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Crossing the Climate Change Divide

October 24, 2019 By meerasub Leave a Comment

ENV 375 class. Photo by Denise Applewhite

This fall, I’ve been leading Princeton undergraduates as we take a deep dive into the climate debate in the seminar “Crossing the Climate Change Divide.” Tom Garlinghouse from Princeton’s Office of Communications joined us to share what we’re doing. To see the full syllabus, click here. And here’s his piece:

The course is taught by award-winning journalist Meera Subramanian, who is asking students to examine what people think about climate change — whether they accept the current climate science, reject it or are simply confused by it — and why they think the way they do.

“I’d love the students to engage in the conversation around climate change with a slightly more wide-open lens about how people are thinking about this and why people are thinking about it in the ways that they do,” said Subramanian, the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environmental Humanities in the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI). She is participating in a panel titled “Breaking the Logjam” at the Princeton Environmental Forum on Oct. 25.

Subramanian wants the students to use what anthropologists call an “emic,” or “insider’s,” approach — that is, taking into account a person’s words, perceptions and beliefs as main sources of information rather than adopting a potentially more objective or “outsider’s” approach. This demands that the students consider factors such as how an individual’s ideology, religion, economic level and politics impinge on a particular topic — in this case, the climate debate.

“Humans are messy creatures,” Subramanian said. “It’s not like we’re just economic creatures or just religious creatures. We are all of those things, all at once.”

Read the rest here.

Filed Under: climate change, teaching Tagged With: climate change, ENV375, environmental humanities, Princeton University, teaching

Announcing: visiting professorship at Princeton University

April 9, 2019 By meerasub Leave a Comment

I’m pretty sure I have been well behind the curve when it comes to the field of environmental humanities. What I didn’t realize as I criss-crossed India working on A River Runs Again was that my method of reporting and research was just that: taking a systems approach and thinking about the interconnected, interdisciplinary aspects to the complicated realm of environmental stories I was exploring. It led me to understand, for example, that designing a clean cookstove was a gender issue as much as (or more than) a technological one and that the disappearance of vultures could have religious as well as ecological implications. I had stepped, without realizing it, into the world of environmental humanities.

So — to bury the lede — it’s with great delight that I announce that for the 2019-2020 academic year, I’ll be the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities at Princeton University. I’ll be rooted within the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI). In their words: [Read more…]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: environmental humanities, Princeton University, teaching

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