Nature and Culture in Fiction and Film
English 781-03 (3099)
Mo. 6:30-8:20
HH 12; Fall 2011
Frederick Buell
631 Klapper Hall
718-997-4666
buell@warwick.net
This course will explore different ways in which complex cultural texts have often been wiser than their
interpreters and even their creators. It will explore how culture and nature are subtly interwoven in a wide
variety of ways in literary and filmic depictions of, on the one hand, nature and, on the other, of the nonnatural human world. In each case, a closer look reveals not just the truly natural in the one and the truly
human in the other, but often very peculiar embraces of the two.
When society entered the “modern” world in the 16th and 17th centuries, it began what many thought was a
heroic process of liberating humanity from nature. Humanity began improving itself and its milieu and set
out on what, by the mid-19th century, the Victorians had come to call its “march of progress”—its one-way
passage toward a better and better state. Nature, in contrast, was by most deemed separate and not subject
to history. It remained behind, enduring or reliably cyclic, governed by natural law, a reliable foundation
for society to build itself upon. Though Darwin shook the Victorians’ religious faith with his theory of
evolution, his theory of gradual evolution of species through time did not unseat popular assumptions about
nature as peoples’ stable, a-historical foundation. Natural evolution was too vastly slow a process to
produce the sort of change that mattered to society.
So nature was one thing and culture or society was another: the two realms seemed fundamentally separate.
Today, however, that attitude is like a troubled dream naturalists and urbanites, environmentalists and
cultural theorists alike are trying to wake up from. For what the “modern” era from the 16th century to the
present achieved was, in fact, not a further and further separation of nature and society. Instead, its cultural
texts reveal the cultivation in fact of stranger and stranger embraces. Instead, it produced a society so
powerful and so essentially (though unconsciously) interwoven with nature it began changing that nature at
a rapid rate. With the beginning of the twentieth century, anxieties about resources running out were
increasingly common. By the end of the twentieth century, it was clear to most people that society had
amassed the power to change nature everywhere and do so quickly, and that nature was no longer insulated
from human history. What this meant, at its most unsettling, was the possibility of a world-wide
environmental crisis was at hand, a crisis that some felt could mean no less than the end of humankind.
With the first Earth Day in 1970, an upwelling of environmental feeling and commitment went hand in had
with fear that, if society did not quickly change its ways, not a Biblical, but a humanly-created apocalypse
was at hand.
Today, we are in what is the second or even third generation of a still-growing environmental-social
crisis—a crisis of a now tightly-interwoven nature-culture. The “modern” belief that nature and culture are
fundamentally separate has definitely waned. Instead, the term I just used—“nature-culture”—has been
coined to express just how tightly these two realms in fact are locked in an embrace each other. On the one
hand, expanded human power to reshape the natural world on its most basic levels promises much to
advocates of new technologies, such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and the
computerization of society and the mind. On the other hand, to a number of environmental and social critics
alike, many of these tighter and tighter embraces seem to be death-grips, not happy cementings of an evermore-fruitful relationship.
All this is to introduce a course that will in fact be structured in a simple way. Alternating fiction with film,
we will first look at a series of different kinds of “nature literature”—literary cultures that were (and are
still) created out of a sense that nature and society/culture are separate. These are cultures of getting “back
to nature” or “in harmony with nature” or “experiencing nature” or (as is today important) “protecting
nature.” Then we will look at texts that dramatize society’s still relatively recent recognition of its drastic
new powers: texts that present visions of society “ending nature.” Finally, we will look at texts exploring
the strange new embraces of the two.
Required Texts:
[Note: books will be ordered at the campus bookstore for purchase as usual. With films, students will need
to entrepreneurially locate copies to see outside of class before the dates on which they are to be
discussed—IMPORTANT: SEE NOTES JUST BELOW UNDER FILMS].
BOOKS:
(available at campus bookstore)
Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (Penguin).
Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain (Bantam).
Kim Stanley Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below (Bantam).
Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone (Picador).
Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats (Penguin).
Octavia Butler, Dawn, in Lilith’s Brood (Warner Books).
(There will be some additional print readings. These will all be available through my blog for the
course, where they will be listed according to the section of the syllabus they go with. Below,
however, you will also find them in the “Assignments” section, which contains week-by-week
assignments of both printed and filmic texts.)
FILMS:
Much Ado About Nothing, dir. Kenneth Branagh 1993 (this version only).
Into the Wild, dir. Sean Penn, 2007.
Soylent Green, dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973.
The Birds, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1963.
Sleep Dealer, dir. Alex Rivera, 2008
Avatar, dir. James Cameron, 2009.
(With the exception of Sleep Dealer, you must see each film before coming to the class for which
it is assigned. Most of these will be available at video stores. Much Ado About Nothing should be
in video stores, as should Into the Wild, and Avatar.
The classic film from the 1970s, Soylent Green, you may have to hunt for. Some video stores
have it; some don’t. But key scenes are available on YouTube.
The other classic film, this one from the 1960s, The Birds, you will probably be able to get at
video stores.
Sleep Dealer, the hardest to get, I’ll screen in class.
Netflix has some copies of all of the films. Copies can also be purchased cheaply through
Amazon.com’s vendors, but you must organize this well in advance.
GRIM WARNING: NOT GETTING THE FILM DOES NOT COUNT AS AN EXCUSE FOR
NOT BEING PREPARED ON IT)
Course Learning Goals:
As you will see below, you will be both writing and doing class presentations in the course of the
semester. You will also be engaging in literary and cultural research and analysis. Finally, as we
meet in a seminar format, you will be engaging in extensive class discussion, rather than listening
to lectures.
Important learning goals thus are the following: 1) increased fluency in writing academic papers
on literature and film; 2) increased skillfulness at using digitally-assisted oral presentations as a
means of informing and involving the class in active discussion; 3) increased skill at research in
preparation for goals 1 and 2; 4) increased ability to contribute actively to class discussions, by
making comments and raising questions that help deepen our understandings of topics discussed
and by engagement with both fellow students and teacher; and 5) increased ability to engage in
the interpretation of literary and filmic texts through the lenses of both cultural and environmental
histories and relationships.
To say just one thing more about the last item on this list: I’d love you to leave the class unable to
consume any cultural text (from high art to mass media) without being able to understand how it
evokes and/or quietly depends on assumptions about nature and culture.
Course Requirements:
Requirement #1. I will hand out a list of topics for each section in the “Assignments” list,
starting with Section Two. Everyone needs to sign up for a topic. These topics will be the basis
for 1) an oral presentation on the week the section it is concerned with is discussed in class and
2) a finished 4-5 page paper due the week after the section it is concerned with is discussed in
class. Each topic thus entails two assignments: 1) an in-class activity and 2) doing the paper on
time.
Note on presentations: PRESENTATIONS SHOULD BE NO MORE THAN 20 MIN.
LONG. These presentations should be in multimedia format; they can be a mix of text, image,
film clip, etc. ALSO, they should end with your engaging the class in discussing the how the
material you presented helps us to better understand the film or print text we have seen/read for
the week. (Ideally, this could involve ending with a provocative image that the class could
interpret together—one that in some sense echoed or embodies what the text for the week
involved.) Also, if someone you are supposedly working with isn’t participating, please let me
know ASAP so I can nudge him/her.
Note on papers
: some of you will be doing solo presentations, some of you will have a partner. For those of you
with partners, please make up the presentation together, but each do the paper by yourself. For
the paper, you should pick, using both your outside research for the report and the literary/filmic
material connected with it, what seems to you an important focus to write about. In writing about
it you should use any of your relevant original ideas that seem still important to you, but also
include new ones the discussion and your own further thought prompted you to. Ideas that you
get in discussion or in working with your partner you don’t need to document; otherwise, follow
the guidelines in the comment about plagiarism below. YOUR PAPER MUST THEREFORE BE
MORE THAN A SUMMARY OF YOUR REPORT. ALSO, IT SHOULD BE EQUALLY
ABOUT THE TOPIC OF YOUR RESEARCH AND AN INTERPRETATION OF THE TEXT,
PRINT OR FILMIC, THAT YOUR PRESENTATION ACCOMPANIES.
Requirement #2. Every student will be asked to also do another sort of in-class activity. I will
hand out a sign-up sheet for these as well. Your job for this will be to pick out several scenes of a
movie and passages in a novel that seem to you to be crucial to both a deep understanding of the
movie or novel itself and the way the movie or novel works with or meditates on explicit and/or
unspoken assumptions about nature and culture. More than with the other sort of presentation,
you need to try to engage your fellow students in discussion of the questions that you feel these
excerpts raise—something that includes being able to go with the flow even when it might lead to
other ideas than you originally had. Don’t simply give a report on the film/print text, or even
ask specific questions you know definite answers for. Try to come in with questions you
think could get the class thinking through a series of issues. (Also please look at the topic for
the presentation being given and try to avoid too great an overlap with it). The sign-up sheet will
give you ideas about what aspects of the topic to focus on; these suggestions are NOT meant to be
the ONLY questions/issues you could address in order to provoke discussion.
Again, you should use the electronic resources of the classroom to help involve others: you
should show a clip or two from the movie or put up on the screen a key passage from the text as a
way of stimulating and focusing discussion. Once again, you may be working with a partner or
alone.
Requirement #3. There will be a final paper of 12-15 pages in length. (Again, ideas that come
from class discussion or from work with a partner on presentations you don’t need to document.)
This paper can be a (genuinely) deepened, expanded, and further-researched version of the one
you previously did, or it can be on a different topic. (An expanded paper, for example, could be
one that engaged itself more significantly with literary scholarship or which explored further
comparable and contrasting texts).
Requirement #4:. A significant part of your final grade will be your preparation and consistent
contribution to class discussion. This means attendance is necessary. It also means bringing the
written texts with you to class for reference.
(Note: except as noted above, don’t use any source without properly acknowledging it in either of
the above writing assignments; it is something I feel strongly about. It earns an automatic F.
Plagiarism, according to the WPA (a council of writing program administrators) “occurs when a
writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge)
material without acknowledging its source. This definition applies to texts published in print or on-line, to
manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers.” (http://www.wpacouncil.org/node/9). Helpful
advice about how to avoid it can be found in the online writing lab at Perdue University at
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/.
Grading:
Your final grade will be 1/3 class participation (including consistent contribution orally to
discussion in every class, preparation for classes, and regular attendance at them); 1/3 for the two
short paper and two in-class activities; and 1/3 for the final paper.
One final ground rule:
I am really eager to be in dialogue with everyone in the class; I hope you’ll find me someone who
is actively engaged with your thoughts and really excited by your leaps forward in understanding.
But there is one thing I don’t want to do: please do NOT e-mail me because you have missed a
class, want to be filled in, and/or aren’t sure of the assignment/reading for the next one. Don’t
miss class, but, if you do, get that information from fellow classmates. I set this ground rule
simply because, for me, inquiries like this have been in the past simply too much of a drain on
time I would like to have for meaningful exchanges with you. (The only exception is excused
absence—for example, for illness).
Assignments:
Literary Pastoral and Nature:
Week 1 (8/29): Class organization and introduction to the topic.
Week 2 (9/12): Read Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces. On my blog, Timothy Clark,
“Old World Romanticism,” The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment
Week 3 (9/19): View Much Ado About Nothing [film; Kenneth Branagh version only]. On my
blog: Dara Ross, “Corner Garden.”
Wilderness and Wildness:
Week 4 (9/26): View Into the Wild [film]. On my blog: Pam Houston, “A Blizzard Under Blue
Sky”; William Cronon, “The Trouble With Wilderness.”
Week 5 (10/3)): Read K.S. Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain. On my blog: Henry David Thoreau,
excerpt from “Walking”; Lisa Couturier, “Reversing the Tides” and Michael Aron Rockland,
“Big City Waters.”
Environmental Apocalypse:
Week 6 (10/17): View Soylent Green [film]. On my blog, J.G. Ballard, “Billennium” and Arthur
C. Clarke, “If I Forget Thee Oh Earth”; Bill McKibben, from The End of Nature.
Week 7 (10/24): Read K.S. Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below. On my blog, Dipesh Chakrabarty,
“The Climate of History, Four Theses, pp. 197-212 only (though all if you wish).
Animal Studies:
Week 8 (10/31): Read Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone. On my blog, Nadine Gordimer, “The
Ultimate Safari”; Donna Haraway, excerpts from The Companion Species Manifesto; Cary
Wolfe, excerpts from What Is Posthumanism?; Neel Ahuja, “Postcolonial Critique in a
Multispecies World.”
Animal Studies/Risk:
Week 9 (11/7): View The Birds. On my blog, Frederick Buell, excerpt from From Apocalypse to
Way of Life; Stacy Alaimo, “Discomfiting Creatures: Monstrous Natures in Recent Films.”
Ecofeminism/Multiculturalism/Environmental Justice/Toxic Discourse:
Week 10 (11/14): Read Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats. On my blog: Karen J. Warren,
“Introduction to Ecofeminism”; Lawrence I. Buell, “Toxic Discourse.”
Postcolonialism/Globalization:
Week 11 (11/21): Catch up on anything if necessary. View Sleep Dealer [film] in class.
Week 12 (11/28): Discussion of Sleep Dealer. View at home The Matrix [film]. On my blog,
Frederick Buell, From Apocalypse to Way of Life; Andrew McLaughlin, Regarding Nature.
Posthumanism:
Week 13 (12/5): Read Octavia Butler, Dawn, the first novel in the trilogy Lilith.
Week 14 (12/12): View Avatar. On my blog, Hans Moravec, from Mind Children”; Cary Wolfe,
excerpt from What Is Posthumanism?; C. Christopher Hook, “Transhumanism and
Posthumanism”; and Neil Badmington, Posthumanism, pp. 1-5 .