Programme/Approved Electives for 2022/23
None
Available as a Free Standing Elective
Yes
1945 marked a watershed moment in both human and Earth history. For the first time, a single species had the potential to destroy not just its own global population, but that of all other living things as well. Yet over the next half-century, scientists, environmentalists and industrialists managed to identify a seemingly neverending list of other existential threats to life on Earth. Many of these - DDT, nuclear winter, global warming, Ozone depletion - were clearly anthropogenic. Others - asteroids, volcanoes, magnetic field reversal - were not. This module will seek to contextualise the existential crises that shaped the late-twentieth century, understand their interrelatedness, and question both their languages and the solutions offered, to better appreciate and understand the complexity of the challenges facing the world today.
Aims
This module aims to stretch students' abilities to synthesise complex interdisciplinary knowledge through critical analysis, in order to better explain and understand the existential crises that came to a head in the mid-1980s, and continue to structure global politics, society and culture today. Students will also be confronted with complex problems such as scale, temporal imagination, memory, and environmental injustice to account for the different stories of extinction panic and their (non-) resolution.
Intended Learning Outcomes
Critically investigate the role of global political languages in local campaigns, protests, or controversies: 1,2Describe and contextualise the major existential panics of the late-twentieth century, and explain their distinctiveness in comparison to earlier apocalyptic thought: 1,2Integrate and synthesise knowledge from different disciplines, including geography, environmental science, politics and film studies: 1,2Produce meaningful and concise analysis for a public audience: 2Constructively critique environmental movements and campaigns from perspectives of, for example, environmental inequality, deep ecology, race or gender: 1
Ten, two-hour seminars = 20 hoursTen one-hour online workshops = 10 hoursSeminar preparation = 60 hoursAssessment preparation and completion = 60 hours
Description of Module Assessment
1: Essay weighted 70%2,500 word essay.Students will be asked to complete an essay on a particular environmental controversy, campaign, protest or movement. Exact questions to be agreed with module convenor.
2: Group Presentation weighted 30%Group Panel Podcast.This will be a group presentation in the style of a pre-recorded 'panel podcast', with one student posing as the chair in groups of 3-5, on a debate related to one of the topics on the module. Total length c. 7.5 minutes per person. This is an audio only assessment, though students may film themselves speaking if they wish. With the agreement of all students involved, the best podcasts will be placed on the Extinction public blogsite: https://www.keele.ac.uk/extinction/