| Course Description |
Ideas of dystopian futures haunt present-day imaginings of the climate
crisis. Such futures are
typically characterized by worsening inequality, disastrous weather effects, and deeply disrupted
social relations. Apocalyptic imaginaries also tend to invoke an individualist politics oriented
around struggle over scarce resources. But what about those for whom the present is already
post-apocalyptic? What about political configurations that insist on solidarity, mutuality, care, and
justice to create liberatory futures? Just solutions to the climate crisis are only as capacious as
the imagination of what the problems are, how the present came into being, who is most
affected, and who gets to decide what futures are created. This interdisciplinary course engages
ethnographic work alongside theorizations of contemporary life and other world-building genres,
including climate fiction, visual art, and poetry. In doing so, the course offers an argument
against the fatalism of dystopia and seeks to imagine what reparative methods centering climate
justice could look like.
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