WRITING AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Beginning with the Popol Vuh, the Mayan myth of creation, which records the first contact with the Spanish conquistadors about 1555, we will explore the history of American nature writing up to the present, with particular attention to problems of environmental justice. Description and interpretation of nature has shaped artistic representation from the very beginning of human history, and we will read both texts and images from the Americas in relation to selected European texts: from Crevecoeur’s “Letters from an American Farmer” (1765) to excerpts from Wordsworth’s “Prelude” in England (1798), which in turn influenced Emerson’s essay “Nature” (1836) and Thoreau’s writing in Walden and “Civil Disobedience” (1851). We will also consider both texts and contexts from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939); Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962); John McPhee’s Encounters with the Archdruid (1971); and international reports and organizations including the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and COP28. Engaging with activist organizations, we will both write and analyze the impact of contemporary environmental journalism such as Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, Liz Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.