Green Culture and Politics

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course seeks to develop critical green analytic tools that cultivate new understandings of the enmeshment of ecology and society, “green politics” and everyday life. We will explore green discourses, environmental issues, and the aesthetics of green actions historically, theoretically, and practically through weekly experimental constellations of readings, artifacts, films, and featured topics. No course is able to cover the diversity of green political topics—this course will argue that all social projects are ecological projects. Our goal is not to cover all environmental controversies; nor will we enterprise to become experts on environmental issues, although we will become more knowledgeable about different environmental issues by sharing our work with one another. Our goal is to develop critical thinking skills and a keen eye for the discourses, patterns, and strategies that shape meaning and action on social and ecological issues. Weekly topics foreground several keywords on many green agendas, but the success of the course requires the contribution of your own empirical knowledge and experiences in order to hone the class’s green-thinking toolkit. The course focuses on critical green theory and practice with the broader aim of contributing to the development of social justice through creative reflection and rigorous analysis. The course proceeds from the assumption that discourse is a key site of struggle in efforts to influence environmental attitudes, policies, and actions. Rather than viewing symbols/stories/metaphors/keywords/images/actions as transparent representations of the world, or employing an instrumental perspective that perceives discourses as mere tools to achieve pre-determined ends, we will develop a constitutive understanding of discourse as material practice and aesthetic action. As a result, this course will consider how green discourse extends to those who do not consider themselves environmentalists, even to those hostile to environmentalism. A respectful classroom is essential. All students must be mindful of the opportunities and hazards of communicative patterns and interactions in the classroom. This class involves critical thinking rather than out-right criticism; rather than reject a position immediately, you must first understand that position as it functions rhetorically—in relation to situation, purpose, audience, institution, etc—and materially with reference to institutions, nature, everyday life. This holds for both what we read and what we discuss in class. There are many advantages to this approach, an important one being that you have the opportunity to excavate how your own beliefs, attitudes, and values are always already shaped in/by green discourses. This will help you to think and act more carefully and thoughtfully about the positions you take, the arguments you make, and the taken-for-granted assumptions that shape what you do. Course work involves weekly readings and film viewings, conceptual map exercises, and applications; a paper that critically dissects a particular issue/crisis; an in-class forum/exhibition on green social projects and manifestos; administration of one class (small groups); a final portfolio project that includes a paper or creative action project that thinks critically “green” about Washington-DC.