Posts Tagged ‘Charles Stross’
Fall Syllabus #2: Environmental Protection!
My other course is also super exciting: a version of the “Material Cultures” course I developed with an NEH grant a few years back devoted to “Environmental Protection.” Some of the assignments are pulled from the ecologically focused modules of the old Cultural Preservation course, others are new to this one.
Again, below you can find the course description and week-by-week schedule; full syllabus is here…
Recently, “sustainability” has become a powerful concept in both academic discourse and popular debate; however, since the time of Heraclitus in Ancient Greece philosophers have recognized that change is inevitable and that there is always tension between what we should preserve and what is disposable. This course will use interdisciplinary scholarship to probe the central question underlying all environmental protection: what should we value enough to pass on to future generations? It will ask students to confront this dilemma by interrogating what precisely makes a natural resource sufficiently valuable to cherish and keep. In our time, the concept of “value” is dominated by economic language, but this view is crucially incomplete: what gives objects value is not their exchangeability but the fact that humans care about them and are willing to preserve and maintain them. A park is just open land, after all, until someone declares it worthy of protection. Establishing and asserting these sorts of non-economic values has long been a defining characteristic of study in the humanities, which have always appreciated how shared heritage links us to the past, creates meaning and relevance in the present, and allows us to shape our collective future. In that spirit we will examine a wide variety of political, philosophical, and aesthetic questions around sustainability, and environmental protection, and develop a framework for engaging pressing contemporary debates about the preservation of our shared natural heritage.
T | Aug 28 | FIRST DAY OF CLASS Charles Stross, “Designing Society for Posterity” (Web) |
Th | Aug 30 | Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future(Chapters 1-3, plus epilogue) |
T | Sep 4 | Johan Rockstrom et. al, “Planetary Boundaries” [D2L] John Bellamy Foster, “Ecology against Capitalism” [D2L] Naomi Klein, “Climate Rage” [Web] |
Th | Sep 6 | Nathaniel Rich, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” [Web]
Responses to Rich from Robinson Meyer, Naomi Klein, Alyssa Battistoni, and Matto Mildenberger and Leah C. Stokes [Web] |
T | Sep 11 | Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (first half) |
Th | Sep 13 | Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (second half) |
T | Sep 18 | S.B. Banerjee, “Necrocapitalism” [D2L] Arundhati Roy, “The Greater Common Good” [Web] Vandana Shiva, “Earth Democracy” [Web] |
Th | Sep 20 | Clare Kendall, “A New Law of Nature” [Web] Mihnea Tanasescu, “When a River Is A Person” [Web] Manuela Picq, “Can the Law Prevail Over Chinese investments in Ecuador?” [Web] |
T | Sep 25 | case study: Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars2-3, 94-96,133-158, 168-179 [D2L] |
Th | Sep 27 | Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (first half) |
T | Oct 2 | Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (second half) Lisa Wells, “The Blaze” [Web] FIRST PAPER MINI-WORKSHOP |
Th | Oct 4 | CLASS CANCELLED FOR MILWAUKEE COUNTY ZOO TOUR |
T | Oct 9 | Kathy Rudy, “Where the Wild Things Ought to Be” [D2L] Kim Stanley Robinson, “Empty Half the Earth of Its Humans. It’s the Only Way to Save the Planet” [Web] FIRST PAPER DUE |
Th | Oct 11 | FALL BREAK—NO CLASS |
T | Oct 16 | Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History” [D2L] McKenzie Wark, “Critical Theory after the Anthropocene” [Web] film (in class): Ramin Bahrani, “Plastic Bag” |
Th | Oct 18 | Daniel Hartley, “Against the Anthropocene” [Web] Margaret Atwood, “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” [Web] Ted Chiang, “The Great Silence” [Web] |
T | Oct 23 | Richard McGuire, Here |
Th | Oct 25 | Richard McGuire, Here SECOND PAPER MINI-WORKSHOP |
T | Oct 30 | Graeme Wood, “Re-Engineering the Earth” [Web] Eduardo Porter, “To Curb Global Warming, Science Fiction May Become Fact” [Web] Adam McGibbom, “There Is No Quick Fix for Climate Change” [Web] Phil Torres, “Engineering the atmosphere: Is it possible? And would it prevent catastrophe, or cause it?” [Web] Alexander C. Kaufman, “The King of Climate Fiction Makes the Left’s Case for Geoengineering” [Web] Peter Frase, “Geoengineering for the People” [Web] |
Th | Nov 1 | case study: refreezing the Arctic Robin McKee, “Could a £400bn plan to refreeze the Arctic before the ice melts really work?” [Web] SECOND PAPER DUE |
T | Nov 6 | Kim Stanley Robinson, introduction to Future Primitive [D2L] Ernest Callenbach, “Chocco” [D2L] 99% Invisible, “Ten Thousand Years” [Web] |
Th | Nov 8 | Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home |
T | Nov 13 | Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home |
Th | Nov 15 | Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home |
T | Nov 20 | Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home |
Th | Nov 22 | THANKSGIVING BREAK—NO CLASS |
T | Nov 27 | Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation |
Th | Nov 29 | Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation
FINAL PAPERS/PROJECTS MINI-WORKSHOP |
T | Dec 4 | Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation film (out of class): Annihilation LAST DAY OF CLASS |
Th | Dec 6 | CLASS CANCELLED DUE TO INSTRUCTOR TRAVEL |
W | Dec 12 | FINAL PAPERS/PROJECTS DUE BY 10 AM VIA D2L DROPBOX |
Weekend Mega-Links, Please Use Responsibly
* In 2015, we will open applications for Tiptree Fellowships. Fellowships will be $500 per recipient and will be awarded each year to two creators who are doing work that pushes forward the Tiptree mission. We hope to create a network of Fellows who will build connections, support one another, and find collaborators.
* It’s a small exhibit, but I really liked A Whole Other World: Sub-Culture Craft at the Racine Art Museum, as well as the Consumer Couture exhibit running at the same time.
* A new economics paper has some old-fashioned advice for people navigating the stresses of life: Find a spouse who is also your best friend. Hey, it worked for me!
* I went off on a little bit of a tear about dissertation embargoes and grad-school gaslighting the other day: part 1, part 2. Some “highlights”:
* Next week in DC! Resolved: Technology Will Take All Our Jobs. A Future Tense Debate.
* Will Your Job Be Done By A Machine? NPR has the official odds.
* What If Everybody Didn’t Have to Work to Get Paid?
* Shields said these perceptions of race were the focus of his work and he aimed to deconstruct them through imagery that reflected a striking role-reversal. Not only do the individuals in this particular lynching image reflect a distinct moment or period in history, they are positioned as opposing players in a way that delivers a different message than those previously shared. This one of a cop is amazing:
* 19 Pop Songs Fact-Checked By Professors.
* So, going by (17) and (18), we’re on the receiving end of a war fought for control of our societies by opposing forces that are increasingly more powerful than we are.
* New Grads Can’t Really Afford To Live Anywhere, Report Finds.
* Uber hard at work on effort to replace drivers with machine.
* Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us.
* The prison-industrial complex, by the numbers. Cleveland police accept DOJ rules you can’t believe they didn’t already have to follow. Charging Inmates Perpetuates Mass Incarceration. The Price of Jails: Measuring the Taxpayer Cost of Local Incarceration. How to lock up fewer people. The Myth of the Hero Cop.
* Science Fiction: For Slackers?
* Presenting Matt Weiner’s wish-list for the final season of Mad Men.
* How to be a fan of problematic things.
* Bernie as the official opposition. And then there’s the issue of the bench.
* A new day for the culture war, or, the kids are all right.
* Can Americans update their ideas about war?
* “I often wonder if my forefathers were as filled with disgust and anger when they thought of the people they were fighting to protect as I am.” Would you like to know more?
* The Political Economy of Enrollment.
Now, the UC administration claims that the cost of instruction is greater than in-state tuition. But these claims are at best debatable and at worst simply not credible, because as Chris Newfield and Bob Samuels have shown they include research and other non-educational expenses in order to inflate the alleged instructional cost. (It’s gotten to the point that, as Samuelsobserves, the administration literally claims it costs $342,500 to educate one medical student for one year.) According to Newfield, a more reasonable estimate of the cost of instruction for undergraduates would be somewhere between 40-80 percent of the administration’s figures. Even using the higher rate, then, the administration still generates a net profit for every extra student they bring in.
* UW System faculty’s role in chancellor picks could be diminished. Also let’s make tenure not a thing. Also, no standards for teachers, just while we’re at it.
* Meanwhile, Wisconsin to burn $250M on famously losing basketball team.
* Board of Governors discontinues 46 degree programs across UNC system.
* How Poor And Minority Students Are Shortchanged By Public Universities.
* How NYU squeezes billions from its students—and where that money goes.
* What’s Left After Higher Education Is Dismantled.
* Midcareer Melancholy: life as an associate professor.
* A Top Medical School Revamps Requirements To Lure English Majors.
* Academia and legitimation crisis. This situation (and distrust/abuses from both sides) is going to get worse yet.
* Parenthood (and especially motherhood) in the academy.
* On opposing capitalism on its good days, too.
* This supposed opposition serves the interests of both sides, however violent their conflict may appear. Helped by their control of the means of communication, they appropriate the general interest, forcing each person to make a false choice between “the West or else Barbarism”. In so doing, they block the advent of the only global conviction that could save humanity from disaster. This conviction—which I have sometimes called the communist idea—declares that even in the movement of the break with tradition, we must work to create an egalitarian symbolisation that can guide, regulate, and form the stable subjective underpinning of the collectivisation of resources, the effective disappearance of inequalities, the recognition of differences—of equal subjective right—and, ultimately, the withering away of separate forms of authority in the manner of the state.
* Ecology against Mother Nature: Slavoj Žižek on Molecular Red.
* Stunning photos of the California drought.
* The Secret History of Ultimate Marvel, the Experiment That Changed Superheroes Forever.
* Why Are You Still Washing Your Clothes In Warm Water?
* Rickrolling is sexist, racist and often transphobic in context.
* Carbon Nanotubes Were An Ancient Superweapon.
* Amazon rolls out free same-day delivery for Prime members.
* Breaking: The Web is not a post-racial utopia.
* Breaking: it’s all downhill from 29.
* Horrible: DC to Begin Placing Ads on Story Pages. Even more horrible: the end of Convergence is the dumbest universal reboot yet.
* The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up: How Your Area Compares. Interesting, but really flattens a lot. It’s not geography that constrains kids’ futures, it’s class.
* The World Cup and prison labor. The World Cup and slavery. The World Cup and total universal corruption.
* They say Charter Cable is even worse than Time Warner. I don’t believe such a thing is possible.
* Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany.
* U.S. Preparation Lagging to Battle Potentially Devastating EMP.
* The Ethical Game: Morality in Postapocalyptic Fictions from Cormac McCarthy to Video Games.
* 10 bizarre baseball rules you won’t believe actually existed.
* So you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European…
* Timeline of the American Transgender Movement.
* Judith Butler: I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a “hard-wired” sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization – and with full institutional and community support. That is most important in my view.
* The PhD: wake up sheeple! Still more links after the image, believe it or not.
* Muppet Babies and Philosophy.
* Broken clock watch: Instapundit says fire administrators to fix higher ed.
* Became self-aware, etc: campus climate surveys said to be triggering.
* Penn State administrators announced Wednesday that a fraternity that maintained a well-curated secret Facebook page full of pictures of unconscious, naked women will lose its official recognition until 2018, pretty much ruining senior year.
* The Proof That Centrism is Dead.
* Understanding Sad Girl Theory.
* Dialectics of union activism. I’ve been really fascinated by what’s been going on at Gawker Media.
* Someone Has Done A Statistical Analysis Of Rape In Game Of Thrones.
* The arc of history is long, but that Florida community college will no longer force its students to practice transvaginal ultrasounds on each other.
* Trigger warnings, still good pedagogy, still bad administrative policy.
* A fetish is born: Porn actors must wear protective goggles during shoots.
* Ring Theory: The Hidden Artistry of the Star Wars Prequels.
* This roundtable from Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, and others on sexism and comedy is pretty dynamite.
* The age of miracles: New Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function.
* How to Bash Bureaucracy: Evan Kindley on David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules.
* The ongoing legacy of the great satanic sex abuse panic.
* Teaching pro-tips from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
* Moore’s Law Keeps Going, Defying Expectations.
* The morality of robot war. Counterpoint: Killer robots will leave humans ‘utterly defenceless’ warns professor.
* Parental leave policies don’t solve capitalism. You need to solve capitalism.
* The Nuclear Freeze campaign prevented an apocalypse, so can the climate movement.
* Honestly, you get used to the taste after a while.
* And at last it can be told! The real story behind the Bill Murray movie you’ve never seen.