Certificate in Theoretical Approaches to Ecological-Cultural Change

Information

This interdisciplinary lecture will provide students an insight into various theoretical and disciplinary approaches to topics such as culture, ecology, sustainability, change, and their interdependencies. Each week a different lecturer will present an introduction to these topics from their respective disciplinary perspective. Contributing fields may include literary and cultural studies, philosophy, law, political science, landscape ecology, marine biology, agrarian ecology, classical philology, and archaeology. External experts will round off the program.

The aim is to enable students to identify different methods and analytical frameworks for critically engaging with the material and cultural dimensions of global climate and ecological crises, their historical and sociological dimensions, and the solutions proposed by each field.

The “cultural” topics, at the intellectual center of this program include human-animal relations, energy cultures, literary ecocriticism, Indigenous and postcolonial approaches to ecological sustainability, and critiques of environmental racism. The lectures will help students become familiar with the various tools for analyzing the current cultural-ecological situation within a global context, and for thinking creatively about its temporal dimension, including its history and its future.

Specifically, the aims of the Certificate are to:

• Facilitate an understanding of and an ability to analyze historical and contemporary issues relating to ecology, sustainability, and cultural change, as well as their representations.
• Foster an inter-and transdisciplinary understanding of the global environmental and climate crisis.
• Enable students to use various tools for analyzing the current cultural-ecological situation within a global context.
• Enable students to think creatively about the temporal, special, and ideological dimensions of cultural-ecological change, including its history and its future.