American Extinctions: The Making of the New World
Spring 2022 / Wednesdays 12:10-2:00PM / Kent Hall 405
Undergraduate seminar in English, 4 credits
Instructor: Ami Yoon, ay2382@columbia.edu
“Oh, men / Made earth inhuman”
—Herman Melville, Clarel 2.21.83-84
Course description
Every year, alarmed reports of lost biodiversity in rainforests fill news articles; animals are classified according to risk status, ranging from “secure” to “extinct”; and popular entertainment offers visions of dire extinction events. Contemporary portrayals of extinction often suggest the novelty of its occurrence and the urgency of halting its progress. Yet extinction has been a consistent and defining phenomenon in the American hemisphere since its colonization, unfolding in various modalities: as an historical narrative, an affective haunt, an ecological danger, and a colonial practice. This course will seek to make sense of the importance of extinction as both a foundational narrative and a lived reality of the “New World.” We will examine how extinction in multiple forms was necessary for the establishment of early colonial societies, and chart an alternative history of the American democracy through literary records that bear witness to how settlers’ claims of possession wreaked dispossession for other humans, animals, and plants on unparalleled scales. When extinction is imposed by forces of colonization, racism, sexism, anthropocentrism, and war, what possibilities of evasion or survival are there? What forms of remembrance can be had for extinguished lives? How does the idea of extinction push us to rethink how we understand life itself?
Through a close analysis of the literary fictions and non-fiction narratives of the New World, we will engage with premature impositions of extinct status on indigenous peoples, gendered extinctions of lives within colonial archives, mass exterminations of animals, and the afterlives of these diverse forms of extinction in our current climate. As we explore how the making of the New World was achieved through the unmaking of many kinds of lives, we will consider how the literature of America cannot be read apart from historical and social contexts of violence, as well as how the texts we read manage to lend new perspectives upon such contexts. Readings will include texts by James Fenimore Cooper, William Apess, Mary Prince, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner. Primary texts will be complemented by secondary literature drawn from Indigenous Studies, Black Studies, legal scholarship, and feminist theory, and we will end with Tiana Clark’s 2018 I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood as a work that collates the consequences of centuries of American extinctions. No prerequisites.
Learning objectives
Through course readings, discussions, and written work, we will
- Develop a deeper historical and cultural understanding of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature, including key genres such as natural history writing, the captivity narrative, the slave narrative, and the early American novel
- Develop strategies for reading and critically engaging with a variety of textual materials, such as historical primary sources, literary fiction, poetry, and scholarly essays
- Practice critical skills fundamental to literary studies, including close reading, applying critical or theoretical frameworks for analytical insight, and comparative textual analysis
- Refine practices of critical thinking and critical argumentation in both written expression and oral discussion
- Gain facility with digital archival research methodologies and digital humanities tools for literary studies, through exposure to and practice with using
- databases such as ECCO, EEBO, Gale Primary Sources, and ProQuest
- and digital notational tools such as Hypothes.is
Requirements & Grading
Attendance and participation (25%)
Attendance is crucial for our mutual development as an intellectual community. Seminars are most productive and enjoyable with robust participation from all members, so that we may explore multiple perspectives and ideas. Participation will encompass both your engagement in class meetings—oral contributions as well as active listening—and weekly annotation posts.
- Active listening is a key component of participation. Please show respect for your peers by attending to what they have to say and attempting to frame your contributions in relation to those of others as you engage in the ongoing conversation. It is also a mark of critical respect to be conscious of the way you are taking up discursive space in class.
- Annotation posts: On our course site, the primary texts for each week will be laid out for annotation posts to be made via Hypothes.is, an online collaborative annotation tool. An annotation might vary in length, but each should be at least the length of a tweet, and fewer than 150 words. You will be asked to write 3-4 annotations on any of the readings for the given week, for at least 8 out of the 14 weeks of the semester.
Presentation (15%)
After the first two weeks of classes, we will begin weekly presentations, during which you will give a presentation on the week’s readings, setting the stage or the direction for class discussion (10-15 minutes). Presenters are encouraged to meet with me in advance to discuss ideas and plans. Presentations should address some or all of the following:
- Place the current week’s reading(s) in context with prior materials covered, or within a historical, cultural, or social context
- Identify specific passages to which you would like to draw the class’s attention, for questions, analysis, and discussion
- Identify specific connections between multiple course texts
- Introduce specific questions raised by a given text
You may choose to incorporate audiovisual equipment into your presentation, although you will not be required to do so. Depending on the class size, there may be more than one presenter for the week, in which case you may also choose to work together for a shared presentation.
Short response essays (25%)
There will be two short response essays (3-5 pages) over the course of the semester: please see the course schedule for deadlines. Around two weeks before each response essay is due, suggested prompts will be provided, as loose guidelines, but you are free to write your response on a topic of your own devising. You are welcome to turn in your response essays any time before the deadlines, as best fits your own academic schedule.
- For one of the response essays, you will have the option of composing a creative assignment, especially if it is one that you would like to develop into a final project. You will also be asked to write a 1- to 2-page rationale (Times New Roman, 12-pt. font, double-spaced) explaining the connection of your creative response with a particular course reading or critical idea.
Final project (35%)
In the last few weeks of the semester, there will be scheduled conference times for which you will be able to sign up, so that we can discuss your final project plans. Conferences will be optional, although recommended. All essays should adhere to either the MLA or the Chicago citation style.
- Option 1: Long essay
Edgar Allan Poe wrote: “Thought is logicalized by the effort at written expression.” Formal writing is a way to organize your thinking and sharpen the clarity of your ideas. Your final essay of 10-15 pages may be on a subject of your choice, but I will expect your choice of a final topic to be precise and original. - Option 2: Co-authored long research essay
Students interested in a common essay topic may work together in groups of 2 or 3 on research and writing to produce an essay of 15-20 pages. The topic should be complex, requiring extended scholarly research and incorporation of that research into a mutually developed argument. Each student will be given a partner evaluation form (or forms), to be turned in along with the essay, in which you will be asked to provide feedback on the division of tasks involved in the co-authoring process and assess the extent of collaborative success. - Option 3: Creative portfolio or project
The extended creative project option is intended as an opportunity for you to engage with a long-term project exploring, extending, or elaborating upon ideas and themes raised by the course. Interdisciplinary projects, applying your studies and interests outside of class to some aspect of our course, can generate productive engagements. Projects may be independently accomplished, or undertaken in collaboration with other members of our class—e.g., a co-produced short film, collaborative multimedia project, photo essay, digital exhibition.- To accompany your creative project, you will be asked to write a short critical rationale (2-3 pages, Times New Roman, 12-pt. font, double-spaced), explaining your choices and the relevance of your project to our course.
Course Schedule
N.B. Weeks with a comparatively intensive reading load are marked with an asterisk (*), so that you may allocate reading time accordingly.
Jan 19. INTRODUCTION: IN THE TIME OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
In-class reading: Elizabeth Kolbert, from The Sixth Extinction
I. Early Extinctions
Jan 26. COLONIZING THE NEW WORLD
Christopher Columbus, Journal of the First Voyage (ca. 1492-93), pp. 89-228
Sylvia Wynter, “The Pope Must Have Been Drunk The King of Castile a Madman: Culture as Actuality, and the Caribbean Rethinking Modernity”
- Recommended: Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “Good Day Columbus”
Feb 2. FICTIONS OF EXTINCTION & INDIGENOUS SURVIVAL*
Hans Sloane, Introduction to A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbardos, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (1707)
Tony Castanha, “A New Version of History”
Sylvia Wynter, “Novel and History, Plot and Plantation”
Feb 9. EXTINCTION & ENSLAVEMENT*
Benjamin Moseley, A Treatise on Sugar, pp. 75-173, 184-205 (1799; 1800)
Vincent Brown, “Eating the Dead: Consumption and Regeneration in the History of Sugar”
Christina Sharpe, “The Ship: The Trans*Atlantic”
- Recommended: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species”
II. Gendered Extinctions
Feb 16. EXTINCTIONS IN THE ARCHIVE: THE ATLANTIC WORLD
Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”
Marisa Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, pp. 1-12, 124-48
Wendy Anne Warren, “‘The Cause of Her Grief’: The Rape of a Slave in Early New England”
DUE: response essay 1
Feb 23. EXTINCTIONS IN THE ARCHIVE: PURITANS
Mary Rowlandson, The sovereignty and goodness of God: together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed: being a narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and related documents (1682)
Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, pp. 246-98
III. Democracy’s Erasures
Mar 2. THE HAUNT OF EXTINCTIONS*
William Bartram, excerpts from Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulgles, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws (1791)
Tiffany Lethabo King, “The Map (Settlement) and the Territory (the Incompleteness of Conquest)”
- Recommended: Avery Gordon, from Ghostly Matters
Mar 9. RE-NARRATING A HISTORY OF DEATH
William Apess, Eulogy on King Philip (1836)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Chapters XVII-XVIII, Vol. 1, from Democracy in America
Mar 23. THE “VANISHING INDIAN”
James Fenimore Cooper, excerpts from The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
Thomas Cole, The Last of the Mohicans: The Death of Cora; Distant View of Niagara Falls
Mar 30. KNOWLEDGE BEYOND CIVIL EXTINCTION
Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831)
Nat Turner, The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late insurrection in Southampton, VA., as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray (1831)
Colin (Joan) Dayan, “Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies”
- Recommended: Fred Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom”
IV. Nonhuman Catastrophes
Apr 6. GEOLOGICAL EXTINCTIONS
Charles Lyell, excerpts from Principles of Geology, Vol. 1 (1830)
William Cullen Bryant, “A Walk at Sunset,” “A Hymn to Death,” “An Indian at the Burial-Place of His Fathers,” “Thanatopsis,” “The Prairies” (ca. 1830)
Kathryn Yusoff, excerpts from A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
DUE: response essay 2
Apr 13. SILENT SLAUGHTERS
Herman Melville, “The Encantadas” (1854)
Charles Darwin, excerpts from Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
Amasa Delano, excerpts from Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817)
- Recommended: Ursula Heise, Imagining Extinction, Introduction & Chapter 1
Apr 20. “THEY CAN LEARN NOTHING SAVE THROUGH SUFFERING”*
William Faulkner, “The Bear” (1942)
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “Indian Country”
- Recommended: David Sztybel, “Animals as Persons”
V. After Extinction
Apr 27. REMEMBERING THE DEAD & LIVING THROUGH
Tiana Clark, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (2018)
- Recommended: Silvia Federici, “Women, Reproduction, and the Commons”
- Recommended: Daryl Baldwin, Margaret Noodin, and Bernard C. Perley, “Surviving the Sixth Extinction: American Indian Strategies for Life in the New World”