New Spring Stanford Course – “Visual Culture of the Arctic and Climate Change”

POSTED IN: OF INTEREST

ARHIST 273 / FILMSTUD 273: “Visual Culture of the Arctic and Climate Change”

Spring Quarter 2015-16, Tue/Thurs 10:30am-11:50am

Instructor: Lisa Bloom

In what ways does contemporary art address the slowly unfolding catastrophes of melting ice and thawing permafrost in the Arctic due to climate change? How might contemporary art and experimental cinema help us come to grips with the emotional disturbance of living amidst the deep-seated changes that are happening in our environment? These are the key questions this course attempts to answer.

The first part of the class attempts to outline the complex history of Arctic visual and cultural representations through an interdisciplinary lens. The second part focuses on the more recent artistic and cinematic responses to climate change in the Arctic. For their final projects, students will be able to combine analytical writing with creative projects that could take the form of photography, installation art, web-based art, fiction, video or poetry.