ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING

This is a second-year course addressed to students of the Master’s Degree in Environmental Humanities who are not required to take the Italian language class. Its aim is to provide critical tools to analyze the different languages, ideologies and positions of environmentalism, across a broad spectrum of different media.

Students will have to get acquainted with different forms of environmental writing and communication, as well as different ideologies, philosophies and political stances connected to environmental issues. Students will develop their skills to recognize and analyze different types of environmental communication, including their use of a variety of emotional registers and persuasive strategies. Finally, they will have to improve their skills in oral (through class discussions) and written communication (through written exercises and for the purpose their final exam) as regards discussing environmental/climate issues, and they will have to learn to to reflect critically on their communicative choices and their implications.

Advanced reading, speaking and writing knowledge of English (B2).

Course title: Writing environmentalism. Positions, styles, registers

There is no single way to be 'environmentalist', and no single way to communicate 'environmental(ist)' ideas. Two forms of self-styled environmental writing may be radically different in their position, ideology or form, and employ radically different registers. Any given form of environmentalism, indeed, is always for someone (and against someone else) and is entrenched in social/political struggles and debates. At the same time 'environmental' communication is arguably everywhere, because every single social issue can be connected to or is embedded in environmental implications. It is therefore crucial to be able to recognize what an 'environmental' text is actually saying, with what political implications, and how.

Starting from those premises, the course will examine different types, registers and styles of environmental writing and communication. We will employ the novel/collection of novellas Our Shared Storm, by Andrew Dana Hudson, which imagines how COP54 would play out in five different climate scenarios, as framing device to introduce problems, questions and different styles/registers to talk about climate issues, as well as a source of speculative inspiration. Besides Hudson's novel, we will be looking at essays, fiction, scientific, critical and technical writing in order to analyze the different discourses, rhetorics, emotional/persuasive registers and approaches employed by authors from different cultures and ideological positions - from mainstream environmentalism to ecofascism and solarpunk. We will also consider documentaries and videos to interrogate the specifics of visual communication. Finally, we will undertake some in-class writing exercises, in preparation for the final exam.

Andrew Dana Hudson, Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures, 2022, Fordham University Press.

The other materials used for the classes will be available on Moodle. Text to be discussed in class include:

Kurtzgesagt, "We will fix climate change", 2022 (available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw )
"A Solarpunk Manifesto" (https://www.re-des.org/es/a-solarpunk-manifesto/ )
"An Ecomodernist Manifesto", 2015 (http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english )
Garrett Hardin, "Lifeboat Ethics", 1974 (available at: https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html )
China Miéville, "The Limits of Utopia", https://salvage.zone/mieville_all.html
Andreas Malm, How to blow up a pipeline, 2021, Verso (selection).
Philosophy Tube, "Climate Grief", 2019 (available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqCx9xU_-Fw )
Andrew Dana Hudson, "On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk", 2015 (available at: https://medium.com/solarpunks/on-the-political-dimensions-of-solarpunk-c5a7b4bf8df4 )

Other optional readings will be uploaded on Moodle.

The exam will consist of a final textual production (2000 words) in which students will have to introduce/discuss an environmental/climate topic/theme/problem. They will have to choose a specific register (hopeful, pessimist, activist, analytic, utopian, dystopian, documentary, realist...) and genre (essay, reportage, manifesto, fiction). The text will have to be complemented with a short discussion (500 words) in which they justify their choices of register and genre to discuss that particular issue, commenting on their strenghts and shortcomings in terms of environmental communication, as well as on the ideological positioning of the text.

The submission of the paper (via Moodle) will be followed by a short oral interview (5-10 minutes), focused on the student's choices and any potential critical points/issues.

It is required to discuss the topic of the essay in advance with the professor. Alternative formats (eg. videos) can be considered, but needs to be discussed in advance.

To PASS, students will have to show that they are able to produce a cohesive text in their chosen genre and register, and be able to critically comment on its formal communicative/stylistic choices and its position in terms of environmental ideologies (both in the commentary and in the short interview). They also need to show they have developed original critical thinking on the issues and critical debates addressed in class and be able to discuss them with sufficient competence.

written and oral

Lectures, class discussions, writing exercises. The course will lean towards a seminar-style, meaning that students will be required to read some texts each week and significant space will be dedicated to informal discussion and debate. The e-learning platform Moodle will be the main tool for communication and to share teaching materials.

The final grade is pass/fail (idoneità).

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Climate change and energy" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development