Honors Seminars Fall 2023

ENGL 401/HON 436/HON 446: CLIMATE CHANGE : Making Climate Change Matter: Intersections of Culture, Science, and Rhetoric with Dr. Bronwyn Williams

The science of climate change may be settled, but the public and private conversations, debates, and emotions connected to the issues around climate change are varied and often volatile. How we respond, both individually and as communities, to climate change is shaped, not only by the science, but by history, politics, psychology, rhetoric, popular culture and more. In this course we will explore the connections – and sometimes tensions – that develop in examining climate change as a cultural experience. We will draw on conversations going on in fields such as sustainability education, media criticism, environmental rhetorics, and psychology, as well as climate science, to examine the ways in which cultural contexts shape our understanding of, and responses, to science and the events of climate change. We will also study the conversations taking place in other cultures around the world about the current climate emergency to see how different cultural contexts shape the ways the issues are discussed and the kinds of responses that are adopted. We will be reading a range of works from rhetorical theory, cultural studies, history, politics, media criticism, education, and creative nonfiction including selections from How Climate Change Comes to Matter, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet, Reimagining Climate Change, as well as films and other popular culture.