Learning to report and write about the anthropocene, in all its scientific and sociopolitical complexity, is the objective of this course. Students will read, discuss, and reverse-engineer foundational masterpieces of nature writing and environmental journalism from the mid-twentieth century to the present. As they gain a nuanced understanding of how and why to approach subjects and events through the frame of the anthropocene-the unofficial term for our ongoing geological epoch, initiated and marked by humans’ dramatic and rapid changes to Earth-they will also produce their own narrative features. The climate crisis will be a central focus.
