SUM4036 – Environmental Humanities: From Civil Disobedience to Arne N?ss to Extinction Rebellion

Schedule, syllabus and examination date

Course content

The Environmental Humanities is a new area of interdisciplinary studies of the environmental crisis which draws on the legacy of, among others, Norway’s greatest nature philosopher, Arne N?ss. Students examine the environmental crisis through the lens of philosophy and ethics, literary traditions, history, media, landscape studies, and the arts. The course covers research areas such as environmental history and anthropology; climate and environmental ethics; ecological literature/media; the nexus environment-religion-ideology; and studies of the relationship between culture, identity and environmental conflicts.

In this course we will explore cultural and political preconditions for achieving momentous social and environmental change. To learn from previous social mobilizations, we will examine main actors, their visions, and political actions. What stories and practices compelled society at large to change course? What worked and what didn’t? How important were morally charged narratives of better lives? What kind of moral community did they aspire to forge? What can we learn from psychological studies of prosociality and wellbeing as drivers of human and environmental flourishing? In what way can our conceptions of the ‘good life’ contribute to a sustainable future? 

The course has a threefold objective:

(1) to revisit influential narratives and initiatives in socio-environmental history - such as Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” Aldo Leopolds’s “Thinking like a mountain,” or Arne N?ss’s Deep Ecology - to discern how and why they broadened socio-environmental consciousness and inspired social mobilization;

(2) to illuminate the imaginative, political, and moral sources of successful paradigm shifts, the emergence of the ‘Nordic wellbeing state’. Can we crack the code of positive, world-changing visions and strategies? What can we learn from the dynamics of historical groups that managed to address insurmountable challenges and make unimaginable worlds come true?

(3) to study modern environmental and climate movements such as Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future in terms of their narrative appeal, mobilizing potential, and social structure. What are the meeting points between the modern environmental struggle and past “revolutionary scripts”? What can be emulated and what needs more work? How can we improve cultural innovation toward a more sustainable world?

Learning outcome

  • to critically evaluate climate mobilizations of our time;

  • to better understand the key conditions of achieving maximum success in combatting the climate crisis;

  • to scrutinize contemporary attempts to effectuate a socio-environmental change by putting the present into a creative dialogue with the past;

  • to identify the main sources of cultural innovation for a sustainable future.

Admission

You may apply to be a guest student at SUM. Please follow these instructions.

Prerequisites

Formal prerequisite knowledge

A bachelor’s degree with a specialization equivalent to at least 80 ECTS within subjects from the humanities or social sciences, sustainable development, or equivalent relevant subjects.