Transpacific Ecologies: Race, Literature, Environment
ENGL 225
Spring 2025
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01
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Although our climate emergency is undoubtedly planetary, the writer Amitav Ghosh has argued that the continent of Asia is in fact "conceptually critical to every aspect of global warming." This course explores how writers from both sides of the Pacific confront the Anthropocene and its related disasters of climate change, species extinction, deforestation, chemical pollution, and oceanic waste. Theoretical readings will address the challenges that the Anthropocene poses to literary representation, the literary innovations and strategies that have emerged in response to environmental crisis, and the question of what a specifically Asian/American (or transpacific) perspective on the environment introduces to ecocriticism. Fictional works will address specific ecological crises such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and also attend to less punctual conundrums, including: recognizing nonhuman interests and assemblages; envisioning collective human agency; representing vast and complex planetary systems; coordinating human and geological histories; and assimilating scientific models and perspectives. In all cases, we will be particularly attuned to the question of how ecological problems impact literary form, asking which tools writers use to capture the new realities of today's climate emergency? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Major readings will include critical writing by Dipesh Chakravarty, Elizabeth DeLoughry, Amitav Ghosh, Ursula Heise, Timothy Morton, Rob Nixon, and Anna Tsing, as well as fiction and poetry by Larissa Lai, Chang-rae Lee, Ling Ma, Ruth Ozeki, Craig Santos Perez, Indra Sinha, Wu Ming-Yi, and Karen Tei Yamashita
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Examinations and Assignments:
weekly responses, papers, group presentation
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Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course fulfills the following English major requirements: American Literature, Literary History 3, World Literature
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| Instructor(s): Tang,Amy Cynthia Times: .M.W... 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: FISK305; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 4 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 1 | SO: 5 | FR: 3 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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