China’s Environmental Voices
A HumanitiesX Course Showcase
This online showcase is part of a series designed to capture the work of the 2022–23 HumanitiesX cohort at DePaul University. In Spring 2023, three teams of HumanitiesX Fellows created three unique project-based courses. See the other course showcase posts on the HumanitiesX website.
The Course
China’s Environmental Voices was a new course taught by DePaul professors Li Jin (Modern Languages) and Phillip Stalley (Political Science). Students explored how Chinese artists, writers, and scholars have interpreted, portrayed, and confronted the socioeconomic forces contributing to environmental degradation in China. The course featured a major public engagement project in collaboration with HumanitiesX Community Fellow Sophia Wong Boccio, of Asian Pop-Up Cinema (APUC), with whom the students planned and hosted a public film-screening event and poster session.
Over the term, students studied and discussed the art, films, and literature that represent China’s ‘environmental voices,’ gaining a deeper understanding of the extent and impact of China’s environmental challenges and reflecting on the causes of environmental destruction more broadly. They read contemporary, environmentally themed Chinese novels, and had the rare treat of an intimate in-class discussion with novelist Chen Quifan, who was visiting campus for an event hosted by DePaul’s Humanities Center.
For DePaul students, this course offered a rare opportunity to both learn from a dynamic teaching team with deep knowledge of Chinese language, culture, history, and politics, and to enrich and engage the community around them, by hosting a large-scale, off-campus public event.
The Project
Over the 10-week quarter, students completed a variety of individual and group tasks to prepare them for the course’s culminating event. This event, which happened during the last week of the class at the AMC New City movie theater in Lincoln Park, invited the public to attend a free screening of a Chinese film about logging in Mongolia, Anima, and a student-led Q&A with the film’s editor, Zimo Huang. The students of China’s Environmental Voices, guided by APUC’s Sophia Wong Boccio, were responsible for planning, marketing, and hosting the event.
To learn about the work of Asian Pop-Up Cinema, an early course assignment asked students to attend one of APUC’s film showings and write a short reflective paper on their experience. Students also worked throughout the course in small groups to first analyze the environmental themes in a Chinese novel, then to research art or literature with themes related to their novel. They shared the results of their research first in in-class presentations, and later developed individual posters that were on display in the theater’s lobby during Anima’s reception event.
The class was also fortunate to have a Q&A discussion on Zoom with Anima’s director, Cao Jinling, who connected from Beijing. Director Cao shared the aspirations leading to the production of this film, her goals of making this environmentally themed film, and other fun stories from the film-shooting process. The class gained a deeper understanding of the meaning of the film from the Director’s perspective.
Students wrapped up their course experience by writing reflective papers summarizing what they had learned about environmental issues, environmental ethics, and public engagement.
The Team
Faculty Fellow Li Jin is a Professor in DePaul’s Department of Modern Languages. She directs the Chinese Studies Program and the Global Asian Studies Program and teaches courses in both programs, as well in DePaul’s Liberal Studies program. Dr. Jin is a linguist by training with a specialty in language pedagogy, and was thrilled to expand her teaching to incorporate environment-focused Chinese artists and authors, as well as to learn from collaborating with her HumanitiesX co-teacher, Dr. Phillip Stalley.
Faculty Fellow Phillip Stalley is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Endowed Professor in Environmental Diplomacy in the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy. He teaches courses on Chinese politics, environmental politics, and international relations. Dr. Stalley’s research focuses primarily on Chinese environmental politics, but having a year to explore this topic through the lens of the humanities has opened up new scholarly interests for him.
Community Fellow Sophia Wong Boccio is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Sophia’s Choice, which hosts the annual Asian Pop-Up Cinema, a non-competitive film festival now in its seventeenth season. This was Sophia’s first partnership with a DePaul course, and it left her excited to pursue other collaborations with DePaul faculty and students.
Student Fellow Emily Figueroa joined the HumanitiesX cohort as a junior, majoring in journalism and minoring in environmental communication. Emily is also on the staff of DePaul’s award-winning student magazine, 14 East. See the article Emily wrote for HumanitiesX on a Sustainability ‘Network-Weaving’ event at DePaul, “Sustainability Advancements, the Vincentian Way.”
Student Fellow Madeline Meyer joined the HumanitiesX cohort as a senior, double-majoring in Theatre and Political Science. See the article Madeline wrote on sustainability in DePaul’s Theatre School, “From Black Box to Proscenium: How Theatre Can Address the Climate Crisis.”
Lessons Learned and Next Steps
China’s Environmental Voices hosted the most ambitious public event to date in a HumanitiesX course. From their experiences teaching the course and supporting a public-engagement project, the HumanitiesX team took the following key lessons:
- Literature, the visual arts, and film both offer powerful lessons about the climate crisis and can move people to environmental action. As students explored the work of Chinese artists, some of whom faced intense political persecution, they grew more and more convinced that creative works are key in the fight for climate action and environmental justice. Public events that share this work, stir hearts, and spur conversation are an important way to maximize the impact of these creative works.
- Planning a film screening is a lot of work! The team was so lucky to have Sophia, an energetic and seasoned public-engagement professional, to lead students through this work. In its complexity, the public event was a great lesson about how ambitious projects come together through the coordinated work of smaller teams.
- The careful staging of student work is important for giving students the confidence and practice to pull off a public event. In the course, students moved from the familiar task of making individual presentations on course material, to more complex group presentations, and finally to the public conversations at the screening’s reception and event. The practice helped them develop their ideas and to develop the necessary confidence to share these ideas with the public.
Both Professors Jin and Stalley were impressed by how students responded to the course, and plan to teach some version of it again in the near future.
