230204 Ecocriticism in American Literature (S) (WiSe 2016/2017)

Ecocriticism, the study of literature from an ecological perspective, is a constantly growing field. Yet, literary studies seemed to have bluntly ignored ecological questions while the rest of the humanities had already been through several ‘greening’ stages since the 1970s. “And while social movement, like the civil rights movement of the sixties and seventies, have transformed literary studies, it would appear that the environmental movement of the same era has had little impact.” (Glotfelty) …Realizing this, in the 1990s, scholars from all types of disciplines started emphasizing a common fundamental premise: Human culture is strongly connected to the physical world! Literature is not just some aesthetic construct that “floats above the material world” but rather “plays a part in an immensely complex global system in which energy, matter and ideas interact” (ibid). Therefore, the list of ecocritical questions is long. The most important one that this seminar will investigate is that of the relation between the human and non-humans in American literature and the representation, the categorization, and theorization thereof. A careful selection of literary texts such as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature” (1836), Joseph Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939), Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” (1949), Jon Krakauer “Into the Wild” (1996), or a focus on Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism portrayed in Native American writing such as Linda Hogan’s “Solar Storms” (1994) will illuminate the path to an ecocritical way of thinking.