Introductory description

This module aims to develop postgraduate students’ theoretical, methodological and creative skills to respond to the pressing environmental challenges faced by contemporary technoscientific societies by developing an understanding of what ecology comes to mean across a range fields in scientific fields, media and data studies and cultural fields including visual and artistic practices.

Students will be encouraged to think how different ecological approaches have emerged, how they differ and connect, and to explore innovative ways to apply ecological ways of thinking to their own projects and social, disciplinary and professional contexts.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Projected lecture themes include

• Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Ecocene
• Sustainability: a critical reappraisal
• Concepts of ecology: thinking relationally
• Nature’s value : commons versus markets
• Naturecultures : posthuman ethics and justice
• Technoscience and ecological cultures: technologies of hope and hype
• Working with nature: ecological design from permaculture to bioarchitecture

Projected seminar topics include

• Waste: ecological cycles and circular economies
• Climate change: resilience, resistance and adaptation
• Atmospheric pollution: citizens and care
• Food: environmental more than human justice from soil to fork
• Extinctions: anthropocentrism and interdependency
• Water: stewarding the commons

The course will combine the introduction to a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to ecological concerns with the discussion of cases and examples.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Under completion of this module, students should be able to demonstrate knowledge of contemporary issues and key transdisciplinary debates in environmental ecology and sustainability.
• Under completion of this module, students should be able to critically reflect upon the relevance for achieving sustainable futures of debates, theoretical frameworks and practices in the social sciences and the humanities.
• Under completion of this module, students should be able to critically examine responses to future global and local environmental challenges faced by contemporary societies (e.g. climate change, species extinction, renewable energy).
• Under completion of this module, students should be able to apply knowledge to examples and analyse selected cases of ecological approaches to environmental concerns.

Indicative reading list

Students will be encouraged and assisted in researching and developing their own reading list to support their writing essay. Readings in preparation for lectures and seminars will mostly consist of journal articles as well as chapters selected from the following background books:

• Boehnert, J. (2018) Design, Ecology, Politics. Towards the Ecocene, Bloomsbury Academic
• Cogdell, C. (2018) Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design, Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis.
• Haraway, D.J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chtulucene, Duke University Press, Durham.
• Harris, J.M. (ed) (2003) Rethinking Sustainability: Power, Knowledge and Institutions, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor MI.
• Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin (eds.) (2015), Art in the Anthropocene Encounters A mong Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, Open Humanities Press, London.
• Moore, J. (2015) Capitalism in the Web of Life. Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, Verso, NY/London.
• Morton, T. (2010) Ecological Thought. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, MA, USA.
• Papadopoulos, D. (2018) Experimental Practice: Technoscience, Alterontologies, and More-Than-Social Movements, Duke University Press, Durham.
• Plumwood, V. (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London/ NY.
• Ricoveri, G (2013). Nature for Sale: The Commons versus Commodities, London, Pluto Press.
• Tsing, A. L. (2018) The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton University Press, Princeton/Oxford.
• Van Dooren, T. (2016) Flight Ways. Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction, Columbia University Press, NY.
• Whitefield Patrick (2016) The Earth Care Manual: A Permaculture Handbook for Britain and Other Temperate Climates, Permanent Publications: Hampshire

Key journal articles from the earth and environmental sciences will be critically analysed in lectures to assess the impact of scientific frameworks in the social sciences and the humanities:

• Crutzen, P.J. 2002. Geology of mankind. Nature 415: 23.
• Folke, C. (2006) Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses, Global Environmental Change, 16, 253-267.
• Zalasiewicz, J., M. Williams, W. Steffen, and P. Crutzen. 2010. The new world of the Anthropocene. Environmental Science & Technology 44 (7): 2228-31.

Interdisciplinary

This module aims to enable students to:

• Develop an interdisciplinary-informed understanding of contemporary environmental concerns and ecological responses
• Demonstrate a strong capacity to connect different approaches to ecological thought and practice that can be applied to different social, disciplinary and professional contexts

Subject specific skills

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Understand a diversity of theories and practices of ecological thinking
• Critically appraise ecological responses to environmental issues
• Apply theories of ecology to concrete social, disciplinary, and professional contexts
• Identify innovation in ecological approaches and their significance for understanding emerging environmental challenges

Transferable skills

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Think critically, creatively and independently in relation to a particular thematic area of the student’s choice;
• Meet regular deadlines;
• Demonstrate time-management skills;
• Demonstrate problem solving skills;
• Demonstrate independent learning skills;
• Participate in class discussions;
• Demonstrate and practice presentation skills;
• Present and report on group discussions;
• Experience and participate in both individual and team-based activities.