| Unit name | The Age of the Anthropocene |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HUMS20005 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Dr. Dudley |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | School of Humanities |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
We’ve killed off the dodo, released unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and raised sea levels: welcome to the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humankind has permanently left a mark on the planet.
This School unit puts students at the forefront of environmental history scholarship to explore how the notion of the Anthropocene has gained traction as a definition of time that recognises the unprecedented Earth-altering impact of the human species. Students will engage with debates among scientists and humanities scholars over the concept, while also exploring how it has captured popular and scholarly imagination.
This unit is, at its heart, deeply historical: understanding change through time, and interactions between nature and culture. But it is the history of an idea that is still being formed – and as such, there is a wealth of source materials, forums for debate and questions for students to engage with. As a School unit, this will use a broad range of resources, including digital tools, literary texts and audio-visual materials, and utilize ground-breaking museum exhibitions and online learning resources provided by the Deutsches Museum (Munich) and Smithsonian (Washington D.C.).
On successful completion of this unit students will be able:
1) to demonstrate a broad understanding of the Anthropocene era;
2) to analyse historical and cultural trends in the field;
3) to collect and analyse a broad range of sources/data in order to form and illustrate arguments;
4) to identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically, and form an individual viewpoint.
1 x 2 hour interactive lecture per week
One 3000 word essay (50%); one 2-hour exam (50%). Both will assess ILOs 1-4.
Peter Coates, ‘Creatures Enshrined: Wild Animals as Bearers of Heritage’, Past and Present (2015)
Stephen Daniels & Georgina Endfield, ‘Narratives of Climate Change: Introduction’, Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009)
Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, ‘Defining the Anthropocene’, Nature 519 (2015)
Jamie Lorimer, Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature (2015)
Steffen, Grinevald, Crutzen, McNeill, ‘The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives’, The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 369 (2011)
Waters et al., ‘The Anthropocene is Functionally and Stratigraphically Different from the Holocene’, Science 351: 6269 (2016)
