Climate Humanities & Social Justice

Catalog description

Author and scholar Amitav Ghosh wrote, “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.” In this multidisciplinary class, we will consider the way culture has both contributed to the climate crisis and created a radical space for imagining sustainable and just futures. Students will read novels and scholarly articles, watch films, and look at visual art that grapples with the cultural, historical, and material roots of the climate crisis, as well as investigate how close attention to language and visual representations can orient us to new ways of knowing and being. Special attention will be paid to colonial consequences of climate, environmental justice histories and movements, ecofeminist and feminist works, climate migrations, anthropocentrism, and decolonial practices. Along the way we will encounter diverse perspectives in the form of our readings and also visits by scholars and activists working at the intersections of these questions around New York City. The course will culminate in a project focused on practicing our own climate agency—either through creative expression or through direct community engagement.