Ecotheology and the Arts

(7.5 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This interdisciplinary module will explore the ways in which theology & the arts might respond to the current environmental crisis. The first half will provide an overview of theological and scriptural engagements with ecological concerns and will relate these, on the one hand, to traditional models of 'natural theology' and, on the other hand, to the contemporary rethinking of matter, vitality, agency and affect, as prompted by movements such as 'new materialism' and the 'nonhuman turn'. The second half will focus attention on the imagination as a technology for venturing beyond the given that allows us to 'try on' alternative ways of inhabiting the world. However, it will also allow students to consider the value from an ecotheological perspective of different art-forms (such as Romantic poetry, nature writing, horror and animated film) that reconfigure 'the landscape of the living' and invite us to envisage apocalyptic scenarios or adopt empathetic postures toward nonhuman others.