ENG 4110: Literature Practicum
Apocalypse & Ecocultural Work

In this course we will be reading Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy alongside critical and theoretical essays that engage multiple issues raised by the Anthropocene, such as: climate change, globalization, environmental justice, endangered species, animal rights, biodiversity, bioethics, ecofeminism, and queer ecologies. We will think about how writers, artists, and activists bring awareness of these issues to the public through narratives, images, and other cultural frameworks. We will explore the kinds of writing skills used by “ecocultural workers” who create content for nonprofits, publishers, corporations, and governmental agencies. Such workers are often called on to create “real-world” visual, written, and digital objects. Assignments and class activities will provide students with opportunities to: work independently, collaboratively, and creatively on multi-modal texts; write in contexts beyond traditional academic essays; and explore new media technologies that might be used in a professional environment outside of the university.

ENG 4200: Margaret Atwood
​Poetry & Fiction

In this course we will explore the works of Anglo-Canadian author, Margaret Atwood (1939–), whose literary influence continues to be of significant interest. In 2017, numerous media, literary, and cultural critics called it “The Year of Atwood” after two of her novels, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) and Alias Grace (1996), aired as critically praised television series on Hulu and Netflix, respectively. Atwood is a vocal activist within the realms of political, feminist, and environmental issues, and her creative output engages numerous genres, themes, and critical approaches. We will read and discuss a broadly representative range of the Atwood “canon,” including her poetry, short fiction, and novels, as well as the sub-genres of fairy tale, myth, speculative, and historical fiction. The course will be organized around a range of themes and motifs that can be found in Atwood’s work: national identity, wilderness spaces, post/colonialism, language, gender, class, age, sexual politics, vision, survival, violence, trauma, war, environmentalism, and posthumanism. Students should complete this course with not only a grounded knowledge in the extent of Atwood’s creative diversity but also the depth of her political, cultural, and ecological investments.  
Jason Hopkins, "Posthuman Structure II" (www.abhominal.com)
REQUIRED TEXTS
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity, 2013. 
Burke, Sue. Semiosis. Tor Books, 2018. 
Emmett, Robert and David Nye. The Environmental Humanities. MIT, 2017. 
Erdrich, Louise. Future Home of the Living God. Harper, 2017. 
Miller, Sam J. Blackfish City. Ecco, 2018. 
Okorafor, Nnedi. Lagoon. 2014. Saga Press, 2016. 
Powers, Richard. The Overstory. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. 
Yuknavitch, Lidia. The Book of Joan. 2017. Harper, 2018. 

ENG 7340: Posthuman Futures

This course explores the genre of contemporary eco-apocalyptic novels, or, climate fiction (“cli-fi”) alongside current theoretical underpinnings of posthumanism within literary studies and the environmental humanities. The rising trend of climate fiction suggests an increased attention to the problems and concerns raised by the Anthropocene, globalization, and climate change, with emphases on new ways of storytelling (and engaging critical theory) that might call into question and unsettle “traditional” Eurocentric representations of subjectivity and nature, or, “the human” in relation to “the nonhuman.” Indeed, Rosi Braidotti argues for “alternative ways of conceptualizing the human subject” that might make possible a post-anthropocentric perspective and posthuman ethics in response to the global, historical, and socio-economic practices that contribute to environmental destruction and oppressive bio-political discourses. Through readings and discussions of assigned novels and critical approaches—including new materialisms, ecocriticisms, and queer ecologies—we will examine a range of themes found within various representations of “posthuman futures,” such as: evolution/extinction, de/colonization, environmental justice, and “alternative” bodies, sexualities, and communities. At the end of the course, students are expected to produce a seminar project that explores any aspect(s) of the assigned novels by incorporating new media approaches or tools. The project will provide students the opportunity to explore the intersections of literary study with environmental humanities and/or digital pedagogies through individual research and creative application. 
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