Spring 2018

H+U+D PROBLEMATICS SEMINAR

Description:

The premise of this interdisciplinary seminar is that the combination of design and environmental humanities will allow us to develop a complex sense of the interplay of infrastructure and affect in the lived and built environment of coastal cities already contending with sea level rise. Ranging temporally (from Mesopotamia to the dystopian futures of climate fiction) and geographically (from Venice and Rotterdam, from New York and New Orleans, to Jakarta and Dhaka, for example), the seminar explores an array of exemplary historical and present-day sites of delta urbanism as portrayed through views coming from the literary and design communities. We will engage directly with notable experts of design and water management (some of whom will be invited to the seminar) as well as works of literature, philosophy, history, and film.

Instructors:

Eugenie Birch, City and Regional Planning, School of Design and Simon Richter, Germanic Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences