Introduction to Environmental Humanities

(4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities. Exploring an exciting range of novels, films, video games, and podcasts, as well as critical texts by philosophers, historians, and anthropologists, we will investigate some of the forms “nature” takes in capitalist and socialist modernity—from sublime confrontation to picturesque display, and from utopian dreamscape to dystopian wasteland. We will also consider how works in diverse media both enable and complicate such fantasies, in some cases articulating national or imperial justifications for the seizure of Indigenous lands, the pollution of air and water through energy extraction, or the development of nuclear weaponry.