SUMMER SESSION

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COMP_LIT 301-0 : Apocalyptic Pasts and Futures: Environmental Fiction, Film and Art

Description

As our planet warms and changes, it seems as though we are truly on the precipice of the end of the world, or rather, the “world” as we know it. Climate processes are rendering the planet quasi-apocalyptic and truly strange, from ancient microbes awakening in Siberian permafrost to microplastics forming part of the atmosphere. At the same time, as Black and Indigenous authors and theorists highlight, some communities are already living in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world, which raises the question of: whose “world” ends at the end of the world and what “world” can we envision beyond this one? What kind of planetary imaginary or thinking do we require to imagine an elsewhere that is beyond forms of capitalist and colonial violence? What genres or forms of narrative could accommodate the multi-scalar issues around climate change, ecocide, and environmental shifts?

In line with Amitav Ghosh’s (2016, 9) proclamation that “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination,” this course interrogates how contemporary global fiction, film, and art, allows us to imagine alternative futures through lens of apocalyptic past and present. We will draw on theoretical scholarship from environmental humanities, postcolonial theory, Indigenous studies, and animal studies, especially through the writings of Kyle Whyte, Amitav Ghosh, Kathryn Yusoff, Ursula Heise, Rob Nixon, Tim Choy and Robin Kimmerer. Primary texts include fiction by Ramona Ausubel and C Pam Zhang; films by directors and artists such as Zhao Ling, Jumana Manna and Alisi Telengut; and art and sound pieces by Olafur Eliasson, Cecilia Vicuña and Cheryl E. Leonard.