Environmental Thinking

The news announce constantly that we are living on a dying planet. For many people, this overwhelms not just our ability to “do something” about it, but even our ability to think it. Sometimes, the disaster seems too immense, too intertwined with every aspect of life for a mere individual to grasp. Other times, we are told to take it one small step at a time, and that every one of our actions makes a difference. Neither position helps us understand the present or imagine the future.

This course introduces multiple critical paradigms for thinking about the environment and one’s relationship to it. Rather than trying to describe the environmental crisis, as if the problem were singular, this course illustrates how different environmental problems engender different cognitive and imaginative frameworks. The goal of the course is not to arrive at a comprehensive, total understanding of the environment, but instead to explore the dynamics among these competing frameworks. Should we strive to reconcile the tensions between them? Can their differences be productive for thought, action, or both?

Watch the course on YouTube.