ENGL 7059 The Politics of Nature: Literature and Theory

This seminar places theoretical models in dialogue with novels from the Global South that foreground questions of environmental violence, governance, and subjective change. We shall investigate how contemporary theory redefines the relationship between nature, politics, and subjectivity, and how literary texts from the Global South engage these shifting frameworks. The course is organized around three major theoretical approaches that have reshaped debates about ecology, power, and transformation: Bruno Latour's political ecology, Michel Foucault's account of biopolitics, and Catherine Malabou's philosophy of plasticity. Together, these frameworks provide conceptual tools for analyzing how environmental crises, historical inequality, and political transformations shape contemporary thought and literary form. Read alongside interlocutors such as Michel Serres, Latour's work introduces students to science studies and the rethinking of relations among scientific knowledge, ecological systems, and political life. Foucault's account of power/knowledge and biopolitics examines how modern authority operates through the production and regulation of life, bodies, and populations. Malabou's post-deconstructive philosophy of plasticity offers a model for thinking subjective change, resilience, and rupture across biological, social, and political domains. Taken together, these perspectives challenge inherited divisions between nature and society, knowledge and power, and stability and transformation. Through sustained close reading and theoretical analysis, students examine how literary form reflects and contests emerging understandings of nature and political life. Emphasis is placed on interdisciplinary inquiry, encouraging students to connect philosophical argument with literary interpretation while situating both within broader debates about ecology, power, and global change. Fulfills Theory requirement for MA students.