Contemporary Nature Writing

Thursday, 11:30-13:00

 [Online Seminar]

First meeting: 28.04.2022 (online via BigBlueButton)

Content

This course offers a survey of major writers and key issues in contemporary nature writing with a selection of different texts that range from poetry to prose, as well as from fictional to non-fictional accounts. Since there is a long tradition of nature writing in literature, the seminar will explore different notions and concepts of how nature and literature are intertwined (e.g. starting from the "sublime" in Romanticism and leading to the idea of "countermapping" in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries). Therefore, the seminar offers a discussion of a variety of authors who have essentially influenced the genre in the last couple of years, such as Roger Deakin, Robert McFarlane, Helen Mort, Nancy Campbell or Katherine Towers. Along with the reading of primary texts, the seminar will offer reflections on how environmental questions in literature can be approached from an ecocritical perspective and thus connect to current movements and activism (Ecofeminism, Eco-Marxism, Deep Ecology). To enhance the textual engagement, students are encouraged to participate in the events of the “Wir müssen reden! – Natur und Mensch im Dialog”-week, which will be organised together with the department of German Studies and will take place in the second half of the semester.

Objectives

This course encourages students to develop a critical understanding of the recent history of nature writing in the face of environmental issues through the analysis of different literary and theoretical texts. In addition, students are made aware of ideas represented in contemporary literature, such as how the writer's background, experience and the historical, geographical, socio-cultural conditions of his/her country of origin shape his/her literary understanding of nature.

Requirements for Credit (5 ECTS):

Close readings of primary, theoretical as well as secondary texts, discussions and oral presentations. For the PVL, each student can either do an oral presentation (approx. 20 minutes) or complete a written task (1500-2000 words), and write a substantial seminar paper (10-12 pages) for the PL.

Set Texts:

The reader, number 70, is available at the Uni-Copy Dietze, Reichenhainer Str 55.