Studies in Contemporary Literature (461-0-20)

Topic

The Environmentalism of the Poor

Instructors

Sarah Dimick

Meeting Info

University Hall 018 English: Thurs 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

After detailing Ramachandra Guha and Joan Martinez-Alier's influential distinction between "full-stomach" and "empty-belly" environmentalism, this course focuses on literary engagements with the latter. We track class and environmentalism through literature set in electronic waste dumps, tent cities of the unhoused, and disaster zones. Via this reading, we catalogue the capacities and limitations of literary modes associated with poverty—including social realism, the documentary, and sentimentalism. This class delves into environmental knowledge and movements emerging from communities subjected to poverty, but it also attends to unsettling slippages between practices of environmental simplicity and experiences of economic deprivation. Primary texts will be drawn from 20th- and 21st-century literature of the United States and the global South.

Teaching Method

Seminar-based discussion.