Our Dynamic Planet in Film

Catalog description

Uses documentary films (e.g., Planet Earth) to explore how global environmental change is impacting human life and livelihoods, with a focus on the intersection of personal identity, social organization, and climate justice in patterns and processes of human-environment interaction. Films are supplemented with interactive lectures and discussions of assigned readings from both periodicals and peer-reviewed literature. Students also use critical film theory to explore the representation of nature(s) and environment(s) in the documentaries, and the effects these representations have on human-environment interaction. This synthetic approach highlights the formidable linkages on Earth between the living and nonliving, human and nonhuman, thus providing students with a holistic understanding of humankind's complex and changing relationships with the planet Earth. Credit Hour s : 3