Credit Points 10

Coordinator James Gourley Opens in new window

Description Present-day climate change is anthropogenic (human-caused), but not all humans bear equal responsibility. The planetary crises climate change has caused directly impact on the Earth’s human and non-human worlds. Introducing an environmental humanities approach, this subject examines literature’s role in conceiving, representing and understanding the ‘environment’ and, by extension, the interrelation of human and natural worlds. Using place-based reading practices, students will reflect on Greater Western Sydney’s relative vulnerability to climate change. Reading a diversity of texts, with a focus on First Nations stories and writing, students will be encouraged to think about how we engage with human and natural communities beyond the classroom. Students will reflect on the cultures, practices and worlds that they identify in environmental writing and consider whether these enable climate justice in the present.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Literature

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 1 10cp

Check your fees via the Fees page.

Level Undergraduate Level 2 subject

Restrictions

Successful completion of 40 credit points of study in currently enrolled program.

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this subject, students will be able to: 

1. Closely read diverse narratives and texts that represent natural worlds.
2. Analyse how different narrative and textual methods present the entanglement of human and natural worlds.
3. Critically assess how story and literature can envision and create climate justice.
4. Critique, with reference to relevant context, the motivating views that inform a text’s representation of ‘environment’.

Subject Content

• Historical and present-day factors that have led to the climate crisis.
• Diverse narrative and textual practices and their relation to natural worlds.
• Established and emergent literary cultures that respond to climate change.
• The contributions of storytelling and story-making to placemaking and activism in Greater Western Sydney and beyond.