Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

The Cultures of Climate Change

Instructor(s): Timothy Wientzen, English

What role do the humanities have to play in addressing climate change? A warming world will require more than just better science; it will require fundamentally reimagining the structures that made the modern world possible—new narratives of our future. Engaging with recent writing on climate change across disciplines—including texts by geologists, public policy experts, historians, filmmakers, visual artists, and fiction writers—this class examines the interface between the science and the culture of climate change. Among other things, we will ask how reading cultural texts might help us reassess the virtues and problems of our modernity, including the political and ethical problems native to life in the so-called “Anthropocene.” How might cinema, fiction, and art help us reimagine our relationship to commodity culture and the natural world?

 

Course Offered:

• Fall 2019