EL3100 - Green Worlds: Environment and Literature

[Offered in even-numbered years]

Humans have used literature to explain, explore, imagine and question their environments for centuries. In this subject, discover how literature illustrates and shapes the relationship between humanity and our environment. Interrogate how we define nature, human, and other, and learn to utilise the theoretical framework of ecocriticism. Discover how the environment is conceptualised in literary works across ages and across genres. This subject will enable students to explore a range of texts, from Indigenous literature to early modern conceptualisations of nature, to local Queensland literature and modern imagined environments in science fiction. We will consider the relationship between the environment, literature, politics, history, environmental justice and climate change. Green Worlds will also provide students with opportunities to contextualise their own creative and critical writing within place and gain practical understanding of the relationship between what they read and the spaces in which they live.

Learning Outcomes

• assess the representation of the environment in literature and its relationship to sociocultural attitudes;
• explain and employ ecocritical theoretical approaches in the analysis of literary texts;
• integrate and critique theoretical approaches and literary texts in relation to their depiction of human-environment relations;
• compose critical and creative responses that demonstrate skills in oral, digital and written communication.

Subject Assessment

• Participation > Class participation - (20%) - Individual
• Written > Essay (including multi-draft) 1 - (50%) - Individual
• Performance/Practice/Product > Creative work - (30%) - Individual.

Note: Minor variations might occur due to the continuous Subject quality improvement process, and in case of minor variation(s) in assessment details, the Subject Outline represents the latest official information.