English/CULTRST 743 Reimagining Nature: Science and Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century - English & Cultural Studies
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Wednesdays, 9:30-12:20, CNH 317 Winter, 2022
Peter Walmsley
walmsley@mcmaster.ca
English/CULTRST 743
Reimagining Nature: Science and Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
This course will consider how British cultural production in the long eighteenth century articulated the
entwined projects of natural philosophy and imperial expansion.
The long eighteenth-century saw the emergence of what Mary Louise Pratt has called “planetary
consciousness” as European capital and consumerism fuelled an explosion in global trade. Science
abetted this process, building, for example, new navigational instruments to permit the mapping of the
planet and establishing taxonomic systems to inventory exotic natural kinds. These transformations
enabled unprecedented mobilities of plants, people, and other animals. Plant products—in the form of
drugs, dyes, cloth, and food—became the most valuable and heavily traded commodities around the
globe, a trade that profited from the coerced labour of millions of slaves and indentured servants. The
colony—and the plantation in particular—came to serve as the crucible of the Anthropocene, with
landscapes remade to mirror the needs of metropolitan capital. In parallel with capital’s abstraction of
commodities, objectivity emerged as a scientific practice that sought to isolate natural kinds,
disentangling them from traditional and local human understandings and from the environments in which
they live. As Carolyn Merchant put it, capital and science worked together to effect “the death of nature.”
We will chart how these ideological developments were variously embraced, negotiated, and resisted;
many writers, artists, and craftspeople, both in the metropolis and in the colonial contact zone, sought to
sustain older ways of knowing the world and invest their landscapes and the biological beings that inhabit
them with meanings and values.
Our primary archive will be British, colonial, and Indigenous cultural production (literary, visual, and
material), and it will range widely—including poems, scientific treatises, natural history taxonomies,
drawings, prints, paintings, novels, ethnographies, a slave narrative, and an addiction narrative. There will
be ample opportunity to explore McMaster’s collection of books from this period. Participants in this
seminar will work at the intersections of critical science studies, environmentalism, and anti-capitalist and
anti-colonial critique. While we will build together a common framework of influential perspectives on
these materials, you are encouraged to bring your own theoretical approaches and social concerns to the
table, and to share your critical practices with the group.
Office hours:
CNH 314: Wednesdays 2:30 to 4:00
If you need to schedule an appointment outside these office hours, please email me at
walmsley@mcmaster.ca. I am always glad to meet with you.Texts:
One longer work has been ordered through the bookstore, but you can also find it in McMaster Library or
online.
• Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Oxford)
Other works and critical readings will be posted on Avenue under Content or made available through links
on this syllabus.
Evaluation:
Two Position Papers (each 3 pages, double-spaced) – 25%
Seminar Participation – 5%
Natural Histories Project (2 PowerPoint Slides due Feb. 27 and a 5 to 7-minute oral
presentation on Mar. 2) – 25%
Essay proposal (500 words) plus bibliography (min. 5 sources), due Mar. 30 – 10%
Essay (12-15 pages double spaced plus bibliography), due Apr. 20 – 35%
Assignment Details:
Position Papers
You will each write two position papers (3 pages double spaced). The paper that earns the higher
grade will be weighted at 15% and the other paper will be weighted at 10%. These papers should be
focused, argumentative interventions that take an analytical stand on a course reading or introduce us to
a relevant critical/theoretical text, testing its assumptions and framework against a course reading. Your
position papers should, above all, be designed to generate lively, high-level in-class discussion. Please
email me by Friday Jan. 14 with a list of your top six position paper choices in order of preference, and I
will make an assignment with an eye to balancing papers across the term.
Please submit your position papers to Avenue using the Discussions tool (under
“Communication”), posting each assignment in the Discussion forum “Position Papers.” You must submit
your position paper by noon on the Monday prior to the relevant Wednesday class meeting.
We will use position papers to generate some of the class discussion, so while you will not be
asked to formally present your papers to the class, come ready to respond to questions and elaborate
upon your ideas. And please make sure to read and reflect upon your colleagues’ position papers before
each class.
Participation
Please come to our meetings well prepared, having thoroughly and thoughtfully read the texts
and identified themes and strategies that you find compelling or problematic. Each week you should
come with one or two passages in hand that you feel would reward group analysis. Good participation
involves regular, informed contributions that build on the ideas of others and help push our thinking to
the next level.
Natural Histories Project
This is an opportunity to complement the primarily textual archive of the course with a personal
project dedicated to either: 1) a material object produced between 1660 and 1850 that offers an insight
into understandings, uses, and representations of nature, or 2) a place, an exhibit, or a curated landscape
that reflects on these themes.
For the first—a material object—you could choose an object from 1660 to 1850 that speaks to
the course’s preoccupations with the intersection of science and empire in relation to the natural world,
but should not feel constrained and should follow your interests. Objects that speak to colonial contactand/or to non-metropolitan perspectives on nature or science are welcome. You could, for example,
choose a scientific or medical instrument (microscope, forceps, Algonquian tobacco pipe), a globally
traded commodity (beaver pelts, sugar), or an objet d’art that represents the natural world (a floral china
set, a still life painting). Places in our region that have objects from this period on display or in their
archives include the Royal Ontario Museum, The Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto Public Library’s
Osborne Collection, and the Gardiner Ceramics Museum (all Toronto); McMaster Museum of Art, Art
Gallery of Hamilton, Dundurn Castle and the Hamilton Military Museum (Hamilton); The Dundas Museum
(Dundas); The Joseph Brant Museum (Burlington); The Woodland Cultural Centre (Brantford); and The
Griffin House (Ancaster). Having found your object, spend a good amount of time in its presence,
considering its materiality, contemplating its messages, and speculating on its uses. Follow up with
research on its manufacture, provenance, collection, cultural functions, and meanings.
For the second—a place or an exhibit—you could investigate and, for a time, inhabit a local
natural place that has resonance for First Nations or settler cultures (or both) in our period: for example,
Niagara Falls as an emergent settler tourist destination in the early 19th century; Coote’s Paradise as site
of Algonquian settlement; or Spencer Creek as a hub for early settler industrialization. There are also
some particular exhibits/curated landscapes that offer Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on the
natural world and imperialism: Lisa Reihana’s (Māori) In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] video installation now
playing at the Art Gallery of Ontario (link below); Joseph Pitawanakwat’s (Wikwemikong Unceded Nation)
guided Anishinaabe plant trail at the Royal Botanical Gardens (https://www.rbg.ca/gardens-trails/by-
attraction/trails/indigenous-trail/); and Lisa Myers’s (Beausoleil First Nation) Finding What Grows audio
walk in Gage Park (https://www.facebook.com/mcmastermuseum/posts/10165735713945335). In the
case of a place or an exhibit, you can narrate your experience, but also dig into the history, reflect
critically, and convey what you’ve learned.
Finally, please provide me with two PowerPoint slides with images of your object/place/exhibit
and some key observations in point form by Thursday Feb. 27. On Mar. 2 be prepared to offer a 5 to 7-
minute presentation to the group working from your two slides.
Essays and Proposals
You major analytical research essay (12-15 pages double spaced plus bibliography) is due on April
20. You may choose to work on a text from the syllabus, or you may also choose another text or primary
source produced between 1660 and 1840 and relevant to the concerns of the course. I would be glad to
offer suggestions if you have particular research interests you would like to pursue.
In preparation for this essay, we will workshop proposals together on April 6. The proposals are
due on A2L Discussions on March 30 and should be 500 words long, with a bibliography of 5 to 8
critical/theoretical sources, each briefly annotated (two or three sentence) to identify its argument and
relevance to your thesis. The week prior to the workshop I will read your proposals and organize the class
into small groups with shared concerns.
English/CSCT 743: Reimagining Nature
Schedule of Classes and Readings
NB: unless otherwise specified, readings will be posted on A2L under Content.
Jan. 12: Organizational
Jan. 19: Imagining Natural Worlds
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi), from Braiding Sweetgrass
Vanessa Watts (Bear Clan, Mohawk and Anishinaabe), “Indigenous Place-Thought andAgency”
Genesis 1-3
Francis Bacon, from New Atlantis
Margaret Cavendish, from Blazing World
Robert Hooke, from Micrographia
Carolyn Merchant, from The Death of Nature
Jan. 26: Biological Beings: Animals
Margaret Cavendish, “The Hunting of the Hare”
Gilbert White, from Natural History of Selborne
Animal paintings by George Stubbs
https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/9850
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/573621.html
https://manchesterartgallery.org/collections/title/?mag-object-7398
https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=216195
William Hogarth, Four Stages of Cruelty
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/hogarth/hogarth-
hogarths-modern-moral-series/hogarth-hogarths-4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Stages_of_Cruelty
Thomas Bewick, from A History of British Birds (sample a few species entries; get a sense
of Bewick’s style of illustration, including the little vignettes he uses as tail-pieces)
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/82314#page/54/mode/1up
Anna Letitia Barbauld, “Mouse’s Petition”
https://romantic-
circles.org/editions/contemps/barbauld/poems1773/mouses_petition.html
Barbauld, “The Caterpillar”
Mary Louise Pratt, from Imperial Eyes, Chapters 1 (Introduction) and 2 (“Science,
Planetary Consciousness, Interiors”); available as an ebook through McMaster
Library (n.b.: Pratt’s work on science and imperialism is foundational, but she is
not speaking directly to issues of animal life)
Feb. 2: Biological Beings: Plants
Aphra Behn, “On a Juniper Tree, Cut Down to Make Busks”
Elizabeth Blackwell, from A Curious Herbal
https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/blackwells/accessible/introduction.html#content
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/10361#page/1/mode/1up
Cut-paper mosaics by Mary Delany
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/late-bloomer-the-exquisite-craft-of-mary-
delany/
https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?sea
rchText=mary+delany
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Walk Seven,” from Reveries of a Solitary Walker
Anna Tsing, “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species”
https://tsingmushrooms.blogspot.com/2010/11/anna-tsing-anthropology-
university-of.html
Feb. 9: Human Bodyminds
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, “The Spleen”https://virginia-anthology.org/anne-finch-the-spleen-2/
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “Saturday: The Small-Pox,” from Six Town Eclogues
Jonas Hanway, from An Essay on Tea, considered as pernicious to Health, obstructing
Industry, and impoverishing the Nation
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Vindication of a Natural Diet”
Thomas De Quincy, from Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821 edn)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2040; plenty of paper and e-copies available
through Mills, but look for the 1821 (periodical) 1822-23 (book) editions; not the
much expanded 1856 edition
Mel Y. Chen, “Introduction: Animating Animacy” and “5: Lead’s Racial Matters” from
Animacies (2012)
https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-0-8223-5272-3_601.pdf
Feb. 16: Landscapes: The Sublime and the Beautiful
Joseph Addison, Spectator No. 412
http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/addison412.htm
Edmund Burke, from Philosophical Enquiry (on A2L)
Leanne Simpson, “Land as Pedagogy”
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/22170/17985
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45130/mont-blanc-lines-written-in-
the-vale-of-chamouni
J.M.W. Turner, “The Fall of an Avalanche” (painting)
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-fall-of-an-avalanche-in-the-
grisons-n00489
P.-J. De Loutherbourg, “Colebrookdale at Night” (painting)
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co65204/coalbrookdale-
by-night-oil-painting
William Gilpin, from Observations on the River Wye (on A2L)
William Gilpin, Six Landscapes (print/watercolours)
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/landscape-2
William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-a-few-miles-
above-tintern-abbey-on-revisiting-the-banks-of-the-wye-during-a-tour-july-13-
1798
Mid-term Recess
Natural Histories Slides and Reports due on A2L Feb. 27
Mar. 2: Natural Histories Presentations
Mar. 9: South Asia
William Hodges, prints from Travels in India
Elizabeth Hamilton, from Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah
Mirza Sheikh Itesamuddin, Shigurf-Namah-I-Valaet or Excellent Intelligence concerning
Europe (Available electronically through McMaster Library and onlinehttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951p00296523l&view=1up&seq=13)
Anonymous Tamil artists, paintings for William Roxburgh’s Plants of the Coast of
Coromandel; floral chintz cloth from Coromandel Coast
Mar. 16: The Pacific
John Hawkesworth, from An Account of the Voyages in the Southern Hemisphere,
ethnography of Tahiti (A2L)
Tupaia (Ra'iatea), drawings and map, https://www.bl.uk/people/tupaia
Keith Smith, “Tupaia’s
Sketchbook,”https://www.bl.uk/eblj/2005articles/pdf/article10.pdf
Lisa Reihana (Māori), In Pursuit of Venus [Infected], https://ago.ca/exhibitions/lisa-
reihana-pursuit-venus-infected
Brandy Nālani McDougall (Kanaka ʻŌiwi), “On Cooking Captain Cook” (on A2L)
Mar. 23: The Caribbean
Mary Prince, History, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17851/17851-h/17851-h.htm
Matthew Lewis, from Journal of a West India Proprietor
Dread Scott, Slave Rebellion Re-enactment, www.slave-revolt.com
Katherine McKittrick, “Plantation Futures,” https://muse.jhu.edu/article/532740/pdf
Essay Proposal Due March 26
Mar. 30: The English Country Estate and Port City
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Raymond Williams, from The Country and the City, cpt. 11, “Three Around Farnham”
All of The Country and the City is currently available through the library’s Hathi Trust
services, but cpt. 11 is also available in the latter part of this pdf online:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/austeni
ntheory/r_williams_reading_austen_in_theory.pdf
Apr. 6: Essay Proposal Workshop
Final Essay due April 20You can also read
