ENGL 196 A-Z - Readings in Literature or Special Studies

Semester Hours: 1-3

Current Special Topics

ENGL 196N - Food and Literature

As the climate house that allows for what we call “civilization” burns down, business as usual in the Global North keeps on fueling the fire. Our foodways are a core element of that business as usual. And because businesses as usual are established, maintained, and, perhaps, challenged and changed by the stories a culture tells about itself and the world, one important way to study how foodways are implicated in the existential but fundamentally ignored crisis of climate change is to study literature in which food plays an important part. In this course, we’ll do that by considering such works as Don DeLillo’s White Noise, Agustina Bazterrica Tender is the Flesh, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “On the Slave Trade,” Amelia Alderson Opie’s “The Black Man’s Lament,” Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” Agnes Varda’s “The Gleaners and I” (a film), and (also a film) Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” (This is a rough list; the actual syllabus may differ somewhat).

Crosslisted as: FST 005C 

Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
WSC 001  or WSC 002 . The topics of the “special studies” courses change every semester. Please consult the English Department Course Description Booklet for topics offered in a particular semester.

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Fall 2025

January 2026

Spring 2026