Sensing the Anthropocene

Undergraduate / Graduate

In this co-taught course between the departments of English (Jennifer Scappettone) and Visual Arts (Amber Ginsburg), we will deploy the senses most overlooked in academic discourse surrounding aesthetics and urbanism--hearing, taste, touch, and smell--to explore the history and actuality of Chicago as a site of anthropogenic changes. Holding the bulk of our classes out of doors, we will move through the city seeking out traces of the city's foundations in terraforming actions such as the filling in of swamp, the production of the river as pipeline, and the creation of transportation and industrial infrastructure--all with uneven effects on human and nonhuman inhabitants. Coursework will combine readings in the history and theory of the Anthropocene (the proposed geological epoch in which humans have become the dominant force shaping Earth's geology, climate, and ecosystems) with examples of how artists and activists have made these changes visible, tangible, audible, and otherwise apprehensible, providing forums for playful documentation and annotations as we draw, score, map, narrate, curate and collate our sensory experience of this all-encompassing yet elusive phenomenon into a final experimental book project. Admission by consent: Beginning February 16, please send to both jscape@uchicago.edu and amberginsburg@gmail.com: a short statement (as brief as a couple sentences) sketching your academic background/major/interests and specifying your interest (general or specific).