Introduction to environmental humanities

Teacher(s)

Bragard Véronique; De Bruyn Ben; Fabry Geneviève;

Language

French

Prerequisites

This course is built on the online  course LBIR 2050 Challenges of sustainable development and transition (5 cr.), which students are expected to have followed beforehand. 

Main themes

1. Key elements of the contemporary ecological crisis (in dialogue with the MOOC) 
2. Environmental humanities: an interdisciplinary field - concepts and methods 
3. Literature and the Anthropocene: analysis of debates and issues of representation (realism, gender, scale, environmental justice, emotion) 
4. Arts, media and the Anthropocene: imaginaries, possibilities and limits 

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	Understand the key elements of the contemporary ecological crisis (in dialogue with the MOOC)
2	Situate various disciplines within the broader context of environmental crisis
3	Produce a critical literary/cultural analysis related to the debates explored in the environmental humanities
4	Understand the aesthetic, ethical, social and/or political challenges of artworks covered in class
This learning unit contributes to the development and command of the following skills and learning outcomes of the ELAL programmes (ELAL learning outcomes): 1.4; 4.4; 5.6

Content

How can literature and the visual arts address ecological concerns? What are the techniques, literary genres, styles, and narratives that can be imagined to denounce the ongoing ecocide while also forging poetic alliances with the non-human world?
 
To answer these questions, this course will offer an interdisciplinary dialogue between literature, cinema, comics, and visual arts around a few key issues that shape our understanding of environmental and social questions: issues of scale, the political and ethical dimensions of our relationship with the environment based on the history of the commons, the diversity of literary genres in their relationship with the environment, and finally, the emotional dimension.
 
This class is an introduction to the field of environmental humanities, which seeks to reconstruct scientific knowledge beyond the major oppositions that have structured our relationship with the world and knowledge in the past: nature/culture, humanities/natural sciences, etc.

Teaching methods

Lectures and conferences. Exercises and discussions.

Evaluation methods

Written exam

Faculty or entity

> ELAL