English 190

Research Seminar: Ecopoetry

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Description

What is ecopoetry, and what, if anything, distinguishes it from nature poetry? How does ecopoetics differ from another poetics? In this seminar we will explore topics surrounding this question, which include the pathetic fallacy and anthropomorphism; representation and reference (content and imitative form, abstraction and specificity); anthropocentrism and ecocentrism; evolution, ecology and ecopoetics; ecopoetry vs. nature poetry, didacticism vs. aestheticism; feminist ecopoetics; animal cognition and species extinction; global warming; Native American and African American ecopoetry, and so on. We will confine ourselves to poetry written in the United States, from the romantics, while focusing on the present, including Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson; Frost, Stevens, Moore, Jeffers; Bishop, Ammons, Berry, Snyder, Merwin, Hass, Graham, Spahr, Hillman, Alexie, Harjo, Hogan, and Roberson. You will learn how to read and evaluate a poem ecocritically. You will be asked to write a five-page ecocriticism of a single poem, and a fifteen-page research paper on a collection of poems and/or a problem in ecopoetics. Toward this end, we will spend one class in the library learning how to research your particular topics with a research librarian. The seminar will cullminate in a GREEN PARTY, during which you will be encouraged to share your own ecopoems or ecological musings.

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