Schedule

All readings aside from required texts (Mary Prince, Typhoon, Wuthering Heights) are available on Canvas under Files.

Please note that this schedule is a living document and, as such, reading smay be subject to change. If anything should change, you will be notified with sufficient time via a Canvas announcement. Readings may be substituted, moved, or subtracted, but I will not add more to your reading load.

* Denotes a week in which Species List entries are due

Week 1
Welcome

01/05
Syllabus, Introductions; Turner, “The Slave Ship” (in class)

Week 2
Situating the British Empire

This week online, see Canvas announcement

01/10
Wordsworth, “Solitary Reaper” & “Stepping Westward”

01/12
Smith, “To the Firefly of Jamaica,” “Beachy Head”

Week 3
Theorizing Ecological Knowledge

This week online, see Canvas announcement

01/17
No class, MLK Day

01/19
Tsing, “This earth, this island Borneo,” “Natural Universals and the Global Scale” (excerpts: pas 88-101)

Week 4*
“Creating” Ecological Knowledge

01/24
Brockway, “Kew & Cinchona”

01/25
Darwin, The Descent of Man (excerpts from Chapter 7: On the Races of Man) & The Voyage of the Beagle (Chapter 10: Tierra Del Fuego)

Week 5*
Pain & The Plantation

01/31
Prince, The History of Mary Prince

Note: The History of Mary Prince contains frank and potentially- disturbing depictions of racialized and gendered violence, though rape is notably absented from the narrative.

02/02

Class remote & asynchronous due to winter storm (see canvas announcement)

Jane Eyre (watch 2011 version); Freedgood “Souvenirs of Sadism”; annotate Freedgood chapter using Perusall

Week 6
Land & ownership

02/07
Carlyle, “Occasional Discourse on the N* Question” (excerpts); Yussof, “The Fabulation of Beginnings,” “Material Markers,” “”1610,” ‘Black Metamorphosis’ (1452),” “1800”

Jane Eyre (watch 2011 version); Freedgood “Souvenirs of Sadism”; annotate Freedgood chapter using Perusall

02/09
Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Vol 1 Ch. 1-5)

02/11
Essay 1 Due

A note on WH: the novel contains potentially-disturbing depictions of gendered violence, though no explicit mentions of rape occur. I have marked the class sessions when we cover the most graphic violence.

Week 7*
Racialized Ecologies

02/14
Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Ch. 6-15; depending on edition also denoted as Vol 1 Ch 6-14; Vol 2 Ch 1)

Note: Chapters 12 & 13 in particular contain strong allusions to gendered violence.

02/16
Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Ch. 16-20; Vol 2 Ch 2-6)

Mid-semester check-in meetings.

Week 8*
Racialized Ecologies

02/21
Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Ch. 21-31; Vol 2 Ch 7-17)

Note: Chapters 27 & 28 contain both explicit and implied gendered violence.

02/23
Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Ch. 32-end; Vol 2 Ch 18-end)

Mid-semester check-in meetings.

Spring Break
02/26-03/06

No class.

Week 9
Travel

03/07
Pratt, “Narrating Anti-Conquest” in Imperial Eyes

03/09
Livingstone, Missionary Travels (Intro, Chapters I&II); explore Livingstone Online site

03/11
Essay 2 Proposal Due

Week 10*
Travel

03/14
Equiano, “The Interesting Narrative” (Ch 1)

03/16
Khan, The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (Chs 6-9; 11; 14; 19-20)

Week 11*
Settler Colonialism

03/21
Olive Schreiner (selections); Fong, “The Stories Outside the African Farm” (optional)

03/23
Project Work Day

Week 12*
Climate, Weather, & POllution

03/28
Conrad, “Typhoon”; Boone, “Dirty Weather” (optional)

03/30
Hay, The Doom of the Great City; images (in class)

Week 13
Ecological Ethics

04/04
Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

04/06
Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

04/08
Essay 2 Due

Week 14
Presentations

04/11
Species List Presentations

04/13
Species List Presentations

End-of-semester check-in meetings.

Week 15/16
Wrapping Up

04/18
Species List Presentations

04/27
Final Portfolio Due

End-of-semester check-in meetings.

Works Cited

• Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights, edited by Richard Dunn, Norton, 2002
• Boone, Troy. “Dirty Weather.” Conrad and Nature, edited by Rebozo Lissa Scheider et al., Routledge, 2018, pp. 93-112.
• Brockway, Lucille. “Kew and Cinchona.” Science and Colonial Expansion, Academic Press Inc., 1979.
• Carlyle, Thomas. Occasional discourse on the Nigger question communicated by T. Carlyle. 2nd ed., Thomas Bosworth, 1853. Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/DS0103738358/SAS?u=umuser&sid=bookmark-SAS&xid=0ef72f21&pg=4. Accessed 1 Jan. 2022.
• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner *1817).”The Major Works, edited by H.J. Jackson, Oxford UP, 2008, pp. 48-68.
• Conrad, Joseph. Typhoon and Other Stories, edited by J.H. Stape, Penguin, 2007.
• Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, edited by James Moore and Adrian Desmond, Penguin, 2004.
• Darwin, Charles. “Chapter X: Tierra Del Fuego.” The Voyage of the Beagle. Andrews UK, 2012. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e700xna&AN=994610&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
• Dickens, Charles. Bleak House, edited by Nicola Bradbury, Penguin, 1996, pp. 13-14.
• Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative, edited by Vincent Carretta, Penguin, 2003.
• Freedgood, Elaine. “Souveniers of Sadism: Mahogany Furniture, Deforestation, and Slavery in Jane Eyre.” The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel, University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp. 30-54.
• Fong, Ryan. “The Stories Outside the African Farm.” Victorian Studies, vol. 62, no. 3, 2020, pp. 421-432.
• Hay, William Delisle. The Doom of the Great City, Newman and Co., 1880.
• Khan, Abu Talib. The Travels of Mirza Abu Talib Khan, edited by Daniel O’Quinn, Broadview Press, 2008.
• Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2013. 
• Livingstone, David. Livingstone’s Missionary Travels Manuscript, directed by Justin D. Livingstone and Adrian S. Wisnicki, first ed, peer rev. and revision, Livingstone Online, directed by Adrian S. Wisnicki and Megan Ward, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2019-20.
• Pratt, Mary Louise. “Narrating the Anti-Conquest.” Imperial Eyes, Routledge, 1992, pp. 38-68.
• Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, edited by Sarah Salih, Penguin, 2000
• Smith, Charlotte. The Poems of Charlotte Smith (Women Writers in English 1350-1850), edited by Stuart Curran, Oxford UP, 1993.
• Tsing, Anna. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Princeton University Press, 2005.
• Wordsworth, William. Poems of William Wordsworth, Volume 1 : Collected Reading Texts from The Cornell Wordsworth, edited by Jared Curtis, Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central.