Kommentar |
Water is not only an elemental force and a vital matter for all living beings but it is also a deeply poetic and symbolic substance with an enduring history in the human imagination. This lecture series will examine how water serves as both a physical backdrop and a symbolic motif in North American literature. Ranging from water’s pivotal role in struggles for environmental justice, the imagination of water futures to aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of water in poetic works this lecture series explores the many ways in which water shapes North American literature.
Students will be introduced to different genres in which human-water relations play a pivotal role – thrillers, crime fiction, picture books, memoirs, poems, non-fiction, novels, and films/TV- series – as well as to different forms and bodies of water – glaciers, wetlands, rivers, lakes, oceans – and to political issues such as Indigenous peoples’ water rights, critical race studies and to theoretical approaches such as material ecocriticism, water’s aesthetic qualities, as well ecological grief and mourning.
There will be an array of different lecturers from FSU, from across Europe, and from North America all working in the fields of ecocriticism, environmental humanities, and blue humanities. There will be a few background texts in the moodle room, but no other texts have to be read in preparation. |