Literature & the Environment
GWU freshmen and sophomores! Looking for an interesting course for next year? Please consider Prof. Cohen’s Literature & the Environment. Contact him directly (jjcohen@gwu.edu) to be signed into the class (all it takes is the RTF form). The course meets on Tuesdays from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m. and is a small, seminar-type class that is restricted to CCAS sophomores and juniors. The course satisfies the GPAC Humanities and Oral Communications: two for one!
This seminar explores how the nonhuman world is depicted in literature and film – and the value of sustained attentiveness to environments with these works and within the larger world. A special emphasis is placed upon environmental justice and future possibilities for the environmental humanities as modes of civic engagement. Much of the course will focus on what we can learn from close observation of the natural and built environments that surround us; how those environments are translated into narrative and what work those narratives accomplishes in the world; and how to speak effectively to an interested public about the issues with which the environmental humanities are concerned.
