Duration
30h Th
Number of credits
Lecturer
Language(s) of instruction
English language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the second semester
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
"Rewriting and Reframing: Women and Documenting Nature from the Nineteenth Century to the Present": This elective MA course offers a transhistorical survey of English-language nature writing and documentaries from the nineteenth century to the present. It understands the form of the 'nature documentary' loosely to include written and textual attempts to represent or 'document' nonhuman animals and the environment. While humans have been documenting nature and natural phenomena for millennia, the nineteenth century marks unique moment in human observation, collection, and representation of the natural world. In this century, projects of empire saw naturalists and hunters sail to different lands to extract specimens and exploit local people and environmental resources in numbers that far exceeded exploratory missions of the eighteenth century and earlier. In addition, the invention of photography in the mid nineteenth-century meant that the technology increasingly came to replace more embodied forms of encounter such as naturalistic sketches, engravings, and woodcuts. This growing use of photographic technology contributed to illusions of detachment and objectivity in human encounters with the natural world. Often, the camera's "view from nowhere" reflected a white, scientific, and colonial male gaze (Pratt 1992).
In this course, we turn to women naturalist writers and filmmakers to explore how their work engages with predominantly male and colonial histories and conventions of documenting nature. In the works selected, we find tactile, meandering, embedded, and intersectional encounters and engagements with environments and nonhuman animals. Each week, we will focus on a different primary work (either written or visual) to explore how women across the centuries have been rewriting and reframing the form of the 'nature documentary.'
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
Outcomes and final competencies include:
- An ability to navigate nineteenth and twentieth century periodicals and archives
- An ability to think transhistorically about nature writing and documentaries
- An ability to transfer the skills of literary analysis to scientific and other non-literary contexts
- An ability to transfer present-day criticism to older works (e.g. ecocriticism)
- An understanding of how environmental writing is shaped by the dynamics of gender and colonialism
- The development of both scientific and narrative literacy
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
A very good knowledge of English.
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
This course is taught in seminar format.
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Face-to-face course
Further information:
Face-to-face course
Course materials and recommended or required readings
Platform(s) used for course materials:
- eCampus
Further information:
Further information on course materials:
Primary material includes fifteen works of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and film from the nineteenth century to the present, including Marianne Moore's poem "The Octopus" (1924) and Sofie Benoot's film Apple Cider Vinegar (2024).
Secondary material will be made available to students throughout the year.
Exam(s) in session
Any session
- In-person
written exam AND oral exam
Written work / report
Further information:
The final grade for this course will be based on an oral presentation (creative formats such as podcast, documentary, or video-log permissible), a written essay, peer feedback and engagement, and a creative reflection piece.
Work placement(s)
Organisational remarks and main changes to the course
Contacts
Shannon Lambert