Climate Fictions

This course will consider numerous kinds of climate fictions, including, but not limited to, the recent literary category of prose fiction known as “cli-fi,” or climate fiction. In this course, “climate fictions” also refers to a range of ideas, assumptions, cultural narratives, and hypotheses about the Earth’s climate: in other words, frameworks constructed by humans1 for thinking about (or not thinking about) the climatic conditions of our planetary home. These fictions might include such debatable propositions as “humans can’t change the climate,” “there’s nothing we can do about climate change,” “climate change is something that will happen in the future,” “climate change is something that will happen far away,” or “climate change is only about the weather.” “Climate fictions” also include scenarios and projections of a near-future, climate-changed world, whether those offered by scientists, by writers, or by ordinary people as they contemplate the possible trajectories of their lives and the lives of their descendants.

Thinking among these versions of “climate fictions,” we’ll consider the role of literature and the literary imagination in fashioning, interpreting, and inhabiting them. What work does the imagination do in the world, in grappling both with the worlds that humans have made, and with the boundary parameters of the Earth system that have shaped life on this planet as we have known it? How do cultural and narrative assumptions shape the work of scientists and policy-makers? How can prose fiction help readers engage with the challenges of knowledge, emotion, anticipation, judgement, and action that a warming world will require? How can climate fictions of all sorts help readers try on modes of living and other futures that we do or don’t want—or lull them into thinking that such anticipation is unnecessary or futile?

Thinking together about these questions, we will use the reading list and the seminar meetings to hone our skills of noticing, extrapolating, speculating, proposing, listening, disagreeing, concurring, and cooperating in the difficult work of confronting fear and doubt and of finding a path toward truth and perhaps even hope. You will be asked to read carefully and curiously, to test your ideas in regular informal writing and weekly seminar discussion, and to develop more polished thoughts (or dreams!) in