Environmental Justice: Futures and Fictions

Catalog description

Climate change represents a nexus of environmental and social injustice with deep roots and deeper implications for the future(s). Unpacking the injustice of climate change requires us to examine what/whose futures have been curtailed. Likewise, working towards climate justice requires us to be able to envision liberatory environmental futures. In this course students will engage with a wide range of environmental futures through narrative, theory, and practice. Apocalyptic and dystopic futures abound throughout the climate discourse but too often obscure more about environmental (in)justice than they reveal, reinforcing the status quo rather than providing us with tools for transforming it. The goal of this course is for students to develop their skills for discerning how climate and other environmental narratives employ environmental values towards just and unjust futures and much in between. With these skills students will undertake a research project-with both critical and creative components-that delves into the environmental narratives and futures at play in the contexts/communities central to their work and/or homes.