Environmental crisis in contemporary literature and culture

Beyond technical and scientific language, understanding environmental crisis is – as Amitav Ghosh writes – ‘also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination’. In this course, we will explore how contemporary writing and storytelling respond to environmental crisis. Beginning with Rachel Carson’s influential and lyrical writing of climate science in Silent Spring (1962), we will consider how recent works of ecopoetry (Alice Oswald and Natalie Diaz), Aboriginal indigenous fiction and science fiction (Alexis Wright; Ellen van Neerven), and a satirical American film (Don't Look Up) engage with – and attempt to reframe – contemporary environmental issues through their aesthetic forms.