Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An in-depth investigation of a selected topic in the history of art, performance and cinema. This course can be repeated four times for credit if the topic is different.

COURSE DETAILS:

Topic for Spring 2023 : Contemporary Art and Ecology

In recent decades, the field of Environmental Humanities has emerged in recognition of the impossibility of relying on any one system or culture of knowledge to address complex environmental issues, such as climate breakdown. Integrating ecological inquiry from the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts, the field has also insisted not only on the dismantling of all nature/culture divides but also on the dismantling of hierarchies between Western, Eastern, and Indigenous ways of knowing and relating. Taking this kind of intervention as its starting point, we will explore how art, philosophy, and decolonizing methodologies might help us to connect more intimately and imaginatively to the present. In our meetings, we will explore together the aspects of life that, in Isabel Stengers’ words, “have been anaesthetized, massacred, and dishonoured in the name of a progress that is reduced today to the imperative of economic growth.” In doing so, the seminar seeks to redirect our attention to ideas, things, and experiences that might inspire radical hope, creative solutions, and collective action.

Course topics include: productive alternatives to apocalyptic thinking; cultivating deep listening; Indigenous and anthropological methods for “knowing from the inside”; studying the earth’s material witnessing; and building new worlds through an Indigenous understanding of deep time. Students will be asked to keep a journal of notes and questions; to engage with the intimate and astonishing nature of multisensory study; and to complete an essay or trans-medial project (that may involve writing, video, soundscape, etc.) that relates to one or more of the issues addressed in the course.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES: