English 247-001
Literature and Human Experience: Evolution in Literature
Instr: Nguyen, Phong
Office: CRT 292; 229-5025
e-mail: pvnguyen@uwm.edu
Office hours: MW; 10:00-11:00am
Course Information: MW; 11:00am-12:15pm; BUS S165
Course Description
In this course we will focus on how "human nature" was conceived by writers of the 19th century, especially in relation to, and in reaction to, Darwin's theory of evolution. In America, particularly, the flourishing of scientific naturalism came at a time of complex feelings toward "nature" itself, when Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman were at work idealizing the natural, at the same time that rapid industrialization, wars with Native populations, and frontier mythology, simultaneously taught fear of, and divine control over, nature. Melville's Moby Dick powerfully illustrates the ambivalence towards nature present in 19th century consciousness. But mostly, these writers maintained a notion of "nature" that was separate from the "human," and used this dichotomy of civilized and savage to rationalize superior attitudes toward, and the malevolent treatment of, non-industrialized peoples.
Questions we will pursue in this course include: How did these writers position the "human" in relation to the "natural," and where did those assumptions originate? How did competing theories of natural evolution and social evolution authorize the social arguments of writers who presupposed an ontological "destiny" for mankind? How were these theories used to construct "race" in the 19th century?
