Department of English
English 3700E ~
Women & Literature: Special Topics:
Indigeneity, Ecology and Women’s Writing
Full course.
Instructor: Professor Julia Emberley
Antirequisite(s): English 2700E.
Prerequisite(s): At least 60% in 1.0 of English 1020E or 1022E or 1024E or 1035E or 1036E or both of English 1027F/G and 1028F/G, or permission of the Department.
Course Description:
Eden Robinson, acclaimed writer, indigenous woman, and a member of the Heiltsuk and Hailsa nations, writes that the ecology or health of a community not only depends on the life of certain species or the preservation of the environment but how our connections to animals, plants, land, and sea bind us together. As a storyteller, Robinson is concerned with writing about these connections, as are many other Indigenous women writers.If the oolichans don’t return to our rivers, we lose more than a species. We lose a connection with our history, a thread of tradition that ties us to this particular piece of the Earth, that ties our ancestors to our children.
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Eden Robinson
Through lectures, workshops, field trips and tutorials, this course will study Indigenous women storytellers and how their stories reveal important knowledge about the meaning of ecology, of relations between and among people, animals and the earth. Students will read literary works by Indigenous women from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Through reading these
works students will gain an understanding of the philosophical and ethical issues that concern Indigenous people today and how their knowledge is relevant to environmental concerns, globally and locally.