First-Year Writing Seminar: Books to Read for the End of the World

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In a moment of history so populated with crises, such as climate change, economic and political instability, and international violence, it can be challenging to see the value or the usefulness of literature. What can reading a novel do for global warming? How does a short story engage with political unrest? What use is a book in the middle of a pandemic? This course will explore possible answers to these questions. We will read a series of novels and short stories to think more about how storytelling and creation in general suggest solutions to, coping mechanisms within, or new possibilities for a world that feels on the brink of collapse. We will also interrogate what we mean when we say “end of the world.” What forms a world, and what constitutes an ending? Our texts will feature more typical understandings of the terms as they foreground environmental collapse, plague, and nuclear warfare, but others will suggest alternate definitions: a world might be a home or a nation, ended when an individual moves away from it. Or, a world might be one’s relationships, ending when one is separated from others. As we read, we will consider this terminological nuance and pair these broader concepts with learning the fundamentals of literary criticism. This writing course will emphasize developing close reading skills and the effective communication of ideas by taking into consideration how writing constructs and deconstructs worlds. Some of our questions, therefore, will emphasize the literary arts in particular: How does form, from the short story to the graphic novel, impact the portrayal of catastrophe? How do different genres, such as science fiction versus horror or literary fiction, imagine (or do not imagine) resolutions to these crises? Through a series of readings and writing assignments (which will include two small papers and one, larger final project), we aim to…