Postgraduate Course: Topics in Environmental Humanities (ARCH11246)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The Environmental Humanities is an exciting new area of research that argues for the importance of arts and humanities scholars engaging with environmental debates. In particularly it explores what kinds of contributions the arts and humanities can make to efforts to respond to key environmental issues.
A good introduction to the goals of this research area can be found in the editorial article for the first issue of the Environmental Humanities journal. In it, Deborah Bird Rose and her colleagues suggest that the non-human world has often been excluded from study in the humanities. However they argue that the environmental humanities are important in two ways. First because they can bring more complex accounts of meaning, value, ethics and politics to our understandings of environmental problems. And second because many of the concepts that have been fundamental to Western culture have been developed on the basis that humans are fundamentally separate from nature. As a result the environmental humanities also challenge these fundamental concepts and take better account of the ways that humans are always entangled in more-than-human worlds.
The aim of our course is to explore these two aspects of the environmental humanities by developing complex accounts of environmental problems and challenging the fundamental anthropocentrism of much of humanities thinking. Each year we will do this through a focus on a topic that is at the forefront of the area. |
| Course description |
In 2016 we will be looking at the theme of 'Untimely Environments'.
We will develop an understanding of environmental issues such as climate change, resource depletion, long-term pollutants, extinctions, food and water security and more. In particular we will look at the role of time within them. How do our understandings of time exacerbate these issues? How might these issues challenge dominant understandings of time? Many theorists have argued that a focus on the linear time of the clock has made it difficult to comprehend the ways that the environment is characterised by multiple and conflicting 'timescapes'. We will thus explore how ideas of time such as past and future, pace and speed, deep time and shallow time affect our understandings of, and responses to, key environmental problems.
The course will be seminar based. This means that each week we will focus on a set of key readings, in order to discuss their key points, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they add to our understandings of the Environmental Humanities.
We will also tie these readings to case studies that we will develop throughout the course. This will allow us to explore how the issues we cover arise in real-life situations. Each student will pick their own case study at the beginning of the course and will build up a portfolio of independent research that fleshes out how their case might be related to the topics we cover. The components of the portfolio will provide a clear step-by-step method for building up the case study and will help students to develop a wide-ranging interdisciplinary knowledge of environmental issues.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- A critical understanding of the ways that theory can be used to understand the human implications of environmental issues. In particular you will demonstrate an understanding of the ways environment is theorised and how these theories contribute to key contemporary environmental issues.
- A practical understanding of how and why to apply theories and methods from multiple disciplines in order to understand complex issues that form the focus of environmental research.
- An ability to develop complex and effective responses to environmental issues that demonstrate a critical approach and an ability to engage with cutting edge research.
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Reading List
Our reading list will vary, depending on the topic covered. An indicative list for 2016 includes:
Adam, Barbara. 1998. Timescapes of Modernity: The environment & invisible hazards. London and New York: Routledge.
Birth, Kevin K. 2012. Objects of Time: How things shape temporality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry 35 (2):197-222.
Ellsworth, Elizabeth, and Jamie Kruse, eds. 2012. Making the geologic now: Responses to material conditions of contemporary life. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum.
Fincher, Ruth, Jon Barnett, and Sonia Graham. 2015. Temporalities in Adaptation to Sea-Level Rise. Annals of the Association of American Geographers Early View:1-11.
Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleManŠ_Meets_OncoMouseTM. New York and London: Routledge.
Heise, Ursula K. 2010. Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species: Cultures of Extinction. Configurations 18 (1-2):49-72.
Hofmeister, Sabine. 1997. Nature's Temporalities: Consequences for Environmental Politics. Time & Society 6 (2-3):309-321.
Ingold, Tim. 1993. The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology 25 (2):152-174.
Irvine, Richard. 2014. Deep time: an anthropological problem. Social Anthropology 22 (2):157-172.
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA. : Harvard University Press.
Rose, Deborah Bird. 2012. Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time. Environmental Philosophy 9 (1):127-140.
Rose, Deborah Bird, Thom van Dooren, Matthew Chrulew, Stuart Cooke, Matthew Kearnes, and Emily O'Gorman. 2012. Thinking through the environment, unsettling the humanities. Environmental Humanities 1 (1):1-5. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
In this course, we will be learning to:
- deal with complex issues and make informed judgements in situations where it is not always possible to have complete or consistent information.
- apply critical analysis, evaluation and synthesis to issues that are informed by developments at the forefront of the area.
- develop a range of routine and specialised skills to communicate with peers, more senior colleagues and specialists
- exercise substantial autonomy and initiative in developing an approach to the materials
- respond to complex ethical issues that may not be addressed by the current professional and/or ethical codes or practices in our home disciplines. |
| Study Abroad |
None |
| Keywords | environment,theory,philosophy,cultural studies,science and technology studies |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Michelle Bastian
Tel: (0131 6)51 5779
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Jennifer Watson
Tel: (0131 6)51 5743
Email: |
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