Monday, January 31, 2022

HW for Feb 3: Peter Coates, "The Human and Natural Environment" (anthology, pp. 21-32)


 

Explain and give examples illustrating one or more of the following sentences:

"Appreciating the character of colonialism in North America . . . requires a biological perspective." (23)

"Clearing the forest for cultivation was partly a redemptive spiritual act" (25)

"The countryside has been a key ingredient in the construction of English and French national identities, but nature in its wilder forms has been a particular potent force in shaping the United States' sense of itself." (27)

"What has been saved has also been changed. The nature on display has been sanitized." (28)

"[E]nvironmentalists had succeeded in persuading the majority of Americans of the value of protecting the environment. They had not resolved the fundamental tension between the cultural and individual restraint that this ethic of protection requires and the acquisitiveness and individualism that has been the hallmark of the nation during most of its first two hundred years." (quote from Hal Rothman, p. 31)

Intersectionality

 


Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, Keywords for American Cultural Studies (3rd edition, 2020)

 






 

Thursday, January 27, 2022

HW: American Studies intro (anthology p. 15-17, 22)

 - Definitions: After reading Temperley and Bigsby's article, do you have a clear ideia of what are American Studies? If not, try to find a definition somewhere else (suggestion: see supplementary article sent by the teacher).

- Contradictions: discuss two possibly contradictory American values.




Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Monday, January 17, 2022

WELCOME


 Would you please share in the comments section the definitions of culture and nature that you have come across in your schooling years?

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 "...