As we ease into summer, I'm pivoting from Religion & Anthropocene to something a little different, at least on the surface: Anthropocene & Humanities. "Anthropocene Humanities" is the name of the course I'll be offering for the Renmin summer school starting end of next month, and also of a First Year Seminar I'll be teaching in the fall. The readings for the former are already set, but the latter will benefit from that attempt, as well as new discoveries (like the books above). I'm excited to be able to bring to beginning students at Lang questions from students in China.
"Anthropocene Humanities" has a nice ring to it, the clash of Greek and Latin etymologies adding to a sense of potent multiplicity. But what might it mean? Here's the (Lang) course description:
Anthropocene names the new reality – and awareness – that humanity has become a planetary agent, perhaps the single most important factor in the current history of life on earth. The term was coined by natural scientists but has been increasingly taken up by thinkers in the human sciences. This course surveys debates about the meaning and significance of humanity’s new status within the earth system from historical, philosophical, literary and comparative, as well as feminist, postcolonial and postsecular perspectives. We'll employ the tools of the humanities to make sense of the Anthropocene, and use the challenge of the Anthropocene to reimagine the work of a planetary humanities.
