124081 VK BEd 08a.3: VK Literature and Language Education (2024W)

How many trees that you see on your way from home to campus can you identify? In fact, how often do you notice them at all? If you were to describe your neighborhood, would you be able to recount its flora and fauna in as much detail as its shops, services, and public transportation options? What comes to your mind when you hear the words “nature” and “environment”? What does it mean for something – or someone – to be “(un)natural”? And why should it matter?

This course proposes that asking these questions matters because they push us to (re)consider how we think of ourselves in relation to the world we live in: a world that is human and nonhuman, natural as well as social, cultural, and political. The climate crisis has its roots in the same social systems of value and power that discourage us from paying close, daily attention to the world around us. It is, in the words of ecocritic Lawrence Buell, a “crisis of the imagination,” of our cultural reluctance to see ourselves as a part of, rather than apart from, the natural world. When we fail to understand, care about, or even see our immediate environment, we also fail to do so at a planetary level.

Poetry, perhaps more than any other literary genre, asks us to look and listen carefully, respond emotionally, and understand afresh. By challenging our habits of reading and meaning-making, it invites us to expand our imagination. Thus, it will be through the lens of poetry that we will explore our relationship to the more-than-human world in this class. We will be learning eco-literacy from what the poems say about nature and environment and from how they say it, examining poetic language, form, and technique. We will practice the skills of paying attention, asking questions, and making connections by reading poetry as well as “reading” place, creative reflection, and effective communication of our insights. We will not be focusing on didactics; rather, will be developing our own literacy in poetry and environment through a range of assignments that bring the two together. We will, however, reflect on our pedagogical principles and consider the possibilities of integrating poetry and eco-literacy into our teaching practice.