TREES

Trees shadow the human in faceless fashion. They mark of a form of deep-time (like Darwin’s tree of Life), record and respond to ecological devastation and abundance. Symbolic of the strange proximity of the divine, trees figure as alter-egos or doubles for human lives and their after lives (in figures like the trees of life and salvation, trees of wisdom and knowledge, genealogical trees, et al). As prostheses of thought and knowledge they become synonymous with structure and form, supports for linguistic and other genres of mapping, and markers of organization and reading (Moretti).  As key sources of energy, that is, as food-procurers, wood, and coal (from the Carboniferous period), trees –as we know them today -- are direct correlates with the rise of the Anthropocene.  This course turns to trees as shadows and shade: that is to trees as coerced doubles of the human and as entry ways to an other-world that figures at the limits of thought and language. Part eco-criticism, part philosophy, this course will begin by coupling medieval literary texts with theoretical works, but will expand (and contract) to other time periods and geographic locales.  An undercurrent of the course is the relation of trees to language, knowledge, democracy, aesthetics, indigeneity, colonization, and religion.