Queer Ecologies: Reading American Landscapes

This course uses ecocriticism and queer theory as its critical lenses. Through them, we will examine a variety of modern and contemporary representations of American landscapes (novels, films, TV shows, performance art, journalism, etc.). We will consider how these

representations encode or oppose gender and sexual norms, as well as racial and class norms; in turn, we will consider how they condition our own experiences of American life. In addition to producing new textual readings through the lenses of ecocriticism and queer

theory, we will consider how those lenses intersect (or, sometimes, don’t). By the end of this course, you should be able to: 1) understand the methods of and major debates within ecocriticism and queer theory; 2) efficiently locate and digest the main arguments in a piece of

scholarship; 3) analyze a variety of cultural texts from a critical/theoretical perspective; 4) engage intellectually with your peers; and 5) produce sophisticated academic writing that reflects your unique voice.

Full syllabus (PDF): ASLE_Syllabi_QueerEcologiesSeymour