GEN2004 Green Communities in Action
Instructors
A/P Chitra Sankaran, Module Chair
Dr Gayatri Thanu Pillai, Research Fellow
Description
Arguably, the most pressing contemporary issue that affects all humanity is the global environmental crisis. This module aims to engage with Green Communities in Singapore in order to synthesise their common aim to fight the negative effects of climate crisis. It will examine cultural, political and literary narratives, and draw on field studies to provide both knowledge-based and experiential insight into various green projects. This module exposes students from across disciplines to salient directions in the environmental humanities and to observe praxis methodologies in action. It approaches the climate crisis primarily from the angle of ecocritical textual analysis. Through community-based engagement, this module attempts to cultivate an orientation towards (and responsibility for) urgent social and environmental issues confronting humanity.
Learning Outcomes
- Enable students to engage with theoretical insights on climate change along with ‘on-the-ground’ interactions with specific Singapore green communities to heighten awareness about the environmental crisis in Singapore and ways in which NGOs, Government Operations and Associations, and Societies are tackling this through active self-organisation and partnerships.
- Engage strategies to reflect on the methods adopted by these organisations and examine these critically based on the frameworks developed by scholars in Environmental Humanities to raise questions about developmental discourse.
- Provide learners with tools to critically explain/think about Green Issues in Singapore.
- Bring about a mutually edifying and beneficial experience since students will learn about how Singapore is combating the environmental crisis on various fronts; simultaneously, their input based on their theoretical and knowledge-based foundation will help these communities better understand and re-adjust their tactical methods and operations.
Topics
INTRODUCTION (Weeks 1 and 2): Documentary-David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020)
Optional viewing: An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Critical reading: “Literature and the Environment” by Lawrence Buell, Ursula K. Heise, and Karen Thornber (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-environ-111109-144855)
OCEANIA (Weeks 3 and 4): Typhoon Poems
Critical reading: “Ecocritical Forms of Engagement with Nature and Texts” by Serpil Oppermann (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA380342009&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=19498519&p=LitRC&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E95812d10&aty=open+web+entry)
ARBOREAL (Weeks 5 and 6): Chapters 1 and 2 The Word for World is Forest by Ursula Le Guin (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-word-for-world-is-forest-1)
Critical reading: “Jungle Tide, Devouring Reef” by Sharae Deckard
TERRA (Weeks 7 and 8): “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson
Critical reading: “Gender and the Environment” by Mary Mellor
CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIODIVERSITY (Weeks 9 and 10): “Termites and Humans” by Tran Duy Phien
Critical reading: “The Climate of History: Four Theses” by Dipesh Chakrabarty