FALL 2007 HONORS COURSES

HONR 299L Exploring the Mystery of Amazonia: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Environmental Issues
Tuesday/Thursday 11 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Dr. Regina Igel, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Students can earn credit for either HONR 299L or SPAN/PORT228A, but not both.

This course focuses on writings, videos, and movies that provide a concept and a set of cultural values related to the Amazonian ecosystem encompassing several countries in South America. The course has three main components: 1. It develops insights on the ecology of the South American rain forest, and on the relationships and frictions between the natural environment and human predators, and the dominant and subordinate cultures in the region; 2. It introduces students to viewpoints expressed by U.S. and non-U.S. scientific explorers, historians, travelers, researchers, adventurers, fictionists, ecofeminists, laborers' and Amerindians' (Indians) advocates; 3. It examines folktales, narratives, and testimonials of the Indigenous population or their descendants as recorded by anthropologists and other scholars.

The course is developed through readings, lectures, class discussions, and the viewing of documentaries and movies set in the Amazonian region. Students will be acquainted with finely tuned writings on the natural resources of the Amazon region, and on some theories, practices, activities and folk beliefs related to the natural environment, human survival, and popular misconceptions on that diversified region. It will explore subjects related to the Amazon ecosystem and values pertinent to a non-Western society, such as of the Amerindians, caboclos and other mestizos in the Amazonian Basin. Course will focus mostly, but not exclusively, in the Brazilian region, by far the largest and most scrutinized among the areas covered by the Amazonian rain forest. Students will be required to write a weekly journal on assigned articles, movies, or documentaries.

Course grade will be based on two quizzes, a panel or individual oral presentation, a term-paper (based on the oral presentation), and a take-home final examination.

Tentative Reading List:

Articles:
Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader, Landmarks in Literary Theory
Betty J. Meggers, Amazonia, Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise (rev. ed).
Eugene P. Parker, ed., The Amazon Caboclo: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Susan E. Place, ed., Tropical Rainforests, Latin American Nature and Society in Transition
Frank A. Salamone, The Yanomami and Their Interpreters--Fierce People or Fierce Interpreters?
Candace Slater, Dance of the Dolphin, Transformations in the Amazonian Imagination
Roger D. Stone, Dreams of Amazonia

Excerpts of Fiction/Folktales:
Betty Mindlin, Unwritten stories of the Surui Indians of Rondonia
Cecile Pineda, The Love Queen of the Amazon
Marcio Souza, The Emperor of the Amazon
K Simoneau and J. Wilbert, eds., Folkliterature of the Yanomami Indians

Documentaries:
The Amazon, Ecuador, Sivam, Chico Mendes
Xingu: The Yanomanis
The Decade of Destruction

Movies:
The Emerald Forest, directed by John Boorman
Bye Bye, Brazil, directed by Rui Guerra

CORE: Literature [HL] and Human Cultural Diversity [D]