Planetary Fictions
“Changing” by artist Alisa Singer
Course Description
In our contemporary moment of ecological devastation, we humans increasingly confront the reality that we are living on a damaged planet. Some humans have lived with this knowledge—and its real-world effects—for much longer than others. In this course, we’ll learn to practice the tools of literary interpretation (close reading, contextual analysis, theory and literary criticism) as we examine the concept of the planet in literature and culture. If we tend to think that all living creatures, both human and nonhuman, share this planet we call Earth, why is it that some are experiencing the damaging effects of climate change far more dramatically than others? How do we even picture the planet when its scale so radically exceeds human frames of reference? And how might we relate to the planet and its other inhabitants differently and more justly?
Throughout the semester, we’ll explore these questions and others through readings of novels, poetry, and creative non-fiction, including works by Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and William Shakespeare. We’ll also apply our critical tools to cultural objects and events outside the usual domain of the literary: the documentary filmmaking of Werner Herzog, James Lovelock’s “Gaia hypothesis” writing, as well as some recent examples of contemporary climate activism. In doing so, we’ll come to see that the tools of literary analysis are not only good for reading books; they can also enrich our understanding of how figurative language and literary forms shape the world we live in—and the planet that is our home.
Required Texts
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Hachette, 2019)
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter (University of Arizona Press, 2017)
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Signet Classics, 1998)
Assignments
This class is structured around substantial discussion and reading, but it can also be flexible. Your well-being, whatever constitutes that for you, matters more than this or any class. If you are having any trouble with the class or otherwise, let me know. You don’t need to confide in me, but I will do what I can to help.
1. Participation
For this class to be a lively and productive group conversation, I’d like all voices to be included. I understand that not everyone is comfortable with verbal participation in a classroom setting. If this description feels familiar, please come to my office hours and we’ll talk about how we can incorporate your ideas into the class.
Participation in class will be one factor in the “ongoing engagement” portion of your final grade. Attending and being attentive in each class meeting may not always be possible, but I hope you will make an earnest effort. Please let me know if you will need to miss class at any point in the semester so that we can discuss ways for you to make up any missed work.
2. Weekly writing (Canvas posts)
In addition to attending class and participating in our conversations, you will need to make a weekly Canvas post for this class. Each Tuesday evening, I will provide a question or prompt for you to respond to. Posts are due each week before class begins on Thursday. You’ll write a total of ten Canvas posts over the course of the semester. (Twelve posts are assigned, as you’ll see below, but you may skip two without penalty.)
There is no absolute length requirement for posts, but I’m imagining something between about 150 and 300 words. If you’ve been reading along and paying attention during class, the posts shouldn’t take too much time to write—no more than about 30 minutes. If you had a quiet day in discussion, you might find yourself writing more, capturing the things you didn’t get to say or wish you’d said.
The purpose of these posts is threefold: 1) you’ll practice writing in a variety of styles and in response to different kinds of prompts; 2) you’ll have the opportunity to demonstrate your engagement in a written—rather than verbal—mode; and 3) you’ll help us build momentum between our Tuesday and Thursday discussions.
3. Annotation assignment
This assignment asks you to select a passage from a course reading and electronically mark up the text, adding interpretive commentary, links to relevant online resources, images, sounds, and explanatory notes. The purpose of this assignment is to practice reading a text closely (what literary scholars call “close reading”)—and to develop a framework for critical interpretation. This foundation will help to prepare you for both the reflective project and the final critical essay. I will go over the specifics of this assignment in the coming weeks, and you’ll receive a handout with detailed instructions.
4. Reflective project
For this assignment, you’ll choose a course text that resonates most powerfully with your life, thinking, community—or with the world as you see it. You’ll then respond to this text in a medium of your choosing. If you choose a more creative route for your reflection (e.g., a painting or poem), I will ask you to include a one-page essay explaining your project. You’ll receive detailed instructions for this assignment well in advance of the deadline.
5. Critical essay
Your final assignment in this course will be a critical essay of 4-6 pages that mounts an argument about one of our course texts. We will devote the last two weeks of class to writing and revising these essays. As with the other assignments, you’ll receive detailed instructions for this essay well in advance of the deadline.
6. Deadlines and extensions
I do ask that you submit your assignments on time. My hope in requiring that assignments be done within their respective window is two-fold: first, to minimize the number of unfinished assignments (and the concomitant dread) that can build up in one’s backlog, and, second, to head perfectionism off at the pass. Your assignments don’t need to be the best thoughts ever thought in all the world, just your genuine thoughts as an engaged person.
I am open to granting extensions, particularly if you have other assignments or conflicts that you know about in advance. If you find you’ll be unable to complete a task before the deadline, telling me as soon as possible will greatly increase the chances of an outcome we both find satisfying. (Two weeks ahead of time is a good rule of thumb.)
Grade Breakdown
Ongoing engagement, including weekly Canvas posts (25%)
Annotation assignment (15%)
Reflective project (25%)
Critical essay (35%)
Schedule of Readings
Right now, I am anticipating that class will proceed as I will outline below, but I will check in regularly with you to see what’s working and what might need to be adjusted.
Unit 1: Planetary Poetics
Week 1
Introduction (key words and themes); read and consider “Headline Statements from the Summary for Policy Makers,” Sixth Assessment Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (28 Feb. 2022)
Listen to “N.K. Jemisin’s Master Class in World-Building,” The Ezra Klein Show (2018, 85 min.); watch or read “A Look Back in Time: How NASA’s Webb Telescope Gives Humanity a Revolutionary New View of Cosmos” (15 July 2022)
Week 2
Read Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, “Defining the Anthropocene” in Nature 519 (2015)
Submit Canvas post #1; read Kyle Powys Whyte, “Our Ancestors’ Dystopia Now: Indigenous Conservation and the Anthropocene” (2017)
Unit 2: Histories and Futures of the World
Week 3
Read “Magellan agonistes” in Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit (2013)
Submit Canvas post #2; read William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611), Act 1
Week 4
Read The Tempest, Acts 2-3
Submit Canvas post #3; finish The Tempest
Week 5
Read Joseph Addison, Spectator no. 69 (1711)
Submit Canvas post #4; read Dionne Brand, selections from A Map to the Door of No Return (2011)
Week 6
Annotation assignment due
A Map to the Door of No Return, cont’d
Submit Canvas post #5; read Joy Harjo, selected poems (1989-2015)
Unit 3: New Horizons of Knowledge and Feeling
Week 7
Read Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “A Summer Evening’s Meditation” (1773)
Submit Canvas post #6; read John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816) and “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” (1819)
Week 8
Read Charles Dickens, The Frozen Deep (1857)
Submit Canvas post #7; watch Encounters at the End of the World, dir. Werner Herzog (2007, 99 min.)
Week 9
Read Ursula K. Le Guin, “Vaster than Empires and More Slow” (1971)
Submit Canvas post #8; watch Silent Running, dir. Douglas Trumbull (1972, 89 min.); view images from the Apollo space missions
Week 10
Read Leah Aronowsky, “Gas Guzzling Gaia, or; A Prehistory of Climate Change Denialism” (2021), James Lovelock, “Gaia as Seen Through the Atmosphere” (1972), and William Golding, “Gaia lives, OK?” (1976)
Submit Canvas post #9; in-class creative project work day
Unit 4: “The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet”
Week 11
Reflective project due
Read Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter (2017)
Submit Canvas post #10; finish Iep Jaltok
Week 12
Read Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993), Chs. 1-7
Submit Canvas post #11; read Parable of the Sower, Chs. 8-14
Week 13
Read Parable of the Sower, Chs. 15-20
Submit Canvas post #12; finish Parable of the Sower
Week 14
Proposals for critical essay due
Individual meetings with Prof. Turner
Week 15
Rough drafts due; in-class peer review
Final class / no new reading
Critical essays due