Planetary Media

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course is about how planets are imagined through media as environmental and social systems, with a focus on exchanges between science fictional "world building" practices and scientific ways of knowing. We study the history of science fiction and science borrowing from one another to explain how Earth and other planets work, and how both fields have used media to depict planets. When science fiction creates imaginary worlds, are its tools similar or different to those used by exoplanet astronomers or Mars rover teams? How do these shared planetary imaginaries affect the public's understanding of the climate crisis? Examples will be drawn from both fiction and nonfiction, and both technical and aesthetic media, including climate models, video games, television, pulp magazines, and film. The course culminates with a creative, group planetary world building assignment.