糖心TV

Overview

What responses do literary and cultural texts afford in the age of intensifying climate impacts? What role, responsibilities and effective powers鈥攎ight the Arts in general offer in the grand endeavour to confront the crisis and enact the kinds of transition that successful mitigation requires: transformations in culture, but also in politics, economics, infrastructure, habitat? As students will discover, the range and volume of cultural registrations of climate breakdown are considerable and diverse. We'll study climate fiction but also graphic novels, cinema, adverts, exhibitions and cultural forms of activism. The module will provide a curated selection oriented around the 鈥榗limate imaginary鈥欌�攔ealist, speculative, creative and performative envisioning of climate-affected presents and futures, from different spaces and times. Such imaginaries offer the means for a generative response to readers, audiences and publics charged with understanding and acting on climate issues. A variety of themes and concerns will be covered, from extractivism to conservation; from scenarios of catastrophic weather, resource depletion and radically transformed habitats to dystopian worlds of geoengineering and utopian forms of community such as solarpunk and post-oil lifeworlds.

Teaching

1 x weekly 1.5 hr seminar

Assessment

Intermediate:

• 1 x 2,000-word assessed essay (70%)
• Creative/Curatorial Project: 1 x 1000 word descriptive essay OR 1 x 5 minute video essay (30%)

Finalists:

• 1 x 3,000-word assessed essay (70%)
• Creative/Curatorial Project: 1 x 1000 word descriptive essay OR 1 x 5 minute video essay (30%)

Syllabus 2026/27

Week One: Introduction to Climate Change: Conditions, Causes and Effects; Cultural Theory on Climate; The role of 鈥淚maginaries鈥�. Please read: Mark Maslin, (4th Edition). Intro Slides

Week Two: Learning the World鈥擝arbara Kingsolver, (2012) FlightBehaviourSlides

Week Three: Fossil Fools? Petroculture and its consequences 鈥� Selection (shown in class) from Peter Mettler's Film  (Greenpeace Canada, 2009). Three Short Stories: "", by Suyi Davies Okungbowa; China Mi猫ville, ""; Mohammed Hasan Alwan, ""; Edward Burtynsky (esp. "Oil"). PetroSlides

Week Four: Climate Dystopia鈥擟ollapse (1)鈥擩ohn Lanchester, (2019) TheWallslides

Week Five: Denial and its Consequences鈥擜dam McKay (dir.),

(2021) Don't Look Up Slides

Week Seven: Futuring (1)鈥� (2018-) RuinsSlides

Week Eight: Collapse/Recovery (2)鈥擶ar, Peace, Repair 鈥� Omar Al-Akkad, (2018) AWslides

Week Nine: Resistance鈥擜ctivism in Song, Art, Performance - ActivismSlides

Week Ten: Futuring (2) Where Now? Renewability/Solarfutures/Geoengineering?鈥擥anzeer, Cixin Lui, (2000); Wanuri Kahui, (2009); After Oil Collective, ; Andrew Dana Hudson, "", Medium (2015); Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, "" (2018). Solarpunkslides