Courses
HUMN2056 Climate Change Literature and Culture (3 units)
This course introduces students to literary and cultural texts that raise environmental awareness, drive climate action, and imagine alternative planetary futures. Students will investigate themes of sea level rise, water scarcity, ocean pollution, overdevelopment, overconsumption, resources extraction, and urban sustainability at the intersection between environmental justice, climate justice, and social justice issues of race, sexuality, migration, Indigeneity, colonialism, and other marginalized livelihoods. Through a diverse range of fictional stories, films, artworks, and popular cultural texts, students will explore literary and cultural forms that go beyond realist conventions, including science fiction, magical realism, fantasy, apocalypse, eco-art, and Indigenous futurisms. The course will take students on an imaginative journey to a diverse range of geographical locations while keeping a focus on the environmental literature and socioeconomic changes in Asia and Hong Kong, including questions of coastal communities and marine ecosystems. Students will gain an understanding of the unique capacity of the arts in engaging with the emotional, ecological, and aesthetic experiences of life under climate change and climate action. In particular, the course will engage students in experiential and service learning to cultivate reflective and participatory projects on “doing” the environmental humanities. Students are expected to gain environmental literacy for cultivating responsible consumption and climate action toward the goal of healthy land-water relations.