SoSe 14: S-Introduction to Cultural Studies II: Local Cosmopolitanism, the Environment and Contemporary Culture
Lenka Filipova
Kommentar
"Think globally, act locally." This phrase is said to have been coined by René Dubos, advisor to the United Nations in the planning of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment which resulted in the creation of the UN Environmental Programme. Since its emergence in 1978, it has become one of the best known slogans of the green movement. Given the high frequency with which it has commonly been cited, one might think that it refers to a clear connection between the experience of the everyday in particular places and an understanding of global environmental systems and relations. The problem is, however, that there are many different kinds of ecological thought that approach the relation between the global and the local in quite significantly different and often problematic ways.
This course is designed to look at the various renderings of this complicated relation in different forms of cultural production spanning the early 1970s, i.e. the time of the emergence of the green movement, until the present. In particular, it is meant to consider the significance of the broad and evasive notion of "place" with respect to a recent shift in the ecocritical thought towards cosmopolitan theories. The rejection of the global and its seamless integration into the local, manifested through various concepts of a "sense of place" and "ethics of proximity" in the ecocritical discourse, has until recently posed both conceptual and political difficulties. Yet, the question remains as to whether environmental responsibility and political action in times of global environmental crisis are to some extent and in some cases still bound to particular places or if place can be completely removed from the debate and replaced by notions of the global. Can specificities of particular places be considered of importance in the time of global risks and global environmental threats? What conceptions and/or artistic representations of place do not resort to dangerous forms of local conservatism and effectively negotiate both the local and global socio-economic and environmental relations of particular places?
We will discuss the following films and texts: Chinatown (1974) by Roman Polanski - film, Into Eternity (2010) by Michael Madsen - film, Pig Earth (1979) by John Berger - collection of stories and poems, White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo - novel, Animal's People (2008) by Indra Sinha - novel, Hungry Tide (2005) by Amitav Ghosh - novel. Please make sure that you have access to the two films through libraries or video stores, for there will be no public screenings during the seminar. Students are encouraged to purchase the four books in second hand bookshops or online, any editions are fine. We will work with a variety of visual materials by artists such as Chris Jordan, Werner Herzog and Isaac Cordal in class. A course reader with short selections from cultural critics, thinkers and writers including Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, Félix Guattari, David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Ulrich Beck, Arran Gare, Paul Carter, T. C. Boyle, Rob Nixon and Ursula Heise will be provided. Students who want to attend this course should contact me before the semester starts at filipovalen@gmail.com. Assessment: active participation in the class discussions and activities, one short researched class presentation, one final essay. Language: The course will be taught in English (level C1).
Schließen14 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung