SHUM 4697 - Is Nature Silent?

(crosslisted) COML 4697
(ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with COML 6697/SHUM 6697.

J. Mueller.

Thoreau, in 1841: “Nature is always silent and unpretending as at the break of day.” He had just contrasted the robin’s song with “the bustle and impatience of man.” Why could silence contain birdsong but not human noise? This course explores the idea and representation of nature’s silence—as a positive ideal; as soundlessness; as wordlessness; and as extinction. Heeding the environmental criticism that interrogates the contrast between silent “Nature” and noisy humanity, we will remain curious about what compels us in accounts of nature’s multivalent silence. Concurrently, we will examine writings that attend to natural sound. Investigating silence, we will also strive to better understand what we mean, and what could be meant, by nature.