Climate Crisis:
Teaching Fiction and Philosophy at the End of the World: The Sequel
Restrictions: max. 15 students from FSU Jena
Wednesday, 10am Georgia time (EST), 4pm CET Jena time (summer)
As wildfires, a global pandemic, rising sea levels, warming ocean waters and increasingly frequent and violent storms have recently shown us, climate change is a topic of imminent urgency. It is a convergence of plural crises that in the coming decades will require all hands on deck: It will require the cooperation of myriad fields of expertise rather than thinking in traditional disciplinary silos. While the sciences must provide the factual, data-based knowledge basis for any possible intervention, the humanities facilitate and enrich the discussion and interpretation of these data. While climate change is a hyperobject in the philosopher Timothy Morton’s sense – too large an entity for humans to envision – fiction and film enable us to go beyond the limits of our imagination, helping us to visualize and conceptualize the imminent threats to our planet’s ecology, including mass extinction.
This course establishes a postdisciplinary, integrative conversation linking the science of climate change, philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, film studies, literary studies, French, Spanish, and English studies, pedagogy, and teacher education, ecocriticism and ecopedagogy.
Offered by FSU Jena and Georgia College, USA, the course will be co-taught fully online by faculty from GC (Dr. Hedwig Fraunhofer) and the Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena, Germany (Prof. Dr. Laurenz Volkmann). With the goal of creating larger popular awareness of the questions discussed, Prof. Dr. Volkmann, together with guest speakers with expertise in ecopedagogy, will in particular explore pedagogical strategies for teaching the topics and materials discussed. We welcome students from both institutions and hope that the interaction between students from different cultures and locales will provide diverse perspectives on a problem that transcends national boundaries.
Class discussions and online interactions will be in English. Students are encouraged to read the assigned texts in the original language whenever possible.
General Outcomes (knowledge, skills, attitudes, action):
Knowledge and Skills:
Students will be able to
** identify the local and global, material and social threats posed by climate change
** analyze the material, historical, political, philosophical, economic and cultural contexts and effects of climate change
** critically assess individual and communal environmental practices and values
** identify viable solutions to environmental problems and their unequal effects
** analyze how different types of (philosophical, literary, filmic, socio-political, etc.) texts engage environmental issues
** approach ecological issues from diverse socio-cultural and ontological perspectives and multiple scales of (human and geological/nonhuman) spacetime (change of perspective)
Attitudes:
Students will develop
** a sense of planetary responsibility for ensuring equitable access to environmental resources
** a sense of shared responsibility for dealing with environmental crises
** a nuanced, post-anthropocentric understanding of the ontological roles and relationships of humans and nonhuman beings and phenomena
Action:
Critical environmental literacy also includes the active participation in local and global communities. Students may be prompted to participate in (media) discourses about environmental issues, change their environmental behavior to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, or take individual or communal action towards ameliorating local/global environmental problems.
(Adapted from Claudia Deetjen & Christian Ludwig, “Introduction ± Developing Students' Critical Environmental Literacies in the ELT Classroom,” 14-15)
Additional learning outcomes will be defined for students’ specific disciplinary backgrounds.
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Logistics
- Completely online, using Zoom, Wordwise (Moodle) and other online conduits of communication
- An international seminar on a global issue
- Combining binational perspectives
- Working together in binational student teams
- One syllabus with tailor-made parts for US and German students
- Course requirements according to module demands of each university
- Georgia College students will join the class the week of May 11, but are welcome to attend before that date. Students from the University of Jena will finish the class the week of July 6 (oral exams will take place the following week), while GC students will continue until the week of July 27.
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