Our Earth:Enviro Justice

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In the year 2000, chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer introduced the term Anthropocene to describe the central role humankind has come to play in shaping the geology and ecology of planet Earth. Since then, the concept has proliferated across academic disciplines. It is profoundly reshaping some of our most fundamental understandings of us as humans, our relations to other beings, the ways in which we intervene and shape the natural world, and how we might live with care within our shared environments. The shift that the Anthropocene concept has prompted has given rise to a whole array of new issues such as the rights of nature, human–animal relations, and environmental crimes. Entire new fields of inquiry have emerged (or vastly grown)—among them the environmental humanities, political ecology, inhuman geographies and human–animal studies—often through interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars, activists, artists, and lawmakers. The work that those thinkers have produced has made important connections between ecological deterioration and issues of social justice. For example, Anthropocene debates have shown how ecological catastrophes disproportionately affect already vulnerable groups—such as those living in the Global South or in extreme poverty. Yet it remains challenging to really grasp the complexity of environmental change. Part of the problem lies in the interscalar character and multiple temporalities that define the Anthropocene. The deep time of melting glaciers, for example, is as much a sign of human-driven climate change as the rapidly increasing presence of microplastics in the human bloodstream. How, then, do those Anthropocene thinkers make sense of this new geological epoch? What instruments, sensors, detectors do they use to trace ecological transformation and to make their claims for environmental justice? What does the Anthropocene actually sound like, and what ordinary gestures or sensations reveal that you and I are living in this new geological age? Some people are experimenting with different forms of narrating or speculating about alternate futures. Some are presenting us with novel ways of relating to the non-human world, exploring, for example, if forests can think, or if we can become ocean? If we are living in this new epoch, how do we know, what does that feel like, and most urgently, what can, should, or must we do about it? This course is an invitation for students to engage with these subjects in ways that are both intellectually rigorous and deeply experiential.