WRITING THE URBAN LANDSCAPES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

LUS Methods Seminar 
Spring Semester 2023, Fridays 12-14



Anthropocene has emerged as a contested yet transdisciplinary term to describe the planetary condition under climate change and environmental catastrophe. While being attendant to its critiques, the Anthropocene discourse provides researchers from critical landscape and urban research to engage with a diversity of fields such as earth sciences, art, environmental humanities, agrarian, literary, and cultural studies. This course addresses the specificity of writing about the urban, landscape, and territory in the Anthropocene. The seminar surveys key writings, ideas, and figures in the Anthropocene debate in conversation with critiques from environmental humanities and postcolonial studies. A number of invited guests working at the forefronts of Anthropocene research will bring seminar participants into their research and writing process. Additionally, the seminar will offer a number of hands-on critical writing and peer-review sessions to help the seminar participants develop and work with the allegories of the Anthropocene. 

24.02    Introduction – Writing in the Anthropocene, Nitin Bathla
03.03    Botanical City, Sandra Jasper
10.03    Histories of Settlement workshop, Hollyamber Kennedy & Anooradha Siddiqi 
17.03    Landscapes in deep time: Nuclear Waste and the Swiss Alps, Rony Emmenegger
31.03    Landscapes of the empire, Hollyamber Kennedy 
21.04    Territories of Swiss Colonialism, Denise Bertschi
28.04    A guided walk through the multispecies landscape of Zurich, Flurina Gardin
05.05    Geological Filmmaking, Laura Coppens
12.05    Landscapes of fossil capitalism, Giulia Scotto 
19.05    LUS Doctoral Crits