Take-home final exam:
You must answer the question in Section 1 and select three questions to answer in Section 2.
Section 1
Over this course, we have covered many of the ways in which we can perceive, experience, and value forms of ecologies, environmentalism, and “nature” in Irish literature and culture. Through both theory and practice, we have examined various ways literary culture has responded to past, current, or future events in the modern environmental crisis. For this mandatory question, you need to write at least a 500-word response answering the following question:
How have the works we read in the course changed the way you perceive and value Irish environmental literature?
Please provide at least three literary and/or cultural examples (literature, film, or visual culture) and one critical example (essays) to support your response. You can use the pronoun “I” in your answer.
(The readings are listed at the very end of this document.)
Section 2
Select only three out of the following five questions to answer. Each answer should be at least 300 words long.
. 1) Explain how place, space, and memory function in Heaney’s “Digging” and James Joyce’s “The Mirage of the Fisherman of Aran” and/or “The City of the Tribes.” In your answer, make sure to briefly define terms, such as the difference between place and space. ?
. 2) Apply a material ecocritical reading to Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass. Your answer must define material ecocriticism to provide context. You can select only a portion of the novel to cover. ?
. 3) Explain the concept of “Solastalgia” (i.e., homesickness from environmental damage) and apply it to Boland’s “In Our Own Country” and Meehan’s “Death of a Field.” ?
. 4) Apply an ecofeminist reading to Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…. Your answer must define ecofeminism to provide context. You can select only a portion of the play to cover. ?
. 5) Define the real and imaginative elements of oil in the energy humanities. Explain how O’Donnell’s The Pipe or O’Kelly’s Little Thing, Big Thing is illustrative of the energy humanities and ecocriticism more generally. You might wish to include the Anthropocene in your response. ?
Each response must answer the question directly and provide textual support as evidence.
Readings:
Barry, Kevin. “Fjord of Killary.” The New Yorker (Feb. 1, 2010).
http://www .newyorker .com/magazine/2010/02/01/fjord-of-killary
Boland, Evan, “In Our Own Country” (2008) and Oliver Comerford, Distance (2008). The Poetry Project: Poetry and Art from Ireland. http://thepoetryproject.ie/poems/distance-oliver- comerford-in-our-own-country-eavan-boland/ (watch the video and read the poem)
Boyer, Dominic and Imre Szeman. “The Rise of Energy Humanities.” University Affairs (Feb. 12, 2014): http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/the-rise-of-energy-humanities
Crutzen, Paul and Eugene Stoermer. “The Anthropocene.” Global Change Newsletter 41 (2000): 17- 18.
http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41. pdf
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. Boston: Thurston, Torry, and Company, 1849. Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29433/29433-h/29433-h.htm
Heaney, Seamus. “Digging” (1966). Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177017 (listen to the audio link of Heaney reading)
Heaney, Seamus. “Feeling into Words.” Preoccupations (1980). https://boginsdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/feeling-into-words.pdf
Gladwin ~ Irish Ecocriticism Syllabus ~ Concordia University ~ 2
Kavanagh, Patrick. “The Great Hunger” (1942). All Poetry: http://allpoetry.com/The-Great-Hunger
Meehan, Paula. “Death of a Field” (2005). Poetry International:
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/3065/auto/0/DEATH-OF-A- FIELD
Soper, Kate. “Beyond Consumerism: Reflections on Gender Politics, Pleasure and Sustainable Consumption.” KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING 3-4 (2009): 92-100. https://tidsskrift.dk/index.php/KKF/article/view/44314
Ullrich, J.K. “Climate Fiction: Can Books Save the Planet?” Atlantic (Aug. 14, 2015). http://www .theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/08/climate-fiction-margaret- atwood-literature/400112
Yeats, W.B. Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1903). http://www.aughty.org/pdf/cathleen_ni_houlihan.pdf
Yeats, W.B. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892). Poetry
Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172053