SHUM 2482

Anthropology of Climate Change

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2022-2023.

What does it mean to study humanity at a time when it has become a geological force? What is required of us as thinking subjects under the Anthropocene? In this course, we will argue that anthropologists have an important role to play at this historical juncture. But we will also consider how climate change troubles some of the discipline's central categories. Time, space, nature, power, reason – climate change throws these concepts into question. It inflects our ways of knowing. It demands adaptive thinking. Throughout the semester, we will take on this work in common, proceeding from the presumption that it is not enough to think of climate change as a simple ethnographic object. Climate change is the unavoidable context of contemporary anthropology.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Recommended prerequisite: ANTHR 1400 or some familiarity with anthropology.

Breadth Requirement (GHB)
Distribution Category (CA-AS, SSC-AS)
Course Attribute (CU-SBY)

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