Queens College ENG 162W: Literature & Place (Instructor: Eric Dean Wilson)

Anything we might call “place” is now endangered. Over the past century, fossil fuel emissions from industrial processes have warmed the average temperature of the planet by 1.1ºC. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that warming will increase by about 0.5ºC regardless. This isn’t just a planetary crisis; it’s a humanitarian crisis. Global warming will intensify dangerous heatwaves, famines, droughts, sea level rise, polar ice loss, wildfires, refugee crises, and even the loss of other-than-human species. The intensity and unpredictability of these events will increase with each ton of pollution emitted. So: in the face of this looming trouble—all of which is underway already—what’s the use of literature? Can literature help us understand our present environmental crises better? How so?
Through rigorous reading and writing, this section of English 162W will investigate broadly how American literary nonfiction has communicated—and constructed—a theme of “wilderness.” Examining a range of nonfiction texts in the genre of the essay from Thoreau to the present, we’ll consider whether the idea of wilderness might, in fact, threaten it. We’ll begin by building close, critical reading skills to analyze assumptions in environmental texts; then, we’ll read several critical environmental theories and put them in conversation with the wider culture; and, finally, we’ll turn toward a more creative and activist approach to wilderness literature in order to address the problems we face. At the core of this class, however, is a focus on college writing: annotations, weekly low-stakes writing, revisions, peer review workshops, three major essays, and scholarly research.