CLIMATE CHANGE & THE HUMANITIES

Catalog description

This course responds to the wicked problem of climate change by leveraging the power of the humanities, especially literature and the visual arts. Students will use those media as a springboard to practical knowledge about the climate-challenged processes of the natural world. They will also engage with a range of cultural production (short stories, novels, poems, essays, paintings, photographs, films, and advertisements) to understand the key ideas and values that have shaped our society’s relationship to “nature.” The class will explore the ways in which the climate crisis is a crisis of the imagination and will actively seek points of intersection with STEM and design fields. Materials will cluster around topics currently receiving urgent attention, which could include (but are not limited to) wilderness, deforestation, water and drought, melting ice, and biodiversity. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)