Reading the Rainforests
English 470 G
January – April 2006
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1400 – 1520
in Buchanan B 226
Instructor: Dr.
Joel Martineau
Homepage: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/joelmart/
This course will examine British Columbia’s rainforests as political
spaces. Michel Foucault’s ideas about discourses will help us understand these
seemingly natural spaces as cultural arenas in which stakeholders continually
contest privileges and power. We will work with two novels, a book of
discursive analysis and a book of investigative journalism. We will augment
these core texts with poems, an ethnobotanical story,
ecofeminist theories, Greenpeace pamphlets, a glimpse
into First Nations forestry practices and accounts of alternative forestry
practices.
Core texts
- Braun, Bruce. The
Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada’s
West Coast. U Minnesota
P, 2002.
- Grainger, M.A. Woodsmen of
the West. 1908. McClelland & Stewart, 1996.
- Marlatt,
Daphne. Ana Historic. 1988. Anansi, 1997.
- Vaillant,
John. The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed.
Knopf Canada,
2005.
Course requirements
- Attendance will be crucial.
- Two six- to twelve-page
research papers
- Final exam
Bonus marks
- Collaborative PowerPoint
presentation (up to 4 bonus marks for this voluntary undertaking)