Browse Hierarchy ESH6093: American Ecologies

In American literature, 'nature' his long been celebrated as a locus of national identity and source of philosophical inspiration. But the very celebration of nature prompts tricky questions: what if nature is inhospitable to humans; what if humans are inhospitable to it; what if `nature¿ is not one thing but many? This module considers texts from the early 1800s to the twenty-first century; human-animal relations; gender, ethnicity and race; technology, climate change and ecological disaster. Literary text are read alongside concepts and methodologies drawn from ecocriticism.