FRS 002BB — Sec. 001 — (2 unit) — CRN 65519 — T 10:00-11:50am — 203 Wellman
The Poetics of Farming from Hesiod to the San Joaquin
Instructor: Julia Major, Department of English College of Letters and Science

Description: This class examines literature about farming, including myth, narrative and poetry, ranging from the early writings of the Greeks, the Hebrew Bible, and the Latin poetry of Virgil and Horace, through Renaissance pastoral, to colonial America and present-day California. The purpose of the class is move beyond the accustomed literary image of America as wilderness in order to recognize that farming and the consequent fostering of community based on the land has crucially shaped our national literary consciousness. Furthermore, as wild America recedes into the past, this class seeks to help students forge a living connection to the earth around them, right here in the valley of central California, through an understanding of and engagement with the local poetics of American farming. Important American authors we will read include Mary Austin, Wendell Berry, and Mike Madison. The class will culminate in a field trip and literary examination of the land around us as presented in the work of local author and farmer Mike Madison.

Format: The seminar will meet for two hours each week. Class time will be occupied by lecture and, discussion during the first hour, followed by oral readings and student presentations during the second hour. Most of the readings will be compiled into a class reader, containing selections from Hesiod, Theocritus, Virgil, Horace, the Hebrew Bible, the Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser, Henry Thoreau, various modem American poets, and Mike Madison. In addition, we will read portions of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain, in its entirety. Grading: Grading will be based on quality of responses in class discussion and general contributions to the class (25%); a short interpretation and oral reading based a text on the class syllabus, 300-500 words (25%); and a collaborative research report and class presentation, 700-800 words (50%).

About the Instructor: