New School is poised and ready for the new semester! Happy to report that after much dithering (an almost technical term in anthropocene discussions, as used by Kim Stanley Robinson) I've figured out how to structure my Religion and Anthropocene course. It took a while, but I finally found my way back to my mantra that the raison d'être of the field of religious studies is that "it reminds us there is no consensus on the real." I'd been trying to engineer some sort of finale, some sense of completion, but on this topic, surely, that would be misplaced. As for the ethics and ecology classes on which it builds, this decisively isn't a topic one can be done with: submit the final, collect your grade, check the box and move on! So we won't end in consensus but in awareness of the inescapability of choice, rooted in humility in the face of other choices and at the fallibility of our reasons for choosing, and a deeper sense of the communities - human and other than human - to whom we are accountable for our choices. The syllabus puts it this way:
The course proceeds in three stages, with some
foreshadowing and flashbacks.
The first explores the ongoing debates across
multiple fields about the “Anthropocene” – what it is, when it began, whether
there are better names for it, how to respond.
The second amplifies critiques of
“Anthropocenologists” with a more complicated historical and political
narrative and lots more new names.
The third turns to religious and other
narratives and frameworks for making broader sense of our predicament and our
prospects.
