Core texts and lab themes for each week are listed below. Additional materials (optional readings, assignments, lab tutorials, media) will be posted online each week.

Weekly texts fall into three broad categories:

{A} Baseline: The key reference establishing a “baseline” definition and conceptual framework for the weekly epochal theme.

{B} Reframing: Texts outlining alternative viewpoints, interpretations, and debates surrounding the week’s epochal term

{C} Regrounding: Situated studies of particular places, environments, histories, subjects and communities that articulate the XXTK

NB: If there is more than a single text for a given category, we will indicate which text should be prioritized with an asterisk*.

WEEKLY SCHEDULE

INTRODUCTION | WK 01

Readings [3/29]

No readings; complete hardware/software survey.

Lab [3/31]

{L01} Introduction to geospatial data and (open source) GIS [QGIS]

I. ANTHROPOCENE/ANTHROPO(S)CENES | WK 02

Readings [4/05]

{A*} Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. 2015. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519 (7542): 171–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258.

{A} Ellis, Erle C. “Land Use and Ecological Change: A 12,000-Year History.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 46, no. 1 (2021): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-010822.

{B} Chwałczyk, Franciszek. 2020. “Around the Anthropocene in Eighty Names — Considering the Urbanocene Proposition.” Sustainability 12 (11): 4458. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114458

{C} Davis, Heather, and Zoe Todd. 2017. “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 16 (4): 761–80.

{C*} Arènes, Alexandra, Bruno Latour, and Jérôme Gaillardet. 2018. “Giving Depth to the Surface: An Exercise in the Gaia-Graphy of Critical Zones.” The Anthropocene Review 5 (2): 120–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019618782257

Lab [4/07]

{L02} Linework: moving from mapping to drawing [QGIS, Adobe Illustrator]

II. TECHNOCENE | WK 03

Readings [4/12]

{A} Zalasiewicz, Jan, Mark Williams, Colin N Waters, Anthony D Barnosky, John Palmesino, Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Matt Edgeworth, et al. 2017. “Scale and Diversity of the Physical Technosphere: A Geological Perspective.” The Anthropocene Review 4 (1): 9–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019616677743

{B*} Kurgan, Laura. 2013. Close up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books. Introduction, “Mapping Considered as a Problem of Theory and Practice,” pp. 9–19.

{B} Gabrys, Jennifer. 2016. Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. Electronic Mediations 49. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Introduction: Environment as Experiment in Sensing Technology,” pp. 1–28.

{B} Hornborg, Alf. 2015. “The Political Ecology of the Technocene: Uncovering Ecologically Unequal Exchange in the World-System.” In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis, edited by Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil, and François Gemenne, 57–69. London ; New York: Routledge.

{C} Mattern, Shannon. 2021. A City Is Not a Computer : Other Urban Intelligences. Places Books. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1, “City Console,” pp. 18–50.

Lab [4/14]

{L03} Mapping systems: Diagrams and spatial grammars [Adobe Illustrator]

III. URBANOCENE | WK 04

Readings [4/19]

{A} West, Geoffrey B. 2017. Scale : The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies. Penguin Press. [selections]

{B*} Brenner, Neil. 2013. “Theses on Urbanization.” Public Culture 25 (1): 85–114. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-1890477.

{B} Wakefield, Stephanie. 2021. “Critical Urban Theory in the Anthropocene.” Urban Studies, October, 00420980211045523. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211045523.

{C} Goh, Kian. 2020. “Urbanising Climate Justice: Constructing Scales and Politicising Difference.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 13 (3): 559–74. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsaa010.

Lab [4/21]

{L04} Power of projections/projections of power: Spatial transformation and geographic relation [QGIS, (D3)]

MIDTERM: EPOCHAL CONSTELLATION | WK 05

{P01} [4/26] Presentations

{EC} [4/28] EC “crit” working session in lab

IV. CAPITALOCENE | WK 06

Readings [5/03]

{A} Moore, Jason W. 2018. “The Capitalocene Part II: Accumulation by Appropriation and the Centrality of Unpaid Work/Energy.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 45 (2): 237–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1272587.

{B} Fraser, Nancy. 2014. “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode.” New Left Review, no. 86 (April): 55–72.

{C*} Federici, Silvia. 2018. Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Chapter 2 (pp. 11–15) & Chapter 7 (pp. 60–86).

{C} Vergés, Françoise. 2019. “Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender.” E-Flux Journal, no. 100 (May 2019). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/100/269165/capitalocene-waste-race-and-gender/.

Lab [5/05]

{L05} Digital bricolage: Images and imaginaries of unmapping [Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator]

V. PLANTATIONOCENE | WK 07

Readings [5/10]

{A} Haraway, Donna, Noboru Ishikawa, Scott F. Gilbert, Kenneth Olwig, Anna L. Tsing, and Nils Bubandt. 2016. “Anthropologists Are Talking — About the Anthropocene.” Ethnos 81 (3): 535–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1105838.

{A*} Wolford, Wendy. 2021. “The Plantationocene: A Lusotropical Contribution to the Theory.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 0 (0): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1850231.

{B} McKittrick, Katherine. 2013. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 17 (3): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2378892.

{C} Montenegro de Wit, Maywa. 2021. “What Grows from a Pandemic? Toward an Abolitionist Agroecology.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 48 (1): 99–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1854741.

Lab [5/12]

{L06} Place-time: Visual timelines for a history of the future [Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator]

VI. PYROCENE | WK08

Readings [5/17]

{A} Pyne, S. J. 2020. “From Pleistocene to Pyrocene: Fire Replaces Ice.” Earth’s Future 8 (11): e2020EF001722. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001722.

{B} Clark, Nigel, and Kathryn Yusoff. 2014. “Combustion and Society: A Fire-Centred History of Energy Use.” Theory, Culture & Society 31 (5): 203–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276414536929.

{B} Lave, Rebecca, Christine Biermann, and Stuart N. Lane. 2018. “Introducing Critical Physical Geography.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Physical Geography, 3–21. Springer.

{B*} Lightfoot, Kent G., and Rob Q. Cuthrell. 2015. “Anthropogenic burning and the Anthropocene in late-Holocene California.” The Holocene 25, no. 10: 1581–1587.

{C*} Simon, Gregory L. 2014. “Vulnerability-in-Production: A Spatial History of Nature, Affluence, and Fire in Oakland, California.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (6): 1199–1221. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.941736.

{C} Celermajer, Danielle, Sria Chatterjee, Alasdair Cochrane, Stefanie Fishel, Astrida Neimanis, Anne O’Brien, Susan Reid, Krithika Srinivasan, David Schlosberg, and Anik Waldow. 2020. “Justice Through a Multispecies Lens.” Contemporary Political Theory 19 (3): 475–512. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00386-5.

Lab [5/19]

{L07} TBD from introductions to remote sensing, 3D modeling/printing, or advanced workflows expanding on previous labs

FINAL: EPOCHAL ATLAS | WK 09

{P02.1} [5/24] Final Presentations (Day 1)

{P02.2} [5/26] Final Presentations (Day 2)

Schedule

v 1.0

Section Outline

A note on the readings