Nature, Ethics, and the Human Imagination

ENCE 51 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

In this class, we will seek ways to mend our relationship to the earth. To prepare ourselves, we will study the stories, values, assumptions, and commitments that have been drivers of climate change and other environmental challenges. On the basis of this study, we will explore the potential for imaginative cultural work to foster a better future. Week-to-week, faculty guests from across Harvard will introduce us to perspectives and methods from an array of fields, including history, literature, music, design, art, philosophy, and religion. As the semester unfolds, we will use what we learn in these sessions to refine our understanding of the contradictory narratives, competing values, human frailties, and historical blind spots that have drawn us into our current environmental predicaments. From this foundation, we will imagine how cultural work might help extricate humanity from these predicaments and put us on a better path.

Each student in the class will work for the semester on an environmental problem of their own choosing. This work will be completed in four stages, progressing from identifying the problem, to studying its history, to imagining a solution and assessing it from various angles, to devising a proposal for cultural work that would help bring that solution into being. Twice during the semester, students will share their work with the class for feedback.

Course Notes

ENCE 51 is required for the NEHI track in ENCE and is a distribution class for the other tracks. Priority will be given to ENCE concentrators and students who have taken ENCE 10, but there are no prerequisites and this course is open to all undergraduates.