Humcore Midterm Exam Study Guide

Vocabulary study flashcards covering key critical concepts, literary frameworks, and lecture themes for the Humcore Midterm Exam.

Anthropocene

The current geological age shaped by human impact, defined in lecture largely by learning to live with loss and navigating categorical confusions.

Capitolocene

An alternative name proposed by some scholars instead of Anthropocene for naming our current geological age, highlighting the role of capitalist systems.

Environmental Humanities

The academic field highlighted by Prof. Davis for its role in addressing the imaginative, cultural, and ethical challenges of climate change.

Binary storyform

A narrative framework exemplified by the cosmology of the Garden of Eden, which ecocritics critique and counter with non-binary metaphors of our relationship to nature.

Contingency

The principle that studying the past demonstrates how present conditions are not inevitable and teaches us to appreciate that change is possible in the future.

Mother Nature framework (Carolyn Merchant)

The cultural framework of nature as feminine, illustrating how constraints on exploitation can change to sanctions through the demise of frameworks and associated values as societal needs change.

Green Man

A figure in Medieval culture and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that illustrates the theme of hybridity between humanity and nature.

Medieval Romance

A literary genre characterized by chivalric language, courtly conventions, trials of virtue, and quest narratives, exemplified by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Translatio imperii

The concept of the transfer of imperial rule and civilization, referenced through the Aeneid in the first fitt of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Stock, bob, and wheel

The distinct verse structure of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that relates to the poem's thematic emphasis on cyclicality, civilization, and human craft.

Anthropomorphism

The literary device of personification, used in significant ways to animate natural elements at the start of Fitt 2 in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Assemblage

A New Materialist concept describing heterogeneous entanglements of human and non-human elements, exemplified by Gawain's arming passage and the multi-species hunts in Fitt 3.

Buffered self

A concept from philosopher Charles Taylor describing an identity bounded and insulated from external spiritual or natural forces, applied to Gawain's arming scene.

Porous self

A concept from philosopher Charles Taylor contrasted with the buffered self, describing an identity open, permeable, and vulnerable to surrounding natural and supernatural forces.

Five sets of five

The symbolic geometric design depicted on Sir Gawain's shield in Fitt 2 representing interconnected virtues and chivalric perfection.

Hautdesert

The castle of Lord Bertilak that acts as a thematic doubling of Camelot during Sir Gawain's journey.

Ontological precarity vs. artificial precarity

The distinction between inherent, unavoidable existential vulnerability of all living beings versus socially manufactured, structural insecurity.

Interlaced narrative

A literary technique of weaving simultaneous plotlines, exemplified in Fitt 3 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by alternating between outdoor hunting scenes and indoor castle seductions.

Homosociality

Social bonds and mutual relations between members of the same sex, manifesting through the covenant and exchanges between Sir Gawain and Lord Bertilak in Fitt 3.

Brittling

The formal, ritualized butchering of the deer in the first hunt of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, providing thematic contrast and foreshadowing for Gawain's fate.

Reynard

The traditional proper name given to the fox during the third hunting sequence of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Dark ecology

A philosophical concept developed by Timothy Morton as an ironic, non-idealized corrective to traditional, cheerful "green" thinking.

Uncanny

An aesthetic and psychological sensation of eerie unfamiliarity within the familiar, used to characterize the depiction of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Ecofeminism

A philosophical framework linking the domination of nature to the subordination of women, illustrated by Morgan Le Fey's orchestration of Gawain's trial and his misogynistic outburst.

Fossil Capitalism

An economic order reliant on the continuous extraction and combustion of fossil fuel energy, originating in the 1780s.

Great Acceleration

A post-World War II period marked by a rapid, dramatic surge in human activity, industrialization, and global environmental impact.

1988 Exxon internal memo

A document revealing a corporate strategy developed by Exxon to protect corporate profits against growing public awareness of global climate change.

End of nature

Bill McKibben's famous thesis asserting that anthropogenic climate change has fundamentally altered every natural system, eliminating truly untouched nature.

Failure of imagination

Prof. Martin's argument that humanity's inability to confront climate change is rooted in an inability to envision altered futures or perceive long-scale ecological crises.

Taxonomy

A scientific method of classification and ordering of knowledge, highlighted in Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation through the specialized roles of the expedition team.

Categorical confusions

Misperceptions and boundary collapses between natural, human, and technological categories that arise from living in the Anthropocene, reflected in the novel Annihilation.

Weird Fiction

A genre of speculative literature that generates dread and horror by confronting characters with inexplicable entities and categorical breakdowns.

Sublime

An aesthetic concept associated with the British Romantic movement evoking awe, vastness, and terror in the face of immense natural power.

Eco-Horror

A narrative genre that creates horror through depictions of nature defying human control, threatening extinction, or imposing physical and psychological dissolution.

Two senses of "annihilation"

Jeff VanderMeer's dual formulation of annihilation: catastrophic ecological destruction versus the radical dissolution and transformation of human identity into nature.