Yanni Loukissas
LMC 3308
Fall 2019
Spring 2018

How have contemporary media, such as film, literature, architecture, photography, and computation, been used to shape popular conceptions of the environment, to challenge these conceptions and to propose radical alternatives? In this class, students will learn to analyze representations of the earth, nature, wildlife and wilderness in creative work across domains: a landscape by James Corner, a short story by Ursula K. La Guin, an installation by Natalie Jeremijenko, a film by Hayao Miyazaki, an interactive narrative by Jeremy Mendez and Leanne Allison. The class will focus on unraveling various configurations of nature and technology in environmentalist creations and exposing their broad social, cultural and political implications. Such configurations might take the form of subject and frame, field and object, original and copy, native and foreign, or non-human and human. Moreover, we will engage with emergent work that seeks to complicate such oppositions as well as speculative practices that move beyond the role of critique. The class will make use of theory from the field of science and technology studies (STS) to motivate a series of short essays and interpretive media projects throughout the term.

Course Level
Partner Engagement
Core Curriculum Requirements