These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books being published with titles that feature the word “Anthropocene.”
To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a “slow read” would require, well, retirement.
But that’s no reason not to try. Here’s just a quick sample of recent titles, some by known authors, others by new names (to me, at least). Comments and additions welcome.
- Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene
- Textures of the Anthropocene: Grain, Vapor, Ray (4 volumes!)
- Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made
- Ecocriticism On the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept
- The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us
- Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene
- Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation After Nature
- The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch
- Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change
- The Anthropocene: The Human Era and How it Shapes Our Planet
- After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene
Another one to add to the stack: Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene, edited by Deborah Bird Rose and Katherine Gibson and published by Eileen Joy at Punctum Books. http://punctumbooks.com/titles/manifesto-for-living-in-the-anthropocene/
Hi Adrian,
I’m teaching my Anthropocene seminar once again next spring with UVM Geography, and looking to rethink and rebuild it. (Last time was a bit too heavy with a critical nihilism approach!) Thanks for these titles. Some of them are on my short list, especially Wark and Lorimer
It would be good to meet up and talk through some ideas. Given the immensity of the topic, a seminar on the Anthropocene can be taken in a thousand directions – a fact as liberating as it is troublesome. Also – and this was a challenge that cropped up the last time I taught this – there’s an interesting pedagogical question about how to discuss issues related to immense temporalities, radical asymmetry, collectivities, etc. in an institutional culture that tends to privilege liberal subjectivity and to reinforce the site of the individual as the foundation of politics. Indeed, a frequently raised question is “What can *I* do?”. It’s an understandable question, but it’s also a politically and philosophically problematic one – especially with regard to the Anthropocene.
Anyway, clearly there are a number of issues related to the question of how to ‘teach the Anthropocene.’ It would be great to catch up and discuss them. Perhaps early next term?
Best,
Harlan
Hi Harlan,
Yes, very interesting challenges. I may also be needing to reconfigure one of my fall courses, and I was considering refocusing it around the Anthropocene. So it would be good to talk (perhaps by email in the coming weeks)…