AMERICAN NATURE WRITING TO 1900

The course is a survey of canonical texts from the American Literary Canon, with emphasis on how these writers experienced the natural world. Some of them had to deal with extreme cold, others with tropical heat. Some of them encountered abundance, others sparsity and famine. They all encountered new life forms – from marine life to birds, reptiles and animals. They had to cope with frequent earthquakes and hurricanes, and classify newly discovered species of vegetal life. What they saw, however, was read not only through the lenses of natural history, but also theologically and politically. For some, the natural world was rich with signs sent by God for them to interpret, for others it was a political space that they organized according to the a theocratic or plantation logic. The class will therefore also pay special attention to politics, and investigate how the ecological spaces that the colonists encountered shaped their politics and ethics.