Introductory description

This module will explore “cli-fi” literature in Spanish, as a genre able to raise awareness of climate change and its consequences on mankind and the anthropocene.

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.

Week1: Introduction Fiction and Climate Change. What is Cli-Fi? How can speculative fiction become a tool to think about the consequences of Climate Change?
Week 2: Estío,- Once relatos de ficción climática: a collection of Short Stories
Week3: Movement and Displacement in Cruzando la linea from Carlos Péres
Week4: Gender anxieties in Amaiur from Aixa de la Cruz
Week 5: Dystopia and the burning earth in Fiebre from David Luna
Week 7: Cuba Between Hurricanes, a Documentary from Micharl Chanan
week 8: Eric Mota's Habana Underguater: Cyberfiction and Climate Disaster
Week 9: Jose Rabelo 2063 y Otras Distopías
week 10: Revision

Week 10: Revisions. Essay methodology.

Learning outcomes

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

• Students will improve their skills to analyse literature in Spanish, they will deepen their linguistic skills of the target language (i.e. specific vocabulary related to global warming and climate change). They will also improve their ability to critically engage with a contemporary debate and develop a knowledge about the contribution to Hispanic Culture in the field of Climatic Literature
• Argue the relation between the cultural and sociolinguistic diversity of contemporary Spain/Latin America and literary texts that address this diversity; evaluate literary expressions of cultural and linguistic diversity in the context of the cultural and sociolinguistic diversity of contemporary Spain/Latin America (subject-specific skills)
• Engage critically with literary texts (both individually and in a group) and be able to present in written form an essay that examines the context, content, and significance of a literary work [cognitive/key skills]
• Develop their linguistic grasp of the target language (Spanish)

Indicative reading list

Primary Readings:

Eric Mota, Habana Underguater, Cuentos,
Jose Rabelo, 2063 y Otras Distopias, Isla Negra, San Juan de Puerto Rico, 2018.
Estío, Once Relatos de ficción climatica, Episkaia, Madrid, 2018
El Futuro es Bosque: Antologia de Ficcion Climatica, ed. Giny Valris, apachelibros, Pluma Futura, 2018

1. Illustrative Bibliography
   Primary Readings:

Erik Mota, Habana Underguater, Atom Press, 2010
Jose Rabelo, 2063 y Otras Distopias, Isla Negra, San Juan de Puerto Rico, 2018.
Estío, Once Relatos de ficción climatica, Episkaia, Madrid, 2018
El Futuro es Bosque: Antologia de Ficcion Climatica, ed. Giny Valris, apachelibros, Pluma Futura, 2018

Secondary Readings:
Atwood, Margaret, In Other Worlds. SF and the Human Imagination, McLelland and Stewart, Ontario, Canada, 2011.
Escobar Arturo, Sentipensar con la tierra : Nuevas lecturas sobre desarrollo, territorio y diferencia, Medellín, UNAULA, 2014. Text available in English online at: http://www.aibr.org/antropologia/netesp/numeros/1101/110102e.pdf
Homero Aridjis and Betty Ferber, News from Earth, Mandel Vilar Press, 2017.
Goodbody, Axel and Johns-Putra, Adeline, CLI-FI: A Companion, Peter Lang, 2018.
Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything, Penguin, UK, 2014.
Clark, Timothy, Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Ghosh, Amitav, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Heyse, Ursula K., 'Comparative Literature and the Environmental Humanities,' The 2014-2015 Report on the State of the Discipline of Comparative Literature (2014), https://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/comparative-literature-and-environmental-humanities.

Kaplan, E. Ann, Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction, New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2015.
Santos De Sousa, Boaventura, The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South, Duke University Press, Durham, 2018.

Macy, Joana, World as Lover, World as Self, Parallax Press, 2007.
Trexler, Adam, Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Hispanic culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of Hispanic climate fictions will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.