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S1617 The Artful Things of Climate Change (Sustainable Development Sp. Track)

Song Min Hyoung

As we reach a rough consensus of sorts that global warming is happening, the really difficult questions emerge with greater force.  These are not scientific questions; they are political, social, and cultural.  How do we stall the underlying socioeconomic forces that are causing it to occur?  How do we adapt our infrastructure, and our way of life, to perpetually changing, and increasingly more violent, climates?  What stresses on government will these changes create, and what forms of governance can we imagine that will be resilient enough not to break under such stresses?  Who bears the greatest brunt of these changes, and what ethical demands do they make on the rest of us?  And, just as interestingly, how do these changes affect the very way we think of ourselves, and our place in the world?  We will address these questions from a literary perspective. This means we will think critically about the ways in which we talk about these questions, paying close attention to how our use of rhetoric can repeat ingrained habits of thought that are not helpful and how writers and creative producers of various types are seeking to find more original ways to speak about this most elusive subject.  We will also make use of Venice as a kind of outdoor laboratory in which we can test out some of the ideas we will be developing in the classroom.

 

The course is divided into four sections: the problem, everyday observations, the anthropocene and Venice, and imagining the future. Each part is anchored by a single book (except for one), which will provide us with a text to focus our discussion and with which we can talk about larger issues. What we will try to do is think with the readings, and not simply about them. In the process, we will explore the main argument of this course: paying attention to climate change invites us to see our world, especially those parts that are familiar to us, in new ways.

 

There will also be a required field trip in May. The exact date will be announced shortly. It is a trip to learn about MOSE, a major infrastructure project to protect Venice from flooding.