Approaches to Climate Change in Environmental Humanities
PhD Course, University of Bergen. 5 ECTS credits. Language: English. The course will be held in person unless pandemic measures prevent it.
Main content
Can the humanities contribute productively to the inter-disciplinary field of climate change research? Some of the humanistic contributions to this field focus on how climate change has been and is being conceptualized, narrated, and visually represented. Another crucial contribution studies how climate change and the related idea of the Anthropocene affect notions of time and historicity, while a third, growing field in the humanities focuses on the imaginaries of climate change futures, and questions about how climate change is visualized and exhibited across media.
The course will last for four days, followed by a day at the University Museum of Bergen. At the museum we will look at exhibits on climate change, environmental issues, and academic knowledge production and discuss the relationship between knowledge production, and public outreach.
About the course
During the four-day course, we will discuss climate change from several perspectives within environmental humanities. Narrative and rhetorical approaches will be one main focus. Narratives and concepts are heuristic tools which help make sense of reality, of the environment, of the past, the present, and future. But narratives can also create path dependencies and lock-ins, privileging some trajectories, while blocking, or simply effacing others. As such, narratives and concepts play an important role in structuring how people reason and talk about climate change, and in guiding decision making and action – or non-action.
Another main focus will be on temporality and long-term perspectives, including discussions on historicity and futurity as well as historical and archaeological studies. Recent debates on climate change temporality have been concerned with how climate change and the Anthropocene disrupt established conditions for understanding history and reconfigures them by going beyond the timespan of human history. At the same time, translating climatic change into (extreme) weather impacts in order to make sense of long-term statistical trends on the level of lived experience, may lead to a disintegration of the scientific concept of climate itself. In this course we will discuss how multiple temporalities are entwined in various discourses on climate change.
The measuring and calculation of global climate change depends on advanced computing and huge amounts of global scale data. Thus, a major challenge in communicating the severity of climate change to a larger audience is that it is not directly observable. How is it possible to visualize and exhibit such a phenomenon? Exhibitions on topics related to climate change have opened at several major Scandinavian museums, such as The University Museum of Bergen, Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, Natural History Museum in Oslo and The Nordic Museum in Stockholm. The course will discuss the challenges concerning exhibiting climate change.
The course will include lectures by prominent scholars in the field, text seminars and workshops, in which the participants’ research materials are discussed. Methods used will be close reading of texts, including field notes, qualitative interviews, media texts, survey discourse and visual representations. To receive the 5 ECTS credits, participants will also have to write a short paper to be handed in approx. a month after the course has ended.
Thematic sections
The course will be organized in the following thematic sections:
- Climate, rhetoric and narrativity
- Climate change temporality
- History and climate change
- Exhibiting climate change
- Climate change and public outreach
Art and Science Integration
Local Climate Change Adaptation
If the corona situation does not allow physical presence in Bergen, the course will be moved to an online platform.
Confirmed lecturers
University of Bergen:
- Eivind Seland (History)
- Eli Kristine Økland Hausken (Museum Studies, University Museum of Bergen)
- Ida Vikøren Andersen (Rhetoric and Media Studies)
- Jean-Paul Vanderlinden (Ecological Economics and Environmental Studies)
- Kyrre Kverndokk (Cultural Studies)
- Marit Ruge Bjærke (Cultural Studies)
- Sarah Hamilton (History)
Other universities:
- Bergsveinn Þórsson (Museum Studies, University of Oslo)
- John Ødemark (Cultural History, University of Oslo)
- Lise Camilla Ruud, (Cultural Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway)
- Lotten Gustafsson Reinius (Ethnology and Museum Studies, Stockholm University)
- Sverker Sörlin (History, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
Application process
PhD candidates from any country and any discipline are welcome to apply. Advanced MA students may be considered in exceptional cases. Admission guidelines are as follows.
Application deadline: May 5, 2022.
1) NoRS-EH members: The course is offered as part of the Norwegian Researcher School in Environmental Humanities (NoRS-EH), and priority will be given to members. Students based at a Norwegian university in any discipline working on any PhD project related to environmental humanities are encouraged to join the researcher school. NoRS-EH members will be fully funded for travel and accommodation for this course. If you are eligible to join and are not yet a member of NoRS-EH, please complete the process detailed on the school’s main page: https://www.uis.no/forskning-og-ph-d/ph-d-utdanning/forskerskolen-nors-eh/. Persons who are based in Norway but are not NoRS-EH members will be treated the same as applicants outside of Norway (#2 below).
2) Non-NoRS-EH members, including applicants based outside Norway: PhD students based in any country who are not members of NoRS-EH are also encouraged to apply for this course. Any places not filled by NoRS-EH members will be offered to students from outside the school. There is no course fee, but students outside NoRS-EH must cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.
To apply for this course, submit your application as a single PDF file to Hedda.Molland@uib.no. It should consist of 1) a 1-page description of your research project and explanation of your motivation for participating in the course, and 2) a 1-page CV.
Organizers
Kjersti Fløttum, Kyrre Kverndokk, Rasmus Slaattelid and Hedda Susanne Molland.