Unit rationale, description and aim
At the heart of the UN’s ‘Agenda for Sustainable Development’ is the recognition that care for human well-being and care for the environment are deeply intertwined. The environmental sciences play pivotal roles in understanding and improving relations among human cultures and the ecosphere—and no less do the environmental humanities. Involving disciplines including history, philosophy, literary studies, Indigenous studies, art history, archaeology, geography, sociology, and anthropology, the environmental humanities seek interdisciplinary approaches to the multifaceted challenges of our day.
Through case studies illuminating the environmental humanities’ crucial relevance for socioecological concerns in Australia and internationally, the unit introduces students to environmental methods and subjects in three humanities disciplines such as history, literary studies, and Indigenous studies. In addition to clarifying their distinctive contributions, the unit highlights how these disciplines’ environmental methods and subjects intersect - and how they interrelate with the broader environmental humanities ‘matrix.’ The unit moves, subsequently, to examine the ambitiously interdisciplinary approaches that characterise the vanguard of the environmental humanities.
This unit aims to equip students with a keen understanding of how sustainability and environmental issues are addressed in the humanities, as well as with strong foundations in understanding, and even designing, the interdisciplinary methods that our 21st century environmental challenges demand.
Campus offering
No unit offerings are currently available for this unit.Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Describe the specific pertinence of the humanities...
Learning Outcome 01
Characterise key environmental methods and subject...
Learning Outcome 02
Demonstrate through academic writing how environme...
Learning Outcome 03
Develop key skills in critically understanding pri...
Learning Outcome 04
Demonstrate an understanding of how emerging inter...
Learning Outcome 05
Content
Topics may include:
- The role, and value, of humanities knowledges in environmental studies
- Environmental history
- Ecocriticism
- Indigenous environmental studies
- The emergence of the environmental humanities as an academic 'matrix’
- Interdisciplinary methods in environmental humanities
- Gender and environment
- Feminist and queer environmental humanities
- Multispecies and 'more-than-human' studies
- The oceanic (or ‘blue’) humanities
- The Anthropocene concept
- Environmental justice
Assessment strategy and rationale
This unit’s three assessments enable students to meet learning outcomes while developing key graduate attributes. The first assessment gauges students’ understanding of the unit’s foundational claim: that environmental concerns are thoroughly entangled with human cultures, and that the humanities play an instrumental role, therefore, in environmental studies. By exploring some particular environmental concerns in contemporary or historical news media, students will refine their research methods, as well as familiarise themselves with ACU’s library resources. The unit’s second assessment invites students to apply the discipline-specific methods of ecocritical literary studies or environmental history to a discrete subject through a written essay. In this way, students will develop their aptitude for whichever discipline is more pertinent for their own scholarly trajectory. At the same time that they deepen their understanding of disciplinary distinctiveness, students will cultivate a sensitivity for their chosen discipline’s interrelations with other disciplinary approaches. Finally, the third assessment evaluates students’ understanding of the unit content through a written take-home exam. This challenges students not only to recount the methods and subjects addressed over the course of the term but to demonstrate an understanding of the unit’s progress from discipline-specific to interdisciplinary approaches.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Culture and environment reflec...
Assessment Task 1: Culture and environment reflection
Students first access contemporary or historical news media to identify an urgent environmental concern, and then identify and interpret the distinctively cultural aspects of that concern.
25%
Assessment Task 2: Essay Students demonstrate th...
Assessment Task 2: Essay
Students demonstrate their understanding of the specific methods of one of the unit’s focus disciplines (e.g., ecocritical literary studies or environmental history) by writing an essay from its particular standpoint. Students are encouraged to articulate clear understandings of disciplinary distinctiveness while registering an awareness of their chosen discipline’s interrelations with other approaches. The Lecturer-in-Charge will designate the particular essay topics available to students.
35%
Assessment Task 3: Take-home exam Students will ...
Assessment Task 3: Take-home exam
Students will complete a take-home written exam assessing their understanding of the unit’s central concerns. The Lecturer-in-Charge may prefer that the exam’s subjects focus especially on one of the unit’s focus disciplines (e.g. Indigenous environmental studies), interdisciplinary methods in environmental humanities, and/or other materials encountered in the unit.
40%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
As the entry point for the study of the environmental humanities at ACU, this unit cultivates understandings of, and aptitudes for, innovative, interdisciplinary methods in environmental humanities research. It does so by first surveying discipline-specific environmental topics and practices in three humanities disciplines - such as history, literary studies, and Indigenous studies - as well as comparing and contrasting these approaches through collective discussion. Building from these foundations, it familiarises students with cutting-edge interdisciplinary environmental humanities methods via case studies that demonstrate how the humanities are involved in responding to environmental and sustainability goals. Core learning activities include identifying and critically understanding pertinent primary and secondary literatures, describing key connections and differences between those literatures, contributing to group discussions, and writing.
This unit encourages students to develop their skills in critically reading primary and secondary sources; understanding and describing the distinctive attributes of humanities disciplines; recognising and characterising interdisciplinary methods in the environmental humanities; and synthesising their understanding through clear and persuasive academic prose.