Reading & Composition

Climate change is undeniable, though some continue to try. With its inevitable cyclicality and, increasingly, with the breakdown of predictability, the natural world structures our sensations, thoughts, and intuitions. This course will explore the theme of nature, including the rupture of natural cycles in modern experience such as climate change, through an eco-critical lens and with the help of representations offered in film and poetry. We will ask how these art forms call attention to rhythm, cycles, ritual, repetition, and spontaneity in relation to the man-made world of narrative.

Scholarly texts will offer theoretical and historical lenses for problematizing the idea of the “natural.” Along the way, we will also consider questions of genre, style, and technological developments in film and analogous formal innovations in poetry. Assignments will build upon and expand your writing and analytical skills, including close-reading, argumentation, developing a thesis, and conducting and incorporating research. Possible poems and films may include: The Shape of Water, Grizzly Man, Wild Child, The Seasons, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and The Forgotten Space. Fieldtrips include the Albany Bulb and to SFMoMA.