Stories of Nature

What is nature? Are humans part of it or outside it? How has this boundary diverged over time and space, and how has it been expressed? This seminar tackles these questions by exploring stories of nature from various epistemic traditions. Through ten case studies, we will investigate how the human-nonhuman boundary has been expressed through storytelling in creation myths, natural histories, fiction and journalistic writing, documentaries, and artistic creations. Methodologically, we will survey how scholars have reflected on this boundary from the history of science, animal studies and indigenous studies, while learning to write stories of nature of our own.