Course Details

Course offered Spring 2018

HONORS 391 A: Ecopoetics Along Shorelines: Marsh, River, Island, Gutter (A&H / SSc / NSc)

HONORS 391 A: Ecopoetics Along Shorelines: Marsh, River, Island, Gutter (A&H / SSc / NSc)

SLN 14945 (View UW registration info »)

Cleo Woelfle-Erskin (School of Marine and Environmental Affairs)
Phone: 206-685-5675
Email: cleowe@uw.edu
Dan Paz (Comparative History of Ideas)
Email: danpaz@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 7 students

Honors Credit Type

Completion of seminar and spring break field studies trip required to receive 5 credits.
$175 course fee.
Contact uwhonors@uw.edu for registration.
This class will explore shadow histories of Seattle area shores and waterways, examining historic maps, oral histories, and on-the-ground legacies of drainage projects. We will visit tribal lands, reflecting on ecocultural politics of fishing, shellfishing, and fisheries management. We will practice close observation of tidal rhythms, and compose odes to the sea, sound, and tides. We will trace buried waterways, gutters, and storm drains of Seattle, and develop an apparatus for investigating hidden flows. We will contemplate post-sea level rise futures in which the city becomes an archipelago. Via shoreline exploration, students will be immersed in their own poetics of relation to area waters. Students will place their own observations into dialog with texts ranging from indigenous and mestiza poetics and queer feminist theory to European explorers’ logs and floodplain engineering documents. We will work on poetic and scientific writing, blueprints, and visual art.