Climate Change Narratives
Subject code: HS30052
Credit: 03
Prerequisite: (if any) Intermediate (10+2) in any discipline.
Course Objective:
The objective of this course is to study climate fiction to demonstrate new ways of thinking about
climate change and invoke opportunities for imagining more just and resilient futures. This course
will enable skills for thinking, writing, and speaking critically about both literature and climate
change. Moreover, it will enable the learners to analyze the specific formal and stylistic
conventions of literary and cultural texts and situate those texts within broader debates and
discourses—scientific, historical, and political—about climate change.
Course Outcomes:
CO1: Draw on relevant political, historical, and scientific information to place literary and cultural
texts within wider debates and discourses about climate change.
CO2: Identify how literary and cultural texts complement or challenge understandings of climate
change.
CO3: Reflect on understandings of and feelings about climate change.
CO4: Employ logic, creativity, and interpretive skills to produce persuasive and imaginative
arguments about literature, culture, and climate change.
CO5: To create a report on climate concerns.
CO6: To evaluate the impact of climate change on the local communities.
Detailed syllabus
Module 1: Introduction to Climate Change
Text for Discussion:
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, Michael E Mann
Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet, Margaret Atwood
The Drowned World, JG Ballard
Environmental Crisis and Hindu Religion, O.P. Dwivedi and B.N. Tiwari.
Module 2: Impacts of Climate Change
Text for Discussion:
“Evidence for Climate Change,”: Explore the CEEW project (Blog)Research present or
future climate change impacts in your own community.
“Diary of an Interesting Year,” Helen Simpson “The Tamarisk Hunter,” Paolo Bacigalupi
“The Weatherman,” Holly Howitt
Living Mountain: The Fable of our times “Amitav Ghosh
Module 3: Language of Climate Communication in Literature
Text for Discussion:
I’m not a plastic bag, Rachel Hope Alison
Leila, Prayag Akbar
Textbooks:
Rachel Hope Alison. I’m Not a Plastic Bag. New York: Archaia, 2012. ISBN-10 : 1936393549
Prayag Akbar. Leila. Simon and Schuster, 2017. ISBN
978-0-571-34133-7
Ed. by Mark Martin (Editor), Bill McKibben (Introduction), Margaret Atwood (Contributor),
Paolo Bacigalupi (Contributor), T.C. Boyle (Contributor). I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from
a Damaged Planet. Verso, 2011. ISBN-10 : 9781844677443.
J.G. Ballard. The Drowned World. Reprint Fourth Estate: United Kingdom. ISBN-0007221835
Amitav Ghosh. Living Mountain: The Fable of Our times. India: Fourth State India. 9354898874
Michael E Mann. The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. USA: Public
Affairs. 1541758234
O.P. Dwivedi and B.N. Tiwari,
Environmental Crisis and Hindu Religion , NewDelhi: Gitanjali Publishing House, 1987
Reference Books:
Maslin, Mark. Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2014. ISBN: 9780198719045
Rich, Nathaniel. Odds Against Tomorrow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. ISBN:
9781250
Lecture Unit and Topics No. of Classes
No.
Module 1.
Introduction to Climate Change
1. Climate Change, environmental ethics and hindu 1
religion
2. The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our 2
Planet, Michael E Mann
3. Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet,” Margaret 3
Atwood
4. The Drowned World, JG Ballard 4
5. Favorite story assignment 1
Module 2.
Impacts of Climate Change
6. “Evidence for Climate Change,”: Explore the 1
CEEW project (Blog)Research present or future
climate change impacts in your own community.
7. Living Mountain: The Fable of our times “Amitav 2
Ghosh
8. Diary of an Interesting Year,” Helen Simpson “The 2
Tamarisk Hunter,” Paolo Bacigalupi
9. The Weatherman,” Holly Howitt 2
10. Assignment: video report 2
Assignment: blogging on climate change.
Module 3.
Language of Climate Communication in
Literature
11. I’m not a plastic bag by Rachel Hope Alison 10
(Identification of indicators of climate change, use
of language of to describe change)
12. Leila 5
The depiction of text -screen interface pertaining to
climate change.
13. Assignment 1
Total 36 hrs
