HF15: World-Building: Environmental Imaginaries in the Arts, Letters, and Design Fields

Collaborative Goals

This new Working Group begins by recognizing that our fields share a strong engagement with environmental issues and imaginaries, but the dialogue among those fields is less robust than we’d like. We therefore propose a series of conversational events focused on the pedagogy and praxis of speculative worldbuilding as a shared concern of environmental studies, environmental history, design history/theory, and arts (including literary), broadly conceived. How does one craft narratives in diverse modes that communicate speculative or emergent futures, particularly in relation to climate change? How do we as educators help students identify and imagine possible futures that are desired, not dystopian, or understand the complexity and contradictory dimensions of environmental relations past and present? How might creative storytelling, countermapping, or other modes bridge between the known science of climate change, environmental harms, and unknown, time-honored or emergent ideas for repairing and caring for our landscapes? This collaboration would engage, on an interpersonal scale, with the challenges of interdisciplinary conversations between the liberal arts, design fields, and environmental sciences (such as occurs in Environmental Studies or Landscape Architecture programs).

To narrate or design eco-socially just environmental relations requires a deft balance of speculative imagination and grounded attention, incorporating teachable communication skills in order to convey, depict, persuade, engage and inspire. Similarly, teaching, creating and learning in pursuit of environmental and/or climate justice is inherently interdisciplinary. The group’s fall activities establish mutual understanding of our diverse research and teaching approaches, building toward a spring communal event where we will share works-in-progress and curate a gallery of teaching materials and student work, especially assignments using local environments for embodied, creative learning.