Course schedule for the Graduate Certificate in Literature Program, Northwestern University School of Professional Studies - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

Course Schedule

LIT 480-DL : Topics in Comparative Literature: Literature of Climate Change

Description

In this course, we will immerse ourselves in Climate Fiction, a relatively new literary genre that takes up the challenge of climate change in the Anthropocene, the proposed epoch in which human beings significantly impact the geological and ecological systems of the planet. Climate fiction asks: how might climate change transform the world in which we live? How might we intervene today to mitigate its effects? What will the world be like in the future, and what will it mean to the human beings who will live in it? The alternative visions of the future elaborated in Climate Fiction literature often combine characteristics of science fiction with elements of other genres, including the romance, the thriller, and the adventure tale. In addition to inquiring into the issue of how and with what literary means these novels attempt to imagine the future, we will also seek to understand: if and how literature imagines a process as widely taken to be “unimaginable” as is climate change, whether fiction might further human knowledge or awareness or if it might modify human actions in the world. We will engage in close and detailed reading of some of the most compelling contemporary Climate Fiction novels and learn to write critically about them.

Our readings will be chosen from: Richard Powers, Overstory or Bewilderment, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake or The Year of the Flood, Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl or The Water Knife, Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140, or 2312, or The Ministry for the Future.

This course may count towards the Comparative and World Literature, Film, Literature, and Visual Culture, or Interdisciplinary Studies specializations in the master of arts in literature program. This course may count towards the Interdisciplinary Studies specialization in the master of arts in liberal studies program. It may also count as a literature course or elective in the creative writing program.

Note: This course meets weekly online.