Final HW: Walt Whitman and Derek Walcott (pp. 279-283)

1. Do some research on D. Walcott and try to account for the different perspectives of the ocean (and sea-crossings) in Walcott's "The Sea is History" and Whitman's "Passage to India".

2. Again on Steve Mentz's effort to deterritorialize academic concepts - what answer can we give to his proposal of "horizons" (as sites of transitions and fusion) as metaphors for futurity that "span green pastures and blue seas"? (xvii - anthology p. 286)

(photo Edward Burtinsky, Oil Spin 13, Gulf of Mexico, 2010)

Presentation: Climbing Matterhorn Peak (João, José, Mariana M)

 

HW for May 5: Walt Whitman: Passage to India (pp. 279-281), and Mentz, "Deterreiorializing Preface" (285-287)

 1. How is Whtiman's title justified - how is it justifiable?

2. What are the positive/euphoric aspects of Whtiman's assumptions about "all seas [having been] crossed"? Do you find difficult or dangerous ideas in the poem?

3. What do you think of Mentz's new research concepts in the "deterreiorializing preface" to his book The Ocean (2020)?

Texts that may appear in the test

Conceptual

Mark Paterson, "Cultural Geography"

Segreti, "Dominant Values in American Culture"

Coates, "The Human and Natural Environment"

Crampton, "Mappings"

Garreau, intro to The Nine Nations

Snyder, "Unnatural Writing"

Mentz, "Interlude: Port of New York"

F. Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the American Frontier"

Leo Marx, "the Machine in the Garden"

S. Shama, "

Documental and Literary Representations

Solnit, "The Walmart Biennal"

Linda Hogan, "What Holds the Water, What Holds the Light"

D. Chávez, "Crossing Bitter Creek"

Rachel Carson, "Surface Waters and Underground Seas"

Harriette Harnow, chap. 2 of Hunter's Horn

Scott Edward Anderson, excerpts from "Dwelling"

John Muir, "My First Summer in the Sierra"

Walt Whitman

HW for May 3: Ecotopia

 Watch this video with Ernest Callenbach about his visionary novel Ecotopia (1975), about the secession from the US of the eco-minded in Northern California, Oregon and Washington. Comment on two good ideas devised by the citizens of Ecotopia and/or two that would have met with serious challenges or resistance.

HW for April 26: Simon Schama and John Muir (anthology, pp. 264-277)

Choose one or more 

1. What different views of how to go about preserving and (non-)representing nature are presented in Simon Schama's landscape and memory.

2. Describe your memory of a landscape in the US, and how it relates to what Simon Schama explains.

3. Pick a passage from John Muir's journal and analyze/ discuss it.

HW for April 21: questions to our guest, Scott Edward Anderson, author of Dwelling: an Ecopoem (anthology pp. 255-263)

 Please post on the comment box questions or impressions / comments on the texts selected from Scott Edward Anderson, or on other facets of the life and work of an "ecopoet", descendant from Portuguese immigrants (see more here https://portuguese-american-journal.com/the-journey-scott-edward-anderson-at-home-away-from-home-interview/) and an environmental activist (here is his blog https://www.thegreenskeptic.com) who also collaborated with the NGO The Nature Conservancy(https://www.nature.org/en-us/).