Class 1. INTRODUCTIONS & ELEMENTAL THINKING
Wed 9/3
Pages of reading this week: 32
Reading
Gavin Van Horn and Bruce Jennings, “Gathering” (Elementals) [PDF]
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, “Eleven Principles of the Elements” (Elemental Ecocriticism) [JStor]
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Arthur Golding Translation (1567), Bk 1. ll 1 -112 [PDF]
Genesis, Books 1-3, King James Bible [PDF]
Discussion Prompt
By way of introductions, we will each share – in a few words – an encounter or entanglement with / an estrangement from an element: earth, air, fire, water.
WATER
Tue 9/9 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, ELEMENTAL WORDS #1 "Water" — submit here [link]
Class 2. WATER 1: OCEANS
Wed 9/10
Pages of reading this week: 135
Reading
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, I.i-ii, II.ii [link]
Joseph Laurent, New familiar Abenakis and English dialogues (1884), p 15: “Of the Elements and Things Relating To Them” (avail. @ Kinney Center)
Pablo Neruda, “Oceana” (Cantos ceremoniales, 1960) [PDF; PDF of Jacketti transl.]
Édouard Glissant, “Ocean” (Collected Poems of Édouard Glissant) [PDF]
Abigail Chabitnoy, In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (2022) [eBook]: “Sea Change”; “In the Current Where Drowning is Beautiful”; “Anatomy of a Wave”
Critical Reading
Steve Mentz, “A Poetics of Planetary Water” and “Blue Humanities Thinking” (An Introduction to the Blue Humanities, 2024) [PDF]
Steve Mentz, “Fathoming” (At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean, 2009), only 1-13. [eBook]
Listening (90 minutes)
Osvaldo Golijov, Oceana (1996) [audio, text, liner notes]
John Luther Adams, become ocean (2013) [audio; about; guiding questions]
Caroline Shaw, The Isle (2016) [about; interview with Folger; Spotify link]
Mon 9/15 Last day to add/drop
Tue 9/16 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, ELEMENTAL POLITICS #1 "Water" — submit via Padlet Link [link]
Class 3. WATER 2: SEA / ISLANDS
Wed 9/17
Pages of reading this week: 69
Looking
Eve’s Paradise & the Isle of Amazons, see [link]
Wonder Woman (2017), first 12 minutes [link]
Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti’s Isolario [link]
Thomas More, Map of Utopia [link]
Reading
John Mandeville, Isle of Amazons (1357-1371) [link]
Margaret Cavendish, “Similarizing the Sea to Meadows and Pastures” (1653) [PDF]
Derek Walcott, “The Sea is History” (1978) [link]
The Myth of Arion (Herodotus, Histories (ca. 430), I.23-24 [PDF]
Critical Reading
Roland Greene, “Island Logic” (The Tempest and Its Travels) [PDF]
Gavin Steingo, “Lilly’s Wager,” in Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music beyond Humanity (2024) [PDF]
Katie Bank, “Truth and Travel: The Principal Navigations and ‘Thule, the Period of Cosmographie’” (2020) [PDF]
Listening (70 minutes)
Luigi Rossi, Al soave spiral d’aure sirene (early 17th c.) [listening after reading the Arion myth; audio; text]
Thomas Weelkes, Thule, the Period of Cosmographie (1600) [described by Bank; audio and text]
Benjamin Britten, Four Sea Interludes (from Peter Grimes, 1945) [about; audio]
Song of the Humpback Whale (1970), first 10 minutes [described by Steingo; audio]
Toru Takemitsu, “Moby-Dick” from Umi e (Toward the Sea) (1981) [about; audio]
Michelle Ross, The Whale Song (2022) [video]
Luna Pearl Woof, Contact (2022) [watch 1-min trailer]
Tue 9/23 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, ELEMENTS & INTER-DISCIPLINES # 1 "Water" — submit via Padlet Link [link]
Class 4. WATER 3: ICE
Wed 9/24
Pages of reading this week: 143
Seminar Guest: Composer Lei Liang
The music of Chinese-American composer Lei Liang combines East and West in a colorful and dramatic fusion. His versatility ranges from brilliant orchestral and theatrical works to gentle chamber pieces. —Take time to learn about Liang ahead of our conversation [link]
Reading
Jane Naviyuk Kane, “Dark Traffic” (Dark Traffic, 2021) [JStor]
Daniela Naomi Molnar, “Memory of a Larger Mind: A glacier is a ghosted god” [link]
Critical Reading
Lei Liang's TED talk [link] (**newly linked**)
Jen Rose Smith, “Careful Guessing” (Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race and Indigeneity in the Arctic, 2025) [JStor]
Sverker Sörlin and Klaus Dodds, “Ice as a ‘Crisis Concept’” (Ice Humanities: Living, Working, and Thinking in a Melting World, 2022) [PDF]
Lowell Duckert “Introduction” & “Hamlet on Ice” (Arcticologies: Early Modern Actions for Our Warmer World, 2025) [eBook]
Denise Von Glahn, “Relational Capacities, Musical Ecologies: Judith Shatin’s Ice Becomes Water” (Sounds, Ecologies, Musics, 2023) [PDF]
Listening (90 minutes)
Lei Liang, Hearing Icescapes (2023) [audio, tracks 4 & 5; video about collaboration]
Henry Purcell, “The Cold Song” (1691) [text by John Dryden; video]
Peter Maxwell Davies, “Junk Yard” from Antarctic Symphony (2001) (journal entry, audio excerpt, and essay by Justin Vickers)
Judith Shatin, Ice Becomes Water (2018) [video]
Seth Parker Woods and Spencer Topel, Iced Bodies (2017) [about and video]
Class 5. WATER 4: FLOODS
Wed 10/1
Pages of reading this week: 67
Critical Reading
Toni Morrison, excerpt from The Site of Memory [link]
Kyle Whyte, “Against Crisis Epistemology” [PDF]
Jonathan Sawday, “The Fortunes of Babel: Technology, History, and Genesis 11: 1-9” (The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, 2007) [PDF]
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Julian Yates, “How to Think Like an Ark” (Noah’s Arkive, 2023) [PDF]
Readings/Looking
The Tower of Babel Story
Genesis, 11: 1-9: King James Bible [link]
Richard Verstegan, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (1605) – Title Page, Table of Contents, pp 1 – 6 (‘confusion of tongues’) [link]
Édouard Glissant, “To Build the Tower” (Poetics of Relation, 1990) [PDF] & “Backwashes” (Treatise on the Whole-World, 1997) [JStor, starts p. 52]
Visit Google Arts & Culture and search “Tower of Babel.” Enjoy surfing the range of art inspired by this story, and then … explore:
The Tower of Babel (1563) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder [link]
Kazimierz Fantasy (1929) by Teresa Roszkowska [link]
The Tower of Babel (1679) by Athanasius Kircher [link]
Broken Soul and Wounded Body: Inside the Tower of Babel (1925-1932) by Alberto Giacometti [link]
Steps (1998) by Sarah Rossi [link]
Babel–The Golden Boy (2020) by Daphne Jiyeon Jang [video]
Noah’s Ark
Listening (70 minutes)
Benjamin Britten, Noye’s Fludde (children’s opera, 1958) [audio, libretto] - based on Chester Mystery Play [link]
Luna Pearl Woolf, Après moi, le déluge (memorial for Hurricane Katrina, 2006) [about; program note; audio; about librettist Eleanor Wilner]
Class 6. GATHERING
Wed 10/8 (in lieu of meeting as a class, you set out on gatherings)
Pages of reading this week: 94
Reading/Moving/Listening
David Macaulay, “Walking the Elemental World” (Elementals, vol. 5, 2024) [PDF]
R. Murray Schafer, “The Natural Soundscape” and “The Soniferous Garden” (The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, 1977) [PDF]
John Levack Drever, “Soundwalking: Aural Excursions into the Everyday” (The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, 2009) [PDF]
Brian Yellen (UMass Prof & Massachusetts State Geologist), “How Rivers Shape the Landscape: Learning with the Land” [video]
Anne McClintock, “Ghost Forests” [link]
Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Returning the Gift” [link]
See Handout under [Attunements / Elemental Gatherings page] for details on GATHERINGS #1 [link]
Mon 10/13 @ 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, GATHERINGS — submit your work (with your full name as the file name) to this Google Drive Folder [link]
EARTH
Tue 10/14 @ 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, ELEMENTAL WORDS # 2 "Earth" — submit here [link]
Class 7. EARTH 1. TREE/ROOT
Wed 10/15
Pages of reading this week: 114
Reading
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Daphne and Apollo, Bk. 1 [PDF]
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (1622-25) [link]
Margaret Cavendish, “A Dialogue between an Oak and a Man cutting him down” [PDF]
Critical Reading
Marjorie Swann, “Vegetable Love: Botany and Sexuality in 17th century England” (The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature, 2012) [PDF]
Rick A. López, Rooted in Place: Botany, Indigeneity, and Art in the Construction of Mexican Nature, 1570–1914 (2025), introduction [about; *PDF*]
Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge (2014), introduction [PDF]
Banu Subramaniam, “In the Dark Shadows of the Tree of Life: Sexuality, Race, and Reproduction” (Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism, 2024) [JStor]
Christy Wampole, “Introduction” (Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor, 2016) [PDF]
Amitav Ghosh “A Lamp Falls” (The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, 2021) [PDF]
Listening (45 minutes)
Henry Purcell, “Hark! Hark! each Tree its silence breaks” (Hail! Bright Cecilia, ode, 1692) [audio; text; score p. 13]
George Frideric Handel, “Cara pianta” (Apollo e Dafne, cantata, 1709-10) [audio] [text at bottom of page]
George Frideric Handel, “Ombra mai fu” (Serse, opera, 1738) [audio; text; score; opera synopsis]
Imogen Holst, The Fall of the Leaf (solo cello, 1963) [audio: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Gabriel Fauré, “Dans le forêt de septembre” (voice and piano, 1902) [audio ; text]
Caroline Shaw, Evergreen (2020): a string quartet offering to one elder tree on Swiikw (Galiano Island), British Columbia [audio]
tree.fm [link]
Bartholomäus Traubeck, Years (2013) (music of tree rings) [link]
Tue 10/21 @ 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, ELEMENTAL POLITICS # 2 "Earth" — submit here [link]
Class 8. Earth 2. CYCLES / SEASONS
Wed 10/23
Pages of reading this week: 73
Looking
Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works (1170), Part I, Vision 4 [text- scroll down to Part 1, Vision 4; image]
Medieval and Early Modern cycles, personifications, and allegories of the seasons and elements
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Four Seasons [link] & Four Elements [link] & Four Seasons in One Head [link]
Très riches heures de Duc de Berry (ca. 1415) [calendar]
Philips Galle’s 1589 set [Summer] [Autumn] [Winter] [Spring]
Philips Galle’s 1563 set [Summer] [Autumn] [Winter] [Spring]
Philips Galle’s 1564 Elements set [Water] [Earth] [Air] [Fire]
Maerten de Vos’s 1583 Elements set [link]
Bassano’s 1580 allegory of Earth
Jan Brueghel, Landscape with Allegories of the Four Elements (1635) [link]
Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (ca. 1480) [link] + The Primavera Project [link]
Reading
Persephone [Orphic Hymn]
Virgil, Aeneid, I.740-747 (Song of Iopas at Dido's Banquet) [Dryden trans., p. 100-102]
Excerpts from almanacs housed in the Kinney Center's collection
Daniel Browne, A New Almanacke and Prognostication (1625) [PDF]
John Evelyn, Kalendarium Hortense, or the gard'ners almanac (1683) [PDF]
George Wharton, Calendarium Ecclesiasticum (1658) [PDF]
John Worlidge, Kalendarium Rusticum in Systema Agricultura (1681) [PDF]
Felicity Sheehy, Seasonal Distortions: An Almanac for the Anthropocene (2025) [about; PDF]
Barbara Adam, "Seasons in Time: Bases, Threats, and Opportunities: A Triptych of Poetic Theory" [PDF]
Critical Reading
David Macauley, “The Four Seasons and the Rhythms of Place-Based Time” (The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives, 2021) [PDF]
Phebe Jensen and Alison A. Chapman, "The Four Seasons" (Astrology, Almanacs, and the Early Modern English Calendar, 2020) [PDF]
Craig Holdredge, “The Seasons Embodied: The Story of a Plant” (The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives, 2021) [PDF]
Katherine Walker, "Almanacs as Underdogs" [short blogpost]
Listening (2 hours total, but feel free to choose 10-minute excerpts of Vivaldi, Richter, Musgrave, Stravinsky, and Piazzola)
Antonio Vivaldi, Four Seasons (1720s, violin concertos and descriptive sonnets) [video; sonnets] + Max Richter’s Recomposed (2012) [video]
Hector Berlioz, Les troyens (1856-58), “O blonde Cérès” (sung by Iopas) [text and opera synopsis; audio]
Igor Stravinsky, Le sacre du printemps (1913): Adoration of the Earth; The Sacrifice [video of reconstructed 1913 choreography (watch videos 1-3); guide]
Astor Piazzola, Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (1969) [about; video]
Tue 10/28 @ 5pm DUE: ATTUNEMENT, ELEMENTS & INTER-DISCIPLINES # 2, "Earth" — submit here [link]
Class 9. EARTH 3. TECTONICS/GEOLOGIC
Wed 10/29
Pages of reading this week: 67
Invited Speaker: Scout Turkel. Poet.
In preparation for Scout's Workshop, please read Juliana Spahr's poem, "Gentle Now, Don't Add to Heartache." [pdf]
Reading
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (1st c. BCE), VI.535-607 (on earthquakes) [PDF]; VI.639-702 (Mt Etna) [PDF]
Pliny the Younger, Letters 6.16 and 6.20 (on eruption of Vesuvius in 79CE) [link]
An account of the late dreadful earthquake and fire which destroyed the city of Lisbon of 1755 (Reading Room of Kinney Center] & here [link], skim
Diane Oliva, “Notating Earthquake Sounds” (from “Earthquakes in the Eighteenth-Century Musical Imagination,” 2020) [PDF]
Phillip John Usher, “The Night before Geology: Fossil Stories from Early Modern France” (Storytelling in Sixteenth-Century France: Negotiating Shifting Forms, 2022) [eBook]
Joshua Dittrich, "The Sound Beneath Our Feet" (Geosonics: Listening Through Earth's Soundscapes, 2024) [eBook]
Listening (90 minutes)
Antoine Brumel, Missa Et ecce terrae motus (early 16th c.): Kyrie & Gloria [audio up to 16:12] [about]
Georg Philipp Telemann, “Er donnert, dass er verherrlicht werde” from Thunder Ode (1756) [audio; text]
Franz Joseph Haydn, Seven Last Words of Christ, “IX. The Earthquake” (1786) [audio; score; about]
Alan Hovhaness, Symphony No. 50, Op. 360 (1981-82) (“Mount St. Helens”) [audio with notes]
Augusta Read Thomas, “Invocation–Pulse Radiance,” in Resounding Earth (2012) [audio; about]
Mon 11/3 @ 5pm DUE: AIR/FIRE COLLABORATIONS (Part 1, vision statement & Part 2, assigned reading/listening) — submit by email to Evan and Marjorie
Class 10. Earth 4. BOTANICAL EARTH
Wed 11/5
Pages of reading this week: 53
Seminar Guest: Artist, Suzette Martin
Suzette Marie Martin is a mixed media painter based in New England. Her work bears witness to ecological trauma through combinations of scientific data, figurative, mythological, symbolic, and archival imagery. —Take time to learn about Martin ahead of our conversation [link]
Reading
Suzette Marie Martin, “Medicinal Plants, Colonial Weeds, and Biodiversity Loss” (Folger Shakespeare Library) [link]
Suzette Marie Martin, Herbarius: A New Herbal for the Anthropocene [link]
Todd Borlik, “Plant-Lore in the Botanical Renaissance” (Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants, 2025) [PDF]
Holly Watkins, “The Floral Poetics of Schumann’s Blumenstück” (Musical Vitalities: Ventures in a Biotic Aesthetics of Music, 2018) [PDF; about book]
Listening (15 minutes)
AIR & FIRE
The final weeks of the seminar pivot from engagement to collaboration, from learning about the interdisciplines to practicing them. In these last weeks, you will collaborate, create, and teach with the elements of air and fire. [link]
Class 11. AIR & FIRE 1.
Wed 11/12
Air/Fire Group 1
Air/Fire Group 3
Class 12. AIR & FIRE 2.
Wed 11/19
Air/Fire Group 5
Air/Fire Group 4
Wed 11/26 NO CLASS
Thanksgiving Break
Class 13. AIR & FIRE 3.
Wed 12/3
Air/Fire Group 2
Air/Fire Group 6
Mon 12 /8 @ 5pm Last day to turn in your 1-2 page reflection on your AIR/FIRE Lesson
Wed 12/10 @ 5pm DUE: ELEMENTAL OVERTURE
Mon 12/15 @ 5pm DUE: CODA. PEER RESPONSES to OVERTURES