immanence

I will be making parts of my “Advanced Environmental Humanities” course open to the EcoCultureLab community and a limited broader public. Technical details remain to be worked out, but I’d like to make our readings and discussions open, so as to include interested participants from outside the university community.

The course is a graduate and upper level undergraduate seminar premised on the understanding that the current “global moment” is deeply challenging, confusing, and dispiriting, but at the same time potentially “pregnant with possibility,” and that the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities has much to offer it. The class will be meeting online using MS Teams software on Thursdays, beginning February 4 and running until May 6, 1:15-4:15 pm Eastern (New York City) time.

Here is a brief description. Anyone interested in joining the class for some of the readings and discussions can write me about it. If we’re lucky, we may occasionally get an author or two to join us.

Advanced Environmental Humanities (ENVS295 / NR395)

This seminar course will explore current themes and issues in the interdisciplinary environmental humanities through readings and discussions of theoretical and empirical texts across fields including environmental philosophy, literary and cultural studies, social and media theory, and others. Themes to be explored may include: Anthropocene studies, technoscience studies, posthumanist and decolonial theory, affect theory, animal and multispecies studies, and others. Students will be expected to carry out a research or applied practice project building on themes at the confluence of critical theory, environmental advocacy, and creative arts/humanities practice.

Thematic Overview

It is broadly recognized today that ecological problems present deep challenges to human society, and that technical solutions and policy responses are insufficient for addressing them. Understanding and engaging these challenges effectively requires historical understanding of their multiple and interacting causes, and humanistic and cultural approaches to motivating responses on multiple social scales. The emergence of the Environmental Humanities (henceforth, “EH”) as an interdisciplinary field testifies both to how this recognition has grown across multiple disciplines and to how critical theory and practice toward an ecologically sustainable culture has only just begun. The latter task faces obstacles at the levels of policy and politics, communication, psychology, and culture. The arts and humanities are central to addressing and overcoming these obstacles. The course will explore this problematic with a focus on key current readings in the environmental humanities and on current topics in the broader culture, including climate change action, social and racial justice, media disinformation, and others. 

This semester’s course will begin from a recognition that we are living through an acute sociopolitical crisis, in which cultural, economic, technological, and ecological factors combine to produce deep differences in the perception of political identity and affiliation, of race and culture, and of environmental issues. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic (and Covid ‘denialism’), this past year’s Black Lives Matter protests (and counter-protests), and the recent U.S. elections and the attack on their legitimacy all reflect forms of deep contention that mirror debates over climate change and climate justice (including ‘climate denialism’). Together they have brought about a situation in which it is difficult to know how and where to get one’s bearings: with such deep social fractures, where do we start in building the kinds of coalitions of thought and practice that will be necessary to build a socially just and ecologically sustainable world? Is it even reasonable to hope that the latter can be achieved? How do we best orient ourselves theoretically and practically in this murky and shifting terrain?

With these questions in mind, the format and expectations of this course will be somewhat flexible and individualized. We will organize the course around three overarching themes, which have been among the most prominent themes in the environmental humanities in recent years:

1. Attempts to grasp the world-encompassing totality of the climate and extinction crises: Recent scholarship has featured debates over the naming of the “Anthropocene,” the place of capitalism and neoliberalism within it, and articulations of the “deep time” of human relations with the geological, earthly, and chthonic beyond that preceded us and will outlast us. Here we find efforts to scope out what it means to live at, or even after, the “end of the world,” in a time of epistemic violence, great derangement, species loss, deaths of civilization and even of the “posthuman,” and all the loss, grief, mourning, rage, and other emotions conjured up at the intersections of geology, history, and the colonial and capitalist petrocultures, militarisms, and technofutures that collectively mark our world.

2. Debates over the ontological multiplicity of ‘the human,’ and the need to decolonize our understandings of it: Sparked by the previous decade’s calls for an “ontological turn,” and connected to the decolonial  thread in all its forms—Indigenous, anti-racist, Black, women of color, global South, transnational, et al.— many scholars argue that the world is riven not only by cultural differences, but by ontological differences, differences of “world” and of “world-making.” These differences require “cosmopolitical” methods of renegotiating the conditions for coexistence within multiple entanglements with ecology, biology, and cosmology in their political, affective, and imaginal contours.

3. Empirical and ethnographic efforts to map out the multispecies entanglements of the cultural and natural, material and discursive, as humans contend with their relations with more-than-human worlds: Many of these efforts engage with the “new materialist” turn in its speculative, relational, object-oriented, animist, enactive/affective, and other forms, while others intersect with the “posthuman” turn in its “more-than-human” and “transhuman” varieties. Others are part of the tradition by which artists and philosophers continually rediscover the sheer delight of life in its biological, animated (and animist) exuberance. The animal, viral, fungal, microbial, vegetal, bodily, crystalline, watery, oceanic, elemental, and darkly and brightly ecological—all these and more provoke creative engagements that continue to challenge our thinking about what constitutes the world and our many possible placings within it.

Required or strongly recommended texts: While most of our readings will be provided in electronic form via Blackboard, the following are books that I recommend you purchase, borrow, or access in full in some way, as we will likely read several chapters (if not the entirety) from each of them:

• Stefania Barca, Forces of Reproduction: Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (Cambridge U. Press, 2020). We will read all of this short book (@65 pages).
• Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press, 2016). We will read about half of this book.
• A. Tsing, H. Swanson, E. Gans, and N. Bubandt, ed., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). We are likely to read a third to a half of this book.
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke University Press, 2020). This book of prose poetry is a quick read. Use the discount code “COURSE30” during checkout for a 30% discount.
• Kate Wright, Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene: More-than-human Encounters (Routledge, 2017). I expect that we will read significant chunks of this book, though we may play it by ear with it. Use discount code “SS330” for 30% off on either the print or electronic edition.
• Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin, Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (Open Humanities Press, 2015). We’ll read several chapters from this. The book is open-access and available for free download from the publisher.

Tentative Schedule of Topics & Possible Readings

This schedule will likely change as we go. The list of readings is inclusive of those we actually will read and others you may find helpful for background. All changes and all readings will be announced in the course Blackboard site.

Feb. 4 Course Introduction & Overview

Personal introductions. Mapping the state of the world & of ourselves.

I. WHY ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES?

Overview of the development of the Environmental Humanities field, viewed normatively (Why is it important?), genealogically (How did it develop? What pressures elicited its cross-disciplinary formation?), functionally (What are its concerns? What does it do and how does it do it?How does it draw upon existing frameworks, discourses, and methods and rearrange them in the process?), and projectively (What should it be doing as we navigate this historical moment?)

Feb. 11  Why Environmental Humanities? – Theory

• Joni Adamson, “Humanities”, in Keywords for Environmental Studies, 135-138
• Greg Garrard, “Environmental Humanities: Notes Towards a Summary for Policymakers”, Routledge Companion to Environmental Humanities, 462-71
• Sverker Sörlin, “Environmental Humanities: Why Should Biologists Interested in the Environment Take the Humanities Seriously?”, BioScience 62.9 (Sept. 2012): 788-789
• Marco Armiero, “The Environmental Humanities & the Current Socioecological Crisis”, in Global University Network for Innovation, Higher Education in the World 7: 426-432
• Poul Holm et. al., “Humanities for the Environment—A Manifesto for Research and Action”, Humanities 2015, 4: 977–992
• Deborah Bird Rose et. al., “Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities”, Environmental Humanities 1 (2012): 1-5

Feb. 18  Why Environmental Humanities? – Method

• Joni Adamson, “Integrating knowledge, forging new constellations of practice in the environmental humanities,” in J. Adamson & M. Davis, ed., Humanities for the Environment (Routledge, 2016).
• Libby Robin, “Environmental Humanities & Climate Change,” WIREs Climate Change 9 (2018), esp. pp. 11-12: “How do the Environmental Humanities innovate?”
• E. O’Gorman, T. van Dooren, U. Münster, et al., “Teaching the Environmental Humanities,” Environmental Humanities 11.2 (2019): esp. pp. 445-458 (section 2.2 to end).
• Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Jill Didur, & Anthony Carrigan, “Introduction: A Postcolonial Environmental Humanities”, in Global Ecologies & the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches, 2015, 1-32
• Emily Potter, Fiona Miller, et al, “A Manifesto for Shadow Places,” EPE Nature and Space (2020)
• KJ Hernandez, et al, “The Creatures Collective: Manifestings,” EPE Nature and Space (2020)

II.  CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

What are the best ways to understand, express, and convey the world-encompassing nature of the climate and extinction crises? Are we living in (or through, or out of) the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, or something else? If the Anthropocene, who or what is the Anthropos that is being “-cene” (making the world new)? How do we best come to grips with the extinction crisis and the “deep time” that current generations of humans are actively affecting? What does it mean to be living at the “end of the world,” in a time of “great derangement,” a time of loss, grief, and radical contingency?

Feb. 25  Framing & De/Reframing the Crisis

• Stefania Barca, Forces of Reproduction: Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (Cambridge U. Press, 2020)
• Dale Jamieson, “The Anthropocene: Love It or Leave It”, Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, 13-20
• Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino, “The Environmental Humanities and the Challenges of the Anthropocene”, in Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene, 1-21
• Rob Nixon, “The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea”, Edge Effects, 6 November 2014.
• E. Gan, A. Tsing, H. Swanson, & N. Bubandt, “Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene,” Arts of Living, G1-13.

Mar. 4  Framing & De/Reframing the Crisis (cont’d)

• Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”, Environmental Humanities 6 (2015), 159-162.
• Joni Adamson,“We Have Never Been Anthropos: From Environmental Justice to Cosmopolitics”, in Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene, 155-173
• Ivakhiv, Adrian, Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times (Punctum, 2018)
• Yusoff, Kathryn, “Golden spikes and dubious origins,” A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, 23-64.
• D. B. Rose, T. van Dooren, & M. Chrulew, “Introduction: Telling Extinction Stories,” Extinction Studies

III.  ONTOLOGIZE! DECOLONIZE!

What is the “ontological turn” and how is it relevant to the environmental humanities? What are the different variations of decolonial thought and practice? Should we, and if so how should we, ontologize and decolonize our approaches to the human and environmental reference points of the “environmental humanities”?

Mar. 11 Ontologize, Decolonize: Global Perspectives (Latin America, Africa)

• Achille Mbembe, “Deglobalization,” “Ways of seeing,” and “Introduction” from The Becoming Black of the World (Duke U. Press, 2018) 
• Ashley Dawson, “Imperialism”, in Keywords for Environmental Studies, 139-143
• Arturo Escobar, “Thinking-feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South,” Revista de Antropologia Iberoamericana 11.1 (2016), 11-30
• Jorge Marcone, “The Stone Guests: Buen Vivir and Popular Environmentalism in the Andes and Amazonia,” Routledge Companion, 227-234.
• Mario Blaser, “Notes Toward a Political Ontology of ‘Environmental’ Conflicts,” Contested Ecologies, 13-26
• Harry Garuba, “On Animism, Modernity/Colonialism, & the African Order of Knowledge,” Contested Ecologies, 42-52
• Marisol de la Cadena, “About Mariano’s Archive: Ecologies of Stories,” Contested Ecologies, 55-67
• S. S. Moore, M. Allewaert, P. F. Gomez, & G. Mitman, “Plantation Legacies,” and G. Mitman, ed., “Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway & Anna Tsing,” in Edge Effects (2019).

Mar. 18  Ontologize, Decolonize: The Black Atlantic

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke University Press, 2020); see also M Archive (Duke UP, 2018) and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press, 2020)
• Tiffany Lethabo King, “Introduction,” pp. 1-11, The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (Duke U. Press, 2019)
• Chritina Sharpe,  “The Wake,” In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke U. Press, 2016), 1-22
• Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None

Mar. 25  Ontologize, Decolonize: North American Indigenous Perspectives

• Kyle Powys White, “Indigeneity”, Keywords for Environmental Studies, 143-146
• Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (U. of Minnesota Press, 2017)
• Heather Davis & Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, Or Decolonizing the Anthrropocene,” Acme: International Journal for Critical Geographies
• Zoe Todd, “Indigenizing the Anthropocene: Dwayne Donald’s Ethical Relationality and Ethical Métissage,” Art in the Anthropocene, 249-251.

IV.  MULTISPECIES ENTANGLEMENTS

Given the uncertainties and the impending casualties of current global processes, what are the best ways forward in recognizing our relations with each other and with the other others—nonhuman, inhuman, “more than human,” “post-human”—with whom we share our world(s)? How do we best recognize these entanglements of bodies, flows, animacies, materialities, and becomings of the world in our midst, and what ethical relations and obligations do they call forth from us?

Apr. 1  Multispecies Entanglements: Narrative & Ethical Methods

• D. B. Rose & T. van Dooren, “Encountering a More-than-human World: Ethos & the Arts of Witness,” Routledge Companion, 120-126.
• Donna Haraway, ch. 3 “Sympoiesis” and ch. 8 “The Camille stories,” in Staying with the Trouble.
• Eben Kirksey & Stefan Helmreich, “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography”, Cultural Anthropology 25.4 (2010)
• Eben Kirksey, et al., “Hope in Blasted Landscapes,” The Multispecies Salon (Duke University Press, 2014), 29-57.
• Elizabeth DeLoughrey, “Ordinary Futures: Interspecies Worldings in the Anthropocene,” in Global Ecologies & the Environmental Humanities, 352-372
• Swanson, Tsing, Bubandt, & Gan, “Introduction: Bodies Tumbled into Bodies,” Arts of Living, M1-13
• Jonathan Gray, “The Datafication of Forests,” Critical Zones, 364-373.
• Una Chaudhury, “Interspecies Dilpomacy in Anthropocenic Waters: Performing an Ocean-Oriented Ontology,” Rutledge Companion, 144-152.
• Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (U. California, 2013)
• Kate Wright, Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene: More-than-human Encounters (Routledge, 2017)

Apr. 8  Multispecies Entanglements: Practice in Shadow Places & Sacrifice Zones

• Eben Kirksey, “Hope in the Reverted Zone,” Emergent Ecologies, 36-51
• Adrian Ivakhiv, “Chernobyl, Risk, and the Inter-Zone of the Anthropocene,” in Sarkar & Ghosh, ed., Risk & Media, 219-228
• Kate Brown, “Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone,” Arts of Living, G33-49
• Nils Bubandt, “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, & the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene,” Arts of Living, G121-138
• Deborah Bird Rose, “Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed,” Arts of Living, G51-61.
• Heather Davis, “Life & Death in the Anthropocene: A Short History of Plastic,” Art in the Anthropocene, 347-356
• Natasha Myers, “Edenic Apocalypse: Singapore’s End of Time Botanical Tourism,” Art in the Anthropocene, 31-42
• Jamie Kruse & Elizabeth Ellsworth, “Design Specs in the Anthropocene,” Art in the A’cene, 155-165
• Dorion Sagan, “Coda: Beautiful Monsters,” Arts of Living, M169-174

Apr. 15  Respite Day (no class)

Apr. 22  Reports, Presentations  (Earth Week Eco-Arts Exhibition)

Apr. 29  Multispecies Entanglements: Datafication & the Role of Science

• Melody Jue, Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater (Duke University Press, 2020)
• Jonathan Gray, “The Datafication of Forests?” in Critical Zones, 364-371.
• Various selections from Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel, ed., Critical Zones: The Science & Politics of Landing on Earth (MIT Press, 2020)
• Others TBA

May 6  CONCLUSIONS: Futures, Hopes, Fears, & Ways Forward

• Readings TBA

Full syllabus available upon request.