Green: Ecocriticism Under Critique.” Environmental History 9, 1 (January 2004): 9-36.

Ursula Heise, “Greening English: Recent Introductions to Ecocriticism.” Contemporary Literature 47, 2 (2006): 289–298.

Day 23 (Mon, Dec. 3):
Joseph Henry Vogel, "Ecocriticism as an Economic School of Thought: Woody Allen's Match Point as Exemplary." OMETECA: Science and Humanities 12 (2008): 105-119.

Hubert Zapf, "Literary Ecology and the Ethics of Texts." New Literary History 39,4 (2008): 847-868.

Day 24 (Wed, Dec. 5): ??

Day 25 (Mon, Dec. 10): ??

Day 26 (Wed, Dec. 12): showing one another what we have been learning...

12:30, Fri, Dec. 20: Final Web event (12 pp.)--What are your ecological imaginings now?

Anne's Reading Notes