*The first class will be held on 27th January online only. Please check the course moodle for the class arrangement before the class commencement date.

Global warming, driven by unfettered human activity, exacerbating inequality while causing inescapable harm (including climate change and extreme weather, sea level rise and ocean acidification, species depletion and extinction), is the most urgent problem life on earth faces in the 21^st century. Yet as a “planetary” problem, it persistently defies translation into human concepts of solution. Entrenched political organizations, economic interests and cultural predispositions appear equally unfit (and unwilling) to countenance modes of action and change that might effectively bring human life worlds into regenerative alignment with a (still) vast assemblage of non-human agencies also struggling for survival. Many writers know this and dedicate their talent and imagination to the realization of social templates, both fictional and nonfictional, intended to mobilize thought and action against catastrophe. But can writing hope to cut through prevailing protocols of reading designed to bend radical flights of the imagination to (merely) uplifting ways of adjusting to the status quo? In this senior colloquium, we will read and discuss a selection of writings—fictional, nonfictional, critical and theoretical—about global warming and consider their value and import in enabling necessary change. In the spirit of a capstone experience, our readings, discussions and reflections will culminate in your own writing, be it critical or creative (or both), which we will collect in an anthology to be shared among participants, and perhaps a wider public.

 

The specific topics to be addressed will be determined by participants based on our selection of texts for reading and discussion. Possible topics will include how writers grapple with problems of agency and scale posed by global warming, the limitations of popular genres to engage with planetary problems like global warming, the power (or powerlessness) of writing and the role of the imagination to effect social and political change, the relationship between scientific knowledge and consensus politics, the normalization of everyday life in the face of catastrophe.

 

This course is designed to allow students to bring together, reflect on and apply what they have learned in their courses in English Studies in the context of a colloquium among peers, while focusing on a novel topic and set of issues. It offers students an opportunity to experience and grasp what their studies enable them to contribute to the field and to society individually and in collaboration with others, and it will engage students in the production of a platform that will showcase their capstone experience to other students and possibly a wider public.

 

The class will meet for two hours every week. There will be no formal lectures and the class will proceed collaboratively. Students enrolling in the course are expected to possess some familiarity with and interest in the topics and issues of the course acquired in relevant readings as listed below. We will begin by reading and discussing a set of texts selected by the convenor of the colloquium (the teacher), while students select and research the texts they intend to focus on. The bulk of the semester will be devoted to discussions of readings proposed by students (in consultation with the teacher) and agreed with the class and to the planning and preparation of an anthology of writings produced by students, which will sum up and showcase the capstone experience. Students interested in this senior colloquium are invited to discuss their expectations and plans with the teacher before the start of the course.

 

Assessment for the course is 100% coursework, consisting of contributions to discussions and collaborations (50%) and a written component involving some research (50%).

 

The actual schedule of readings for the colloquium will be decided by participants in consultation with the teacher. Students intending to enroll in this senior colloquium are expected to have done some reading in each of the sections of the select bibliography below before the start of the course and are encouraged to suggest additional relevant readings. Unless indicated otherwise, all texts listed below are either available or on order at the HKU library.

Fiction

• Ballard, J.G. The Drought. 1965. New York: Liveright, 2012.
• Ghosh, Amitav. Gun Island. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2019.
• Jensen, Liz. The Rapture. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.
• Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. New York: Harper, 2012.
• Rich, Nathaniel. Odds Against Tomorrow. New York: Picador, 2014.
• Robinson, Kim Stanley. Green Earth: The Science in the Capital Trilogy. London: Harper Voyager, 2015.
• Strahan, Jonathan, ed. Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond. Oxford: Solaris, 2016.
• Turner, George. The Sea and Summer. 1987. London: Gollancz, 2013.
• Wright, Alexis. The Swan Book. New York: Altria. 2016.

 

Nonfiction

• Empson, Martin, ed. System Change not Climate Change: A Revolutionary Response to Environmental Crisis. London: Bookmarks, 2019.
• Hern, Matt, Am Johal, Joe Sacco. Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018.
• Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Henry Colt, 2014.
• McKibben, Bill, ed. The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing About Climate Change. New York: Penguin, 2012.
• McKibben, Bill. Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? London: Wildfire, 2019.
• Pope Francis. Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home. Rome: Vatican Press, 2015. Web. https://laudatosi.com/watch
• Thunberg, Greta. “Transcript: Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit.” NPR. 23 Sep. 2019. Web. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit
• Wallace-Wells, David. “The Uninhabitable Earth.” New York Magazine 10 July 2017. Web. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

 

Criticism and theory

• Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35.2 (Winter 2009): 197-222. (online access)
• Clark, Timothy. Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
• Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. (e-book)
• Johns-Putra, Adeline. Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. (e-book)
• Latour, Bruno. “Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene.” New Literary History 45.1 (Winter 2014): 1-18. (online access)
• Symplokē 21.1-2 Special Issue on “Critical Climate” (2013). (online access)