HIS-30145 - Module Specification
School of Humanities
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2021/22

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2021/22

1945 marked a watershed moment in both human and Earth history. For the first time, a single species had the potential to destroy not just its own global population, but that of all other living things as well. Yet over the next half-century, scientists, environmentalists and industrialists managed to identify a seemingly neverending list of other existential threats to life on Earth. Many of these - DDT, nuclear winter, global warming, Ozone depletion - were clearly anthropogenic. Others - asteroids, volcanoes, magnetic field reversal - were not. This module will seek to contextualise the existential crises that shaped the late-twentieth century, understand their interrelatedness, and question both their languages and the solutions offered, to better appreciate and understand the complexity of the challenges facing the world today.

This module aims to stretch students abilities to synthesise complex interdisciplinary knowledge through critical analysis, in order to better explain and understand the existential crises that came to a head in the mid-1980s, and continue to structure global politics, society and culture today. Students will also be confronted with complex problems such as scale, temporal imagination, memory, and environmental injustice to account for the different stories of extinction panic and their (non-) resolution.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Critically investigate the role of global political languages in local campaigns, protests, or controversies: 1,2
Describe and contextualise the major existential panics of the late-twentieth century, and explain their distinctiveness in comparison to earlier apocalyptic thought: 2
Integrate and synthesise knowledge from different disciplines, including geography, environmental science, politics and film studies: 1,2
Produce meaningful and concise analysis for a public audience: 1
Constructively critique environmental movements and campaigns from perspectives of, for example, environmental inequality, deep ecology, race or gender: 1,2

Study hours

Ten, two-hour seminars = 20 hours
Seminar preparation = 60 hours
Assessment preparation = 68 hours
Exam = 2 hours

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment