December 16, 2024
The Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative is pleased to support a new seminar in the department of Theater Arts. Enrollment is now open for Spring 2025:
Ecology Across the Arts and Humanities
Theater Arts 266: Special Topics
Tuesdays, 2 - 5 PM
Instructor: Shannon Jackson
Class #: 27557
Learn More and Register
How do we understand the aesthetics of climate change, especially in times of increased climate change denial? Scientists, politicians, activists, and policy-makers struggle to sensitize global citizens to the threat of climate change. Within this nexus, artists, humanists, and cultural critics work to articulate and propel the role of the arts and humanities in climate advocacy and in the re-imagining the systems of the world. How do differerent art forms and media —literature, visual art, performance, film, architecture, and more — activate a multi sensory understanding of the ecological? How are humanistic methods transforming and transformed by engagements with climate science? How do so-called “human” agents reckon with a “more-than-human” perspective on the world? Coinciding with a recently awarded Mellon grant on the arts and anti-authoritarianism, we will also explore how the question of climate has become politicized in a partisan landscape and in the context of growing authoritarianism. We will consider these and other topics throughout this graduate seminar, integrating methods of critical inquiry, formal analysis, archival research, curation, community engagement, art-making, and post-election community engagement throughout the Bay Area. Conceived in relation to the campus-wide Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative, we will welcome several visiting scholars and artists to our seminar. The seminar will also include a field trip to one of the UC Field Stations. Final essays and projects will be developed in relation to the skill sets, partnerships, and disciplinary goals of enrolled students.
