HISC 108 Parables for a Warming Planet: The Politics of Climate Change

Examines the literary forms of parables, allegories, fables, and other kinds of storytelling as a way of understanding and responding to ecological crises. How can these stories capture the scale and myriad agents of climate change, sea level rise, and species collapse while helping us explore options for a planetary future? What kinds of attention do these forms demand of their readers and how is their simplicity matched by a complexity of possible interpretations? Course also examines the role of figurative language and speculation in the discourse of science. What are the stories that science tells itself? Texts span literature, science, and philosophy with a special interest in the fields of Black feminism, science studies, and Indigenous thought of the Island Pacific.