A seminar/workshop and Arts Core course designed by Jennifer Scappettone, University of Chicago, Winter 2017 and Spring 2018 (2017 syllabus featured here) Tumblr blog: http://ecopoeticsatchicago.tumblr.com/ and  https://ecopoeticsuchicago.tumblr.com/; taught in the form below as a graduate seminar in Fall 2019.

Ecopoetics: Literature and Ecology

This course will introduce students to recent debates in the environmental humanities and simultaneously to a range of creative responses across fiction, documentary, poetry, and the visual arts spurred by the effects of what has come to be called the Anthropocene epoch (despite substantive challenges to the term that we will address)—in a period of perceived grave environmental crisis. Students will be asked to respond critically to the works at hand, but also to conduct their own research and on-site fieldwork in Chicago on an environmental issue of their choosing. Students must be available for several field trips. This course will be taught in conjunction with the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Books available for purchase at Seminary Co-Op:

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)—Mariner

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)—Signet Classic

Amy King and Heidi Lynn Staples, eds., Big Energy Poets (2017)

Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, Decomp (2013)

David Buuck, Site Cite City (2015)

Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (2017)

Recommended:

Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Note: Please attend the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a free exhibition in the Chicago Cultural Center, within the first two weeks of class: https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/visit

Note 2: Please think about an environmental issue that you would like to track via your fieldwork assignments for this course, which will proceed in parallel with more standard readings and researched responses (see Course Requirements for details). Check in with me during Week 2 or 3 about what you will be tracking.

M 10/7 Week 2: Introductions

(introducing ourselves first, without recourse to political definitions)

Theoretical Introduction: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene

Anthropocene: Brian Holmes, “Driving the Golden Spike: The Aesthetics of Anthropocene Public Space”

 Brian Holmes, Driving the Golden Spike: The Aesthetics of Anthropocene Public Space and text at https://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/156774/driving-the-golden-spike/

Capitalocene: Jason Moore, “The Double Internality: History as if Nature Matters,” from Capitalism in the Web of Life: Economy and the Accumulation of Capital (Files tab of Canvas)

Chthulucene: Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin” (Files tab of Canvas)  [longer version is in Introduction (18-25) and Chapter 2—“Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene” (30-57) from Staying with the Trouble (2016)]

Case Studies in Ecologies of Scale:

Dziga Vertov, newsreel tracing the evolution of a hamburger: kinoglaz

Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten (1977): Powers of Ten™ (1977)

Juliana Spahr, “Poem Written after September 11, 2001,” from This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (Files tab of Canvas): audio at https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Spahr/Mills/Spahr-Juliana_02_Poem-Written-After_Literary-Salon_Mills-College_2005.mp3

Edward Burtynsky, interview from Manufactured Landscapes: https://americansuburbx.com/2009/05/interview-manufactured-landscapes.html

Edward Burtynsky images here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/15/edward-burtynsky-photography-interview

Fieldwork exercise: Into the field, into context: choose an object or environmental phenomenon in your immediate environment such as a leaf, a dragonfly, a piece of Styrofoam, etc., and describe it in its context at macro- and microscopic scales.

M 10/14            Week 3: The Fate of the Pastoral

Rachel Carson, Chapters 1-8 and 15 of Silent Spring (1962)—

William Carlos Williams, selections from Paterson (1946-58): Preface by Williams and Book I (2 pdfs, reserves)

Kathryn Yusoff, “Golden Spikes and Dubious Origins,” from A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Files tab of Canvas)

Fred Moten, “there is religious tattooing”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53481/there-is-religious-tattooing and  “tonk and waterfront, black line fade, unbuilt hotel, that union hall”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53482/tonk-and-waterfront-black-line-fade-unbuilt-hotel-that-union-hall 

Media for Thought:

Virtual exhibition surrounding Silent Spring at http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/silent-spring/overview

Eric W. Sanderson, Welikia Project, formerly known as the Mannahatta Project: https://welikia.org/

Fieldwork exercise: Idyll vs. Actual: Imagine two shepherds coming upon a site relevant to your field research. Compose a brief dialogue that takes place between them (it need be no more than 1 page long—longer is not necessarily better). For context, see Theocritus’s Idylls, one translation of which appears here: https://www.theoi.com/Text/TheocritusIdylls1.html

M 10/21 Week 4: Farm and Factory

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)

Carl Sandburg, “Chicago” (1914): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/12840

Selection from William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis (1991): “Annihilating Space: Meat” (Files tab of Canvas)

Margaret Ronda and Tobias Menley, “Red,” in Cohen, ed., Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond Green (Files tab of Canvas)

Recommended for enrichment:

Background imagery: footage from the closing of the Chicago Union Stockyards, here: http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/12/20/chicagos-union-stockyards-40-years-closing

Ariana Reines, The Cow (2005) and accompanying essay, “Sucking”: http://www.actionyes.org/issue6/reines/reines-sucking.html

Fieldwork exercise: Intimate Foodways: Take notes on and track all points of contact (strategized or not) with a food substance of your choice over the course of a week. (The substance can be anything, but something minimal enough to focus on closely: coconut oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, ground beef, refined white flour, chicken as stock or as leg or as foot, etc. Salt, for example, is too ubiquitous for this.) Compose a text or map tracing this substance’s journey from its origin to your body.

M 10/28 Week 5: Mapping Ecologies, Species Entanglement

Stephen Collis, “Manifesto of the Biotariat” (Big Energy Poets)

Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, Decomp

Selections from Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: “Arts of Noticing” and “Contamination as Collaboration” (e-reserves or book, 16-34)

Denis Wood, excerpts from Everything Sings at http://globalurbanhumanities.berkeley.edu/uploads/Introduction_Everything_Sings.pdf and https://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/Everything_Sings_Excerpt_and_Intro.pdf

Fieldwork exercise: Adventures in Cartography: Map the site of your research, or one of its sites. I leave the understanding of the mapping exercise up to you, but you are free to use the “Living Atlas” layer data via ArcGIS (link in resources column below) to construct your map, or you may use any number of analog methods.

SATURDAY, 11/2:  TOUR OF CHICAGO RIVER BUY TICKETS FOR RIVER TAXI (1-WAY PASS) ONLINE AT https://www.chicagowatertaxi.com/buy-tickets/

(they can also be purchased in front of TOWER 45)

MEET AT MCCORMICK BRIDGEHOUSE & RIVER MUSEUM FOR TOUR OF THE MUSEUM AT 12 pm SHARP (https://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/plan-a-visit).

Tour guide on the river "cruise" will be RACHEL HAVRELOCK OF UIC/FRESHWATER LABS (founder of Freshwater Lab and Freshwater Stories—please see http://www.freshwaterlab.org/ and http://freshwaterstories.com/ for background)

SUNDAY, 11/3, 1 PM-DUSK OR THEREABOUTS: TOUR OF EAST CHICAGO WITH BRIAN HOLMES of DEEP TIME CHICAGO (http://deeptimechicago.org/) 

Here's the departure point: MEET AT 1 PM SHARP

https://goo.gl/maps/5DKKcRMdY4vq2rjV6

And here is the map Brian created, Petropolis. which is about a situation from the recent past:

http://environmentalobservatory.net/Petropolis/map.html

And here is a text about the site:

http://ecotopia.today/art-and-pipeline-politics

If you can provide carpool rides, please let me know how many people you can bring along.

If you cannot attend, please research some parallel opportunity, clear it with me, attend, and write a 1-page text summarizing the experience and what you learned to share with the class and with me.

M 11/4 Week 6: Listening for Vibrational Communication: visit with Jonathan Skinner: MEET IN LOGAN CENTER 801!!!

Jonathan Skinner section of Big Energy Poets

Jonathan Skinner, “Call the Pulsing Home” (Files Tab of Canvas)

Jonathan Skinner, “Conceptualizing the Field: Some Compass Points for Ecopoetics”: https://jacket2.org/commentary/conceptualizing-field

For enrichment:

Hildegard Westerkamp, "Speaking from Inside the Soundscape" (Files tab of Canvas) and related sound pieces at https://ecopoeticswarwick.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/soundscape-compositions-by-lopez-and-westerkamp/ 

Jonathan Skinner, "The Unbending of the Faculties: Learning from Frederick Law Olmsted" (Files tab of Canvas)

“Discourse Camping: Ecopoetics as Transitional Architectural System”: https://jacket2.org/commentary/discourse-camping

Fieldwork exercise: Maps of Listening: spend one hour in a local spot relevant to your research, and construct a map of that place using only your sense of hearing. How does this alter your perception and experience of the place?

M 11/11 Week 7: Waste and Ritual: Improvisation and Salvage

NOTE: Julie Patton will be performing in the Logan Center at 6 pm on W 11/13 in Logan 801, and your attendance is encouraged.

Michelle Ty, “Trash and the Ends of Infrastructure” (e-reserves)

Walt Whitman, “This Compost!” (1867): http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1867/clusters/142

Julie Ezelle Patton section of Big Energy Poets

Julie Ezelle Patton, “The Building by the Side of the Road: Cleveland’s Native/Green Rights Movement”: http://aboutplacejournal.org/rust-belt-tales/julie-ezelle-patton/

Ed Roberson, “Eclogue,” from City Eclogue (2006): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/89465  

Brenda Coultas, from The Bowery Project (Files tab of Canvas)

Cecilia Vicuna’s quipus, precarios, and other installations: http://www.dailyserving.com/2017/04/cecilia-vicuna-about-to-happen-at-the-contemporary-arts-center-new-orleans/

The Volta trash issue: http://www.thevolta.org/index-january01-2014.html

Fieldwork exercise: Trash Texts:

Try to find out where your trash and recycling goes. Map it.

OR: Collect your garbage for a week. Compose a text using this garbage as archive. 

M 11/18 Week 8: Enviro-Aesthetics and the Uses of Strategic Dystopianism: Visit with David Buuck

David Buuck, SITE CITE CITY

BARGE/Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-Aesthetics, Buried Treasure Island: A Detour of the Future: Sample parts of audio tour: http://davidbuuck.com/barge/bti/audiotour.html (note: this is the audio component of the central section of SITE CITE CITY)

Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” (1851-62): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/06/walking/304674/

Lisa Robertson, “Site Report: New Brighton Park” from Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (Canvas)

C.S. Giscombe, poems from Prairie Style: http://xpoetics.blogspot.com/2009/02/two-prairie-style-poems-from-cs.html

Fieldwork exercise: Walking vs. the Internet: Walk through a neighborhood for 45 minutes, delineating a geometric figure with chalk or tape or objects in 2 places and rigorously recording the contents, either photographically or in writing, or some combination of the two. Then conduct research on that location online. It’s okay if your field notes and your internet research reveal contents of the site at vastly different scales. Combine the material of your walk and the material of your virtual research in a single text. The text can assume any literary genre of your liking—or like Paterson, it can embrace a combination of literary modalities.

M 11/25 Week 9: Landscape and Wildness, Sovereignty and Indigeneity

Layli Long Soldier, Whereas

Kyle Powys Whyte, “The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and US Colonialism”: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55c251dfe4b0ad74ccf25537/t/591712ef2e69cf82b8e08b6f/1494684399523/Whyte+-+DAPL%2C+EJ+and+US+Settler+Colonialism+Updated+5-13-17.pdf

Cecilia Vicuña, Kon Kon: available for $1 at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/konkon (was ordered from Library months ago; still waiting for it to arrive)

Fieldwork exercise: Writing through Legal Documents: Take a legal document surrounding the issue that you have chosen to focus on, and manipulate it to make a new text. 

M 12/2  Week 10: Living in Ruins: Alienation and Entanglement

Michelangelo Antonioni (director), Red Desert (1964)

Anne Carson, Plainwater (focus on “The Anthropology of Water”) 

NOTE: ANNE CARSON, SHERRY POET AT UCHICAGO

Anne Carson: “Stillness” 
Tuesday, December 3, 6:00 pm
Performance Hall

Anne Carson: “Corners”
Wednesday, December 4, 6:00 pm
Swift Hall, 3rd Floor

Anne Carson: "Chairs"
Friday, December 6, 6:00 pm
Mandel Hall

12/10 FINAL PROJECTS DUE

Course Requirements:

In-class presentation:  15%

You may choose to focus on a specific work or to address the group of texts for that week as a whole. Consider this space an experiment in public dialogue, a mini-conference paper proposing an argument or hypothesis rather than a summary or lecture about its background. You are free to develop your presentation into a paper, either for the midterm or the final (either one—but not both). Sign-ups will take place during Week 2.

Midterm paper, 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words), due on Friday of Week 5, 11/1, at 9 am: 20%

This brief paper should take up one of the concerns of the course—the limitations of the term anthropocene, for instance—and one of the texts or objects studied in class. Feel free to see me in office hours to settle on a topic.

Fieldwork journal surrounding an issue of your choice, to be composed as you see fit, either electronically or as a notebook.  25%

Over the course of the term, you should perform research on a local and/or global topic in ecology and generate your fieldwork responses in relation to this topic. Feel free to respond to the exercises in analog fashion, using an actual notebook: they may end up resonating with you more powerfully that way. Note: this research must be anchored in a local site that you can visit, live. Examples would be: managing the combined sewage outflows of the Chicago River; pollution and stewardship of Lake Michigan and the larger Great Lakes watershed; the resonance of US Steel in Gary; sanctuaries and species “management” in Chicago Parks; the ecological significance of grasslands/the prairie; environmental justice issues such as the petcoke crisis on the South Side. Other sample topics: research surrounding a chosen Superfund site, such as the Calumet Cluster; narrative of a certain chemical or product, such as vinyl; focus on environmental impact of a chosen corporation in a certain area or areas; focus on a phenomenon resulting from climate change, such as extreme weather events (hurricanes, melting of polar ice caps, the polar vortex); fracking and related local extraction projects; oil; slow food, local food movements, permaculture; focus on a certain waterway or infrastructure project; focus on a certain plant; focus on a certain endangered species; strategies for reconnecting to nature in the city through design; etc.

One final project, due 12/10 at noon, 30%.  You may, if you wish, produce a research paper surrounding an issue in the environmental humanities—of 15-20 pages, analyzing at least one work that we have encountered in class. As an alternative to a traditional scholarly analysis of works encountered in class, this project may also take the form of a work of microdocumentary on some aspect of Chicago ecology building on the exercises produced for class—it can be a narrated photo or video essay, a researched piece of nonfiction, an educational website, an atlas, a cycle of poems, etc—accompanied by an 8-page (2000-word) paper that details the conceptual underpinnings of your work and its relation to other readings or works we have encountered, justifying aesthetic and analytical choices. If you choose the latter option, please clear a project proposal of 250 words with me no later than week 6.

Class “citizenship,” attendance and participation in class and at related events:  10%

This is a discussion-based course; please see me early on if you have trouble speaking up in class.  Attendance is a critical part of class citizenship and I expect you to attend unless you absolutely cannot. Given that we have so little time together, more than one unexcused absence begins to impact both your experience of the material and your final grade (by half a step per absence; i.e., A to A-). If you have to miss class, please check in with your peers, asking for notes, and with me in office hours. If you cannot make the date for a fieldwork trip, please research a suitable substitute, clear it with me, and attend that instead with a short write-up about your experience and what you learned.

Attendance at extracurricular readings and events:  incalculable. Announcements will be made throughout the quarter.

Resources for your fieldwork:

(Note: Please feel free to send me additional links! Let’s make this a resource for all):

Environmental Protection Agency website, with extensive database: https://www.epa.gov/

ArcGIS Mapping Tools: log in via Enterprise/UChicago at https://arcgis.com

DOCUMERICA project by the Environmental Protection Agency: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/collections/72157620729903309/

Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6kr8p5rq

Naturalist’s Tour of Southern Lake Michigan: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/306488.html

iNaturalist app: https://www.inaturalist.org/

Rocks of Lake Michigan beaches: https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2015/11/collectible_rocks_of_southwest.html

Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which includes Citizen Scientist links: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

Databases in which to look for National Pollution Discharge Elimination Systems permits (https://www.epa.gov/npdes/npdes-permit-basics ):

ECHO database: https://echo.epa.gov

IDEM Virtual File Cabinet (Indiana): https://vfc.idem.in.gov/DocumentSearch.aspx

Illinois Document Explorer: https://external.epa.illinois.gov/DocumentExplorer

Citizen Science links: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/citizen-science/find-a-project

Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which includes Citizen Scientist links: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

Links to groups practicing environmental advocacy:

Creative Reuse Warehouse (the “Waste Shed”): https://www.facebook.com/wasteshed

Canoe Chicago with Friends of the Chicago River: https://www.chicagoriver.org/events or get otherwise involved: https://www.chicagoriver.org/get-involved

Freshwater Labs: https://www.freshwaterlab.org/

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization: http://www.lvejo.org/

Deep Time Chicago: http://deeptimechicago.org/#

Co-Prosperity Sphere: http://www.coprosperity.org/

Surfrider Chicago: https://www.chicago.surfrider.org/

Abrams Environmental Law Clinic: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/clinics/environmental

Deep Time Chicago: http://deeptimechicago.org/

Links to discursive resources in ecocriticism:

Anthropocene Curriculum: https://anthropocene-curriculum.org/

Discard Studies Compendium: https://discardstudies.com/resources/journal-articles/

Post-Harvey Introduction to Critical Infrastructure Studies: https://cistudies.org/events/public-humanities-infrastructure-a-post-harvey-introduction-to-critical-infrastructure-studies/

UCSB Literature and the Environment exam list: http://ehc.english.ucsb.edu/?page_id=2374