| introduction to environmental humanities
(objectives)
Ecological crisis is commonly declined as a “technical” issue: so the aim is to develop a series of restorative strategies in order to keep alive the consolidated systemic frames and considering the “environment” as a simple inert background of our human epos. Contrariwise, the planet crisis involves the shared visions of the world, the ways, always conflicting and socially connoted, the living beings look, name, think and narrate the ecological space by which they are in turn determined. For some years now, scholars from different geographical and knowledge areas, forcing their respective disciplinary boundaries, have been trying to understand the complex character of the entanglements between human and non-human, between living beings and the realm of the inanimate, which characterize the common ecological space. The course introduces students to this new research domain, the environmental humanities, where an alliance grows between humanities (philosophy, literature, the arts, etc.), social sciences (anthropology, environmental history, sociology, economics, political ecology, geography, etc.) and natural sciences (biology, ecology, etc.) aimed at critically rethink the terms of the environmental issue.
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Code
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20710678 |
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Language
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ITA |
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Type of certificate
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Profit certificate
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Credits
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6
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Scientific Disciplinary Sector Code
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SPS/10
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Contact Hours
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36
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Type of Activity
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Core compulsory activities
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Teacher
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ROMANO ONOFRIO
(syllabus)
The course stands at the crossroad between different disciplinary fields: philosophy, sociology, environmental history, literature.
We will firstly define the main characteristics and contents of the Environmental humanities study area. Then we will focus, first and foremost, on how humanities and social sciences stand today before the regulatory ontology of the neoliberal growth system. This is based on an apparently contradictory mixture of vitalistic unleashing and rational anticipatory ordering, where the goal is no longer disciplining the living system and the living beings but the possibility to profit from indeterminacy, i.e. from the continuous liberation of energy.
Humanities and social sciences, increasingly dominated by a neo-materialist perspective, play an ambiguous role in this framework: on the one hand, they aim to eco-critically denounce all forms of domination of the human and the non-human; on the other hand, by working on the deconstruction of some traditional dualisms (nature/culture, nature/technology, words/things, reality/knowledge, living/non-living, etc.), they contribute to settle a de-regulation imaginary in which ecological threats, far from being opposed, are actually indulged. With this awareness, we will try to reflect on the possible ways out.
Going backwards, we will retrace the social and political events that characterized the emergence of the ecological question in the second half of the twentieth century, focusing on the Italian case, both through the approach of environmental history and through the forms of literary expression.
(reference books)
- M. Armiero, S. Iovino, "Environmental Humanities", in Enciclopedia Italiana, decima appendice, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana 2020, pp. 39-44.
- L. Pellizzoni, “Ontological Politics in a Disposable World. The New Mastery of Nature", Ashgate, Farnham 2015.
- S. Romeo, "L'altra faccia del benessere. Una storia ambientale nell'Italia contemporanea", Carocci, Roma 2024.
- T. Di Ciaula, "Tuta blu. Ira, ricordi e sogni di un operaio del Sud", Edizioni Alegre, Roma 2022 [1978]
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Dates of beginning and end of teaching activities
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From to |
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Delivery mode
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Traditional
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Attendance
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not mandatory
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Evaluation methods
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Oral exam
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Università Roma Tre