Honors Collegium 146
Imagining Global Climate Change
Enrollment: Open to College Honors/College Scholars students
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for College Honors students. Global and comparative study of regions in front line of climate change, such as islands that visibly confront sea level rise and glacial melt, through study of visual arts, literature, and film. Study of oceanic themes in authors and artists from the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America to examine threat of climate change in its complex cultural imaginations. P/NP or letter grading.
Professor Elizabeth DeLoughrey
Elizabeth DeLoughrey is a professor in the English Department and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA who teaches postcolonial literature courses on the environment, globalization, and the Anthropocene and climate change, with a focus on the Caribbean and Pacific Islands. With Thom Van Dooren, she was co-editor of the interdisciplinary open-access journal Environmental Humanities until 2020. She is the author of “Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures” (2007), and co-editor of the volumes “Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture” (2005); “Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment” (2011); and “Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches” (2015). Her latest (open access) book, “Allegories of the Anthropocene,” examines climate change and empire in the literary and visual arts and was published by Duke University Press in 2019.
Q & A
What is your home department at UCLA? English (with affiliation in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability)
How long have you been teaching your HC seminar? For five years, with updates every year because our climate crisis and its representations are evolving
What is your favorite part about teaching this HC seminar? The small class setting, the ability to get to know students and share ideas around a seminar table, our interdisciplinary discussions, and being able to incorporate field trips to museums as inspiration for the future.
What do you find to be the most compelling about the subject matter of this seminar? The global climate crisis is–unfortunately– very timely. Yet the literature, film, and art works we examine are incredibly inspiring and provide new critical perspectives, particularly from those who are at the frontlines of the Anthropocene such as Indigenous and postcolonial communities. Our focus for the quarter is examining perspectives from the global south, which incorporate how the histories of empire are integral to understanding our current climate crisis, and offer new visions for the future.
What are the learning objectives for this course?
- To develop effective oral and written communication skills for an interdisciplinary audience;
- Develop skills in critically analyzing visual and literary texts from a variety of cultural and environmental contexts;
- Apply theories or concepts from courses within the student’s major to the analysis of climate change texts;
- Identify ethical issues raised by particular environmental texts and analyze their rhetorical and visual ways of communicating;
- Produce a final paper or project based on reading materials covered in the course