CMLT-C 347 34264 Literature and Ideas: Darwin and the Americas
TR 5:45-8:15 SY 108
A+H, CSB
This class will trace the influence of Charles Darwin’s published works, from his account of the voyage of the Beagle to the Theory of Natural Selection, on fiction, poetry and drama written in the Americas. Ever since he set foot on the Galápagos Islands, the landscape of the Americas deeply affected how Charles Darwin came to understand the interrelationships between organisms and their environments. With this in mind, we will read works in which novelists, playwrights, story writers and even scientists from the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean (and those merely writing about South America) describe the interrelationships between humans, the environment, and the creatures—real and imaginary—which inhabit the American landscape. Among the texts we will be reading in this class will be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, short fiction by Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier, and Gabriel García Márquez, non-fiction by ethno-botanist Gary Nabhan, and the play Inherit the Wind, recently performed by the Cardinal Stage Company as part of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Themester.
