This course will explore a range of literary responses to the period commonly known as the anthropocene, understood as the geological age in which the prevailing economic and social paradigms of humans have conditioned changes in climate and the environment. We will read foundational texts in environmental perception and activism (Ruskin’s “Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century” and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring) in dialogue with modernist work engaging with urban landscapes (William Carlos Williams’s Paterson). We will then open onto a wide range of contemporary texts that engage the natural and constructed environment in crisis. In tandem with our readings, fieldwork throughout Chicago (on the Chicago River, at local Superfund sites, at the Chicago Architecture Biennial) will expand our awareness of how global and regional crises manifest locally, and introduce students to new methods of engaging with ecological challenges. (20th/21st)