{"id":8,"date":"2012-09-05T11:20:01","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T15:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/template\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2026-09-16T12:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:22:27","slug":"courses","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/tharpold\/courses\/","title":{"rendered":"Courses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

Courses<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Fall 2026<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

ENG 6824 \u2013 Proseminar in Environmental Humanities<\/strong>
Th, periods 3\u20135 (9:35 AM \u2013 12:35 PM), Turlington Hall 2349<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wide enough to keep you looking
Open enough to keep you moving
Dry enough to keep you honest
Prickly enough to make you tough
Green enough to go on living
Old enough to give you dreams

\u2013 Gary Snyder, \u201cEarth Verse,\u201d Mountains and Rivers Without End<\/em> (1996)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An introduction to best practices in research, teaching, and out-of-classroom activities in
the environmental humanities (EH), with emphasis on effective methods for
introducing undergraduate humanities students to the science of planetary climate
transformation and to literary media (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction) and visual media
(graphic novels, cinema) addressing the place of the human in a more-than-human
world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students will read widely from the emerging literature in ecopoetic and ecocritical
pedagogy, ecosophy, ecopoetry, and ecofiction, and will develop practical solutions for
adding EH theory and practice to their scholarly and teaching emphases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Spring 2027<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

AML 4170 \u2013 Ecopoetry & Ecopoetics
Location & times TBA<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An introduction to and eclectic survey of modern poetry addressing human relations with the more than human world in an age of planetary transformation. We\u2019ll read mostly poetry by American writers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, though we\u2019ll turn further back in time for a few important historical precursors. Graded course requirements include three short critical readings of poems chosen by the student from among those discussed in class, and participation in a collaborative group project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

LIT 4930 \u2013 The Lunar Voyage
Location & times TBA<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An eclectic survey of the literary canon of extraordinary voyages to and from our planet\u2019s nearest neighbor in space, and what \u2013 or who \u2013 we may discover there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a brief review of the planetary science and cultural meaning of the Moon \u2013 how it is, as Rebecca Boyle observes, the Moon \u201cmade us who we are\u201d \u2013 we\u2019ll start with two of the earliest translunar literary narratives, Lucian\u2019s Vera Historia<\/em> (True History<\/em>, Greece, 2nd c. CE, widely considered the first science fiction narrative) and The Tale of Princess Kaguya<\/em> (Japan, 10th c. CE). Then we\u2019ll leap ahead to the 17th century for Johannes Kepler\u2019s astronomy-lesson-as-fiction Somnium<\/em> (The Dream,<\/em> 1634) and Francis Godwin\u2019s and Cyrano de Bergerac\u2019s utopian fantasies The Man in the Moone<\/em> (Godwin, 1638) and The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon<\/em> (Cyrano, 1657). We\u2019ll travel a bit with copies of Rudolf Erich Raspe\u2019s Baron Munchausen\u2019s Narrative of His Marvellous Travels<\/em> (1785) in our pockets, before the 19th century presents us with the archetypal texts of the modern genre: Edgar Allan Poe (\u201cThe Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal,\u201d 1835), Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon<\/em>, 1865; Around the Moon<\/em>, 1870), H.G. Wells (First Men in the Moon<\/em>, 1901), and a few marginal but striking contemporary oddities, such as Pierre de S\u00e9l\u00e8nes\u2019s An Unknown World: Two Years on the Moon<\/em> (1896). Then we\u2019re headlong into the early twentieth century via the age of rocketry (Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard\u2019s visions of the voyage\u2019s physics and mechanics are determinate here) by way of the na\u00efve enthusiasm of the pulp, golden, and silver ages of science fiction. We\u2019ll read several short works in the launching-and-landing strains of the genre from the first half of the century, less comedic and self-reflective than their predecessors.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As July 20, 1969, approaches, the lunar voyage narrative begins to turn from the technological novelties of the journey and the funhouse mirrors of orbiting and treading on a dusty and lifeless pebble, to the deflationary psychic economy of we\u2019ve-arrived-now-what? and the melancholia of occupation. Elements of political satire and skepticism of scientific hubris \u2013 almost universal in this genre, and we\u2019ll address why that might be \u2013 grow more direct and critical (Philip K. Dick\u2019s Time Out of Joint,<\/em> 1959, for example). An imaginative exhaustion begins to set in, even as Armstrong takes his first small step; the Apollo program is ended in 1972, and actual<\/em> lunar voyage stories cease for at least another half-century. Thomas M. Disch\u2019s \u201cMoondust, the Smell of Hay, and Dialectical Materialism\u201d (1967), Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s \u201cWhitey on the Moon\u201d (1970), and J.G. Ballard\u2019s \u201cThe Man Who Walked on the Moon\u201d (1985) and \u201cNeil Armstrong Remembers His Journey to the Moon\u201d (1991) capture the declining mood at the century\u2019s close. Perversely this period, and the next few decades, represent a true golden age of lunar science, and international, publicly\u2013 and privately-funded unmanned<\/em> missions. But the urge to leave another footprint on the surface also calms considerably. We\u2019ll discuss the seeming reversal of the calming in narratives of the American Artemis and Chinese Chang\u2019e and Mengzhou programs, and the fevered, openly nationalist race between China and the US to \u201creturn\u201d humans to the Moon before this decade is out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we\u2019ll pass through a few disquieting visions of lunar colonization that counter the triumphalist fantasies of the first half o the twentieth century \u2013 for example, Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s \u201cThe Lunatics\u201d (1988) and Rosaura S\u00e1nchez and Beatrice Pita\u2019s Lunar Braceros 2125\u20132148 <\/em>(2026) \u2013 and conclude the course with Emily St. John Mandel\u2019s Sea of Tranquility<\/em> (2022), asking why it is that one of the most elegant and humane tales of lunar residence of the twenty-first century (thus far) should depend so heavily on literary gymnastics of time travel and meta-fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graded course requirements include three short critical papers on assigned readings for the course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Previous courses<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

(Last 5 years, most recent iterations)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n