| Unit name | Writing in the Elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Uranium |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGLM0067 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Pite |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
N |
| Co-requisites |
N |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
‘Writing in the Elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Uranium’ responds to the current emergence of elemental writing and ecocriticism – creative and critical literature, that is, which engages with the natural world through a focus on the elements – either the four elements of classical and renaissance worlds, or those of modern science. From attending to these, new perspectives emerge on the material world, on human beings’ relation to and participation in the material world, on the mythical, the scientific and the relationship between them, and on how writing may bring the elemental into the cultural. The course of seminars will range across periods and topics, including earth writing, nuclear fictions, literature from liminal and marginal territories. Poetry by Alice Oswald will be discussed alongside essays by Wes Jackson and the nature writing of Barbara Hurd. There may be an opportunity to further enquiry into the elements via a field trip.
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
1. apply an understanding of elemental ecocriticism to issues articulated in literary texts;
2. situate readings informed by elemental ecocriticism alongside other critical views (such as posthumanism, the new materialism and the new historicism);
3. identify and present pertinent evidence to develop a cogent argument in an academic essay appropriate to level M
4. reflect, via a piece of creative / personal writing, on the impact of elemental ecocriticism on their perception of the natural world
Teaching will be delivered through a combination of synchronous and asynchronous activities. These can include seminars, lectures, class discussion, formative tasks, small group work, and self-directed exercises.
Essay 100%
Written Assessment 0%
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, Elemental 'Ecocriticism': Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire (2015)
Barbara Hurd, Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark (2003)
Stacey Aliamo, Exposed (2016)
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Rob Nixon (2011)
Alice Oswald, Dart (2002)
Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to this Place (1994)
