View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Oregon Scholars' Bank CLIMATE CHANGE IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE: CONVERSION, SPECULATION, EDUCATION by STEPHEN SIPERSTEIN A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2016 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Stephen Siperstein Title: Climate Change in Literature and Culture: Conversion, Speculation, Education This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: Professor Stephanie LeMenager Chairperson Professor David Vazquez Core Member Professor William Rossi Core Member Professor Kari Norgaard Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2016 ii © 2016 Stephen Siperstein iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Stephen Siperstein Doctor of Philosophy Department of English June 2016 Title: Climate Change in Literature and Culture: Conversion, Speculation, Education This dissertation examines an emergent archive of contemporary literary and cultural texts that engage with the wicked problem of anthropogenic climate change. Following cultural geographer Michael Hulme, this project works from the assumption that climate change is as much a constellation of ideas as it is a set of material realities. I draw from a diverse media landscape so as to better understand how writers, artists, and activists in the global north are exploring these ideas and particularly what it means to be human in a time of climate change. How do individuals learn to live with climate change, that is, with a daily commitment to navigating these chaotic and unprecedented times? Whether a memoir or a novel, an alternate-reality storytelling game or a collection of agitprop posters, each of these texts call on us to imagine different kinds of selves, different kinds of communities, or different kinds of futures. Just as the modes of inquiry practiced in the Environmental Humanities ask us to question the political, economic, and cultural status quo that has led to climate chaos, these texts also call on their audiences to engage in modes of transformative learning incited by this ongoing disorienting dilemma. The project thus also offers a set of ideas and practices for teaching climate change in literary and cultural studies. I argue that climate change poses both challenges iv and opportunities for educators in the Humanities, particularly in the context of its psychological impacts and emotional contours, and I suggest that transformative learning is a productive framework through which to understand such education. Ultimately, transformative climate change learning requires that students question their own assumptions and identities as well as exercise their cultural agency as a way of generating hope and working together to imagine and enact more just and sustainable futures. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Stephen Siperstein GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2016, University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, 2009, Boston College Bachelor of Arts, English, 2006, Wesleyan University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Environmental Humanities Ecocriticism Twentieth and Twenty-First Century American Literature Environmental Education Climate Change PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2009-2012, 2014-2015 Visiting Instructor, Stonehill College, 2012-2013 Graduate Teaching Fellow, Boston College, 2008-2009 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Peer Mentor Award, University of Oregon Teaching Effectiveness Program, 2015 Faculty-Librarian Partnership Pedagogy Award, Stonehill College, 2013 Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Oregon Department of English, 2011 vi Sarah Harkness Kirby Award, University of Oregon Department of English, 2011 Louis Owens Award, Western Literature Association, 2010 PUBLICATIONS: Siperstein, Stephen, Shane Hall, and Stephanie LeMenager. Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities. London: Routledge, 2016. Print. Siperstein, Stephen. “Engaging in Climate Change Conversations: A Role- Playing Exercise to Cultivate Effective Communication.” Learner-Centered Teaching Activities for Environmental and Sustainability Studies. Ed. Loren B. Byrne. New York: Springer, 2016. 285-92. Print. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful for the many friends, colleagues, students, and teachers who, knowingly and unknowingly, helped bring this project into existence. Stephanie LeMenager not only offered her unwavering support throughout this project, but also inspired me to think about myself, my career, my students, and the field of the Environmental Humanities in new and more capacious ways. She gave me the gift of her mentorship, and she taught me to imagine affirmatively. I want to acknowledge other mentors for their graciousness, support, and involvement at various stages of the degree: my committee members, Bill Rossi, David Vazquez, and Kari Norgaard; Jason Schreiner and Lee Rumbarger in the Teaching Effectiveness Program; and Allison Carruth. Teaching and learning are necessarily social practices, and I wouldn’t be the educator and scholar I am today without the help of my colleagues at the University of Oregon, particularly Shane Hall, Taylor McHolm, Dan Platt, and Rob Zandstra. They, along with many others involved in the Mesa Verde group, have offered unbounded encouragement and camaraderie. The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment has likewise been an important presence in my professional and personal life over the past seven years. There are too many people from ASLE to thank in this space, so I will just say that the friendships I have made in that community continually remind me that I do this work because it brings us together. Teachers, of course, are everywhere, and I have learned the most from people outside the classroom. My parents taught me about the importance of education, and they gifted me a love for learning—whether learning how to read or how to skip a stone. They have always been in my corner. My wife, Jemma, is a model of patience, pragmatism, viii and hard work. She has been, and continues to be, the greatest teacher of all. For all that she gave, she deserves to be recognized as co-author of this dissertation. Jemma, you never doubted that I could do this. Thank you for believing in me. ix "We need to slip on the oil and trust our fellow friends and family and strangers to help us up; we need to feel the wind in our hair and reach deep for strength. I do not think we have the time, the luxury, to wait for perfection. Rather, I think we might be better served by diving in, getting messy, and trying over and over as we fight our way forward." - M Jackson, While Glaciers Slept For students, past, present, and future. x TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE PERSONAL ...................... 1 II. FROM #MYCLIMATEMOMENT TO LIVING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE .... 42 III. ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FRONTLINES WITH THE CLIMATE CHANGE MEMOIR ...................................................... 79 IV. TEACHING CLI-FI: LESSONS IN AFFIRMATIVE SPECULATION .............. 131 V. AFTERWORD: LOVE IN A TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE............................. 192 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 206 xi INTRODUCTION: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE PERSONAL I. The Challenge As greenhouse-gas emissions increase, as carbon sinks are further degraded or destroyed, and as average global temperatures continue to rise, the impacts of climate change increasingly touch every aspect of planetary function and human life, from what and how much we eat, to where we live and how we die, to our basic economic, political and societal stability. We have entered a new reality, which scholars across disciplines now call “the Anthropocene,” a geological epoch in which the human species has acquired a power equal to that of the Earth’s bio- and geophysical systems. Consider, for example, how humanity has damaged the planet’s soil (roughly half the earth’s topsoil has been lost in the past 50 years), heated the atmosphere past tipping points (scientists say the melting polar ice caps are now irreversible), acidified the oceans (some ecologists predict saltwater fish will be gone by 2048), and ushered in the greatest mass extinction since dinosaurs were wiped out (the planet is losing species at between 1,000 to 10,000 times the normal background rate) (Arsenault; Notz; Worm; Barnosky). Consider too how small invisible changes—such as parts-per-million increases in particular atmospheric gases—can upset the flow of heat energy into and out of the global atmosphere and thus alter long taken-for-granted climatological and biophysical systems everywhere on the planet. The consequences of such irreversible changes can be overwhelming and often frightening. Cascading shifts in ecological systems cause 1 unpredictable social impacts, particularly in the context of food production, water availability, emergency relief, infrastructure integrity, economic stability, and international