ENGL 152 - Plant, Animal, Mineral: American Literature and Extractive Industry

A study of American literature that examines relationships between literary texts and the extractive industries that shape our world. The large-scale processing of organic materials has created significant costs and unevenly distributed benefits, leading to conflicts that have informed important work in imaginative literature and film. The texts explored allow for discussions about how art interprets and protests the use and misuse of natural resources, how it describes the origins and implications of climate change, and how it imagines alternative approaches to economic production, consumption, and labor. Students use a group thematically linked texts to understand fundamentals of the study literature. Figures studied include W. E. B. Du Bois, Herman Melville, Rebecca Harding Davis, Katie Beaton; Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson; and Jun Yung.

Credits: 1.0
Corequisite: None
Prerequisites: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: No Junior, No Senior
Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts Practices: Confronting Collective Challenges and The Process of Writing
Core Component: None

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