Developing Climate Change Literacy With the Humanities: A Narrative Approach

Abstract:

Teaching the science and policy of climate change is necessary but insufficient for helping students to develop a robust climate literacy. Climate change educators must also teach students how to evaluate historical trends, to unpack the assumptions in shared cultural narratives, to grapple with ethical dilemmas, and more generally to traverse the turbulence of feeling that is a hallmark of living in a time of global climate chaos. In short, climate literacy must include the skills and strategies of the humanities, and specifically literary and cultural studies. After providing an overview of how literary and cultural studies scholars from around the world are developing innovative pedagogical methods for addressing climate change (drawing on the presenter’s experience editing the forthcoming volume Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities), the presentation will then report on a specific Literary Genres course taught at the University of Oregon. The course, offered to undergraduate non-majors who entered the class with little or no knowledge of climate change, constituted a case study of action research into the transdisciplinary teaching of climate change. The presentation will thus draw on quantitative course assessments, student coursework, and the instructor’s own experiences in arguing that three key narratives underpin the work we do as multidisciplinary climate change educators: narratives of observation, narratives of speculation, and narratives of conversion. That is, we guide students through the processes of witnessing climate change, imagining more just and sustainable futures, and by so doing, transforming themselves and their communities. In the particular Literary Genres course under consideration, students used the tools of literary and cultural studies first to analyze existing versions of these narratives and then to compose their own versions of these narratives based on their local communities and ecologies. In the context of multidisciplinary climate change education, one of the most important roles of the humanities is to empower students by giving them the critical and creative tools to tell their own climate stories.