We'll explore environmental ethics through the lens of "cli-fi" and "eco-fiction"...
We'll all read Richard Powers's environmental trilogy beginning with The Overstory, following the arc of humanity's historical movement from a more intimate original relation to the rest of nature to the increasingly computer-mediated world of the present, to a who-knows-what future. We'll also look at Jill LePore's The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, which imagines a future in which we've surrendered our autonomy to the machines... but also holds out hope that we can still avert that future.
Then, each of us will select a different additional work of eco-fiction to write and report on. In that way, we'll canvas this growing, exciting genre of literature that addresses what is arguably our most urgent concern.
William James long ago said it best: "The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"
“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story....
What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down...
This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.” Richard Powers, The Overstory
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