First-Year Writing Seminar: Wilderness and Civilization

Semester and Year	FA 2010
Course Number	FIRST-UG357
Section	001
Instructor	Andrew Libby
Days	Mon,Wed
Time	4:55 PM - 6:10 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Description

The ruin of the environment begins with agriculture. With this assertion Paul Shepard sharpens a modern tradition of radical environmental thinking that ranges from Rousseau to Elizabeth Kolbert. In this course, we will consider some of the basic issues behind our urges to protect, and squander, the environment. If the environment includes wilderness, how does such wildness relate to our own sense of who we are? How wild, how civilized, are we? Is homo sapiens  hard-wired for violence? To what extent do our current forms of economic and social organization allow or prohibit us from accommodating ourselves to the world around us? In this seminar, we will write about these issues and imagine realistic alternative futures. Authors may include Matsuo Basho, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, Black Elk, Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Elizabeth Bishop, Edward Abbey, Paul Shepard, Elizabeth Kolbert, Alice Walker, and Cormac McCarthy.

Course Type

First-Year Program: Writing Seminars (FIRST-UG)