LIT-158 American #Cottagecore

From Henry David Thoreau’s Walden to Taylor Swift’s Folklore, Americans have long romanticized “returning to the land.” But whose land is it, and who is – and who isn’t – permitted to “return” to it? We’ll examine depictions of the relationship between humans and nature by reading environmental literature alongside the cottagecore online aesthetic. In addition to Walden, readings may include A Son of the Forest (the first autobiography written by a Native American), The Land of Little Rain (an early feminist account of life in the California desert), and Silent Spring (the book that helped launch the environmental movement of the 1970s). We will analyze how these works – and their cottagecore social media cousins – reinforce, revise, or refuse idealizations of a simple "return" to nature.

Maximum Enrollment

First Year Course (18)

(First Year Course, Writing Intensive.)

Credits

1

Notes

(Genre)