Institution: La Trobe University
Instructor: Katie Holmes, Andrew Goodman, Terry Eyssens
Description: This subject introduces students to key ideas within the Environmental Humanities. We begin with the Anthropocene – the era in which humans have become a geological force. We look at the relationships between nature and culture and their representation through processes that embed understandings of power and control. We then apply these ideas to four different case studies that focus on the themes of earth, wind, water and fire, in relation to stories and histories from the Americas, Monsoonal Asia, the Pacific and the ‘Australian’ continent. These stories are woven through with the environmental implications of colonisation, capitalism, resource extraction … and with discussions of human and more-than-human relationships to land from the perspectives of First Nations epistemologies and ontologies.
Level: Undergraduate
Timing: Yearly, Semester One
Country: Australia