Becoming-Earth: Environmental Humanities, Art And Science

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

Becoming-Earth: Anthropocene, Art & Science is a course designed to provide students with athorough grounding in all major topics of environmental humanities. It aims to prepare students
to analyze and interpret selected texts and visual materials, while also remaining broad-based enough to enable them to apply a variety of concepts and methods to individually chosen case
studies. It offers the opportunity to undertake own research leading to a final essay, and to reflect on the influence that theoretical perspectives developed within environmental humanities can
have on human attitudes towards environment and ethical considerations. It aims to provide not only subject-related knowledge skills but also research, study and personal skills.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to Environmental humanities and Art
Week 2: Anthropocene, anthropocentrism and beyond
Week 3: Deep time: deep past & deep future of life
Week 4: Minerals, excavation, remediation
Week 5: Sustainability and overpopulation
Week 6: Climate change
Week 7: Geoengineering
Week 8: Plastics
Week 9: Extinctions and biodiversity
Week 10: Plants and their future environments
Week 11: Metabolic force: living-nonliving distinction
Week 12: Dust
Week 13: Water, Underwater & Hydrofeminism
Week 14: Refugia
Week 15: We-Earth: a closing discussion

Reading list

Bakke, M. “Art and Metabolic Force in Deep Time Environments.” Environmental Philosophy,
Spring 2017.
Cohen, J. “Geophilia, or The Love of Stone.” Continent, 4:2, 8, 2015.
Debaise, D. “The Modern Invention of Nature.” In: General Ecology: The New Ecological Paradigm
edited by E. Hörl. Bloomsbury Academic, London 2017.
Davis, H. & Turpin, E. Art in the Anthropocene. Open Humanities Press, London 2015.
Haraway, D. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.”
Environmental Humanities, 6, 2015.
Jamieson, D. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 2001.
Living Books About Life http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/
Mirzoeff, N. “Visualizing the Anthropocene.” Public Culture, 26:2, 2014.
Nemais, A. “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water.” In: Undutiful Daughters, edited by
H. Gunkel, Ch. Nigianni & F. Soderback. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Neimanis, A., Asberg, C., Hedren, J. “Four Problems, Four Directions for Environmental
Humanities: Toward a Critical Posthumanities for the Anthropocene”
Parikka, Jussi. “Deep Times and Media Mines: A Decent into Ecological Materiality of
Technology.” In: General Ecology: The New Ecological Paradigm edited by E. Hörl. Bloomsbury
Academic, London 2017.
Yusoff, K. “Geologic Life: Prehistory, Climate, Futures in the Anthropocene. Environment and
Planning, 31, 2013.
Schlosberg, D. & Coles, R. “The New Environmentalism of Everyday Life: Sustainability, Material
Flows and Movements.” Contemporary Political Theory, 1470-8914, 2015.
Yusoff, K. & Gabrys, J. “Climate Change and the Imagination.” Advanced Review, 2, July/August,
2011.
Zylinska, J. Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Open Humanities Press, London 2014.
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/minimal-ethics-for-the-anthropocene/