ENGL 591 A1: Literary Ecologies and Habitat Study

S. Krotz

This course explores Canadian literatures “obliquely” through the innovative methods of what Laurie Ricou has termed “habitat studies.” A form of literary ecology, habitat studies expands practices of reading to engage deeply with the more-than-human communities and spaces with and in which we live. We begin, then, with Canada not as a human and cultural construct, but as a set of shared habitats in bioregions that pay no heed to our borders. Each student will be assigned an animal, plant, or feature of the topography that will become their “guide.” Over the course of the term, they will research their guide’s complex ecological significance through a diverse assemblage of texts that name, describe, and respond to it into story and song.

As we explore and experiment with this method, we will consider the following questions: How is literature ecological, and how is ecology literary? What definitions of nature and wilderness, animal, plant, and human define our scholarly practices and relationships? How might literary ecology, conceived through habitat study, transform these notions as well as notions of literary history, reading, and place? How does this method bring Indigenous writing and thinking into conversation with settler literatures? How does it invite us to “listen,” as Ricou puts it, beyond our human languages altogether? How have writers articulated such practices of listening? What happens when we let a species or feature of the land (instead of an author or literary movement) guide our reading, research, and perhaps even the forms of our scholarly writing? How does this highly focused yet interdisciplinary approach to literary study help us attend to the particularities of our habitats?

We will conduct as many seminar meetings as possible outside. Please let the professor know of any accessibility needs so that accommodations can be made.

A portion of our reading list will be generated by the students, whose habitat guides will become integral to the development of the course. Our discussions will also be supported by a mix of literary and theoretical sources selected by the instructor, which may include:

Jeanette Armstrong, “Land Speaking”
John Borrows, “Earth-Bound: Indigenous Resurgence” and “Natural Law” (from
Canada’s Indigenous Constitution)
Daniel Coleman, Yardwork
Don McKay, Vis à Vis: Notes on Poetry and Wilderness
Laurie Ricou, Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory
Selections from Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems
Leanne Simpson, “Land As Pedagogy” (from As We Have Always Done)