Subject Area: Environmental Humanities

Climate change is often understood as primarily a scientific or environmental problem that requires economic or technological solutions. In this course we will explore how climate change is perhaps better understood as a social, cultural and political phenomenon which is remaking the ways in which we understand our relationship with the Earth. How we understand climate, weather, nature and the environment are crucial for understanding contemporary global warming and our responses to it. We will examine the underlying politics of climate change. You will garner a conceptual and methodological toolkit for interpreting and making sense of the social aspects of climate change and the often intense political arguments that surround it. The course explores the history of climate science and the more recent emergence of a global consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The course goes on to consider recent work on abrupt climate change, climate modelling and the politics of climate change adaptation and mitigation technologies. The course draws on a multi-disciplinary framework for understanding the social, historical and political aspects of climate change, with insights from politics, sociology, and science and technical studies (STS). You will be introduced to key areas of contemporary scholarly thinking in the environmental humanities – including political ecology, the sociology of scientific knowledge and contemporary political theory.