123421 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA American / North American Lit. Studies (2022S)

This course will introduce the students to the African American ecopoetic tradition, exploring various aspects of Black American poetic engagement with more-than-human world from 18th century to the present. As Camille Dungy observes in her introduction to the 2008 anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, African American literary imagination of the “natural environment” as a site of both potential comfort/rootedness and actual violence/exclusion is representative of the historically Black perception of “nature” as a paradoxical site of (non)belonging, marked by the history of forced labor, dehumanization, and dispossession but also of nourishment, shelter, celebration, and care. Rooted in this complex historical and sociocultural setting, Black ecopoetics can be understood as an ecologically-minded poetic practice that explores the interconnections of human and nonhuman natures in search of practical, responsible, and creative modes of simultaneously inhabiting North American landscapes and Black bodies.

In this class, we will examine how Black poets have engaged in this practice through various poetic, thematic, and ideological modalities, including African eco-humanism, ecowomanism, herbalism and conjure, provision gardening, marronage, and environmental and climate justice. We will also look at theoretical texts and short essays that will allow us to further contextualize African American ecopoetics as a way of not only expressing and imagining but, crucially, understanding the larger-than-human world and developing environmental and ecological knowledges rooted in Black history and experiences.

Upon completion of this course, students should:
• be able to identify and discuss the sociohistorical and cultural context, representative authors, and themes characteristic of the African American ecopoetic tradition;
• understand and be able to explain approaches and perspectives such as (eco)womanism, Afro-ecology, Black environmentalism, environmental justice, and other modalities of Black ecopoetics;
• understand and be able to explain the connections between representations of nature and environment in Black poetry and the extra-textual (cultural, political, spiritual) consequences of and motivations for such representation;
• display an increased fluency in academic research, critical thinking, and academic writing, including skills such as conducting library and database research, critical engagement with various literary and cultural texts, formulation of informed opinions and insightful theses on topics related to the intersections of literature and the environment, and eloquent substantiation of their theses and opinions with textual evidence as well as secondary sources obtained through research.