English and Comparative Literature
Undergraduate Seminar
Tu 2:10-4PM
Thinking among the many versions of “climate fictions,” we’ll consider the role of literature and the literary imagination in fashioning, interpreting, and inhabiting them. What work does the imagination do in the world, in grappling both with the worlds that humans have made, and with the boundary parameters of the Earth system that have shaped life on this planet as we have known it? How do cultural and narrative assumptions shape the work of scientists and policy-makers? How can prose fiction help readers engage with the challenges of knowledge, emotion, anticipation, judgement, and action that a warming world will require? How can climate fictions of all sorts help readers try on modes of living and other futures that we do or don’t want—or lull them into thinking that such anticipation is unnecessary or futile?
Link to Vergil
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