Contemporary societies across the world are experiencing a "crisis of nature," or rather the crisis of nature's identity when such identity is thought in opposition to "society," "culture," "artificial," etc. The collapse of this split is brought to us by the consequences of environmental destruction or degradation, or by scientific changes such as biotechnology and genetic engineering, among others. Challenging this dualism has also been a major concern in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. This course is an introduction to current debates on nature/culture across disciplines: post-structuralism, cultural studies, environmental history, political ecology, Marxism, literary ecocriticism, bio-cultural studies, liberation theology, and cognitive studies. Against essentialist ideas of nature, the theory of the social construction of nature argues that our ideas, representations, values and practices regarding nature are originated in culture and the social rather than in nature itself. The opposition nature/culture, goes the argument, is a "mental representation" or "construct" transmitted through social interaction. In recent years, however, this model has been under revision. What we usually call nature is a site of biological, environmental, social, and cultural relations. "Ecology" means in this case attempts to relocate the theory of the cultural construction and social production of nature within the interaction of the subject and society, the body and the environment. The course includes readings from David Abram, Giorgio Agamben, Leonardo Boff, Lawrence Buell, William Cronon, Arturo Escobar, Felix Guattari, Donna Haraway, David Harvey, Enrique Leff, Carolyn Merchant, Kay Milton, Edgar Morin, Dana Phillips, Vandana Shiva, Reuven Tsur, Raymond Williams, and Donald Worster. The theoretical readings will be accompanied by movies, short stories, poems, and literary essays. Format: seminar. Requirements: Active participation in class discussions. Oral presentations. Each student completes, in stages, a research project on the controversy of the social construction of nature. A 12-page background paper at mid-semester will review and integrate the theory read until then. The subsequent research paper incorporates the background paper, with revisions, into a 20-page analysis of the controversy. This paper will include the remaining readings in the course as well as an interpretation of the meaning of the controversy itself. Prerequisites: 1 100-level course in literature or philosophy, or permission of instructor. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to Environmental Studies concentrators and Comparative Literature majors. This course satisfies "Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences" requirement for the Environmental Studies concentration.

Hour: MARCONE