Inventing the Environment: Ideas of Nature in Literature and History of Science

Course will explore western conceptions of nature in the modern period. We will ask: How have differing views of nature represented new definitions of the human? How have perspectives on nature changed historically in tandem with other cultural developments? What does it mean to have ethical responsibilities towards natural entities? How are ideas of the environment formed, critiqued, and changed through imaginative and investigative practices such as those of science and literature? Views of the environment considered will include: resource, generative force, sacred space, ecological process, home, and apocalyptic wasteland. We will read diverse thinkers such as: Darwin, Blake, Thoreau, Humboldt, Goethe, Kafka, Theodor Storm, Haeckel, Lynn Margolis, and Octavia Butler.