Introduction to Environmental Humanities 3300-WHŚ(KZ)-OG

The lecture will introduce key issues in contemporary environmental humanities and posthumanist thought, aimed at overcoming the anthropocentric paradigm of human–world relations. While rooted in the planetary crisis and new concepts of human and more-than-human agency, the course will also address questions of global inequality, postcolonial legacies, and extractive economies.

A crucial reference will be Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, which explores the temporally and spatially extended forms of ecological violence disproportionately affecting marginalized and impoverished communities. In this framework, we will also examine Achille Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics, highlighting the global mechanisms that determine whose lives are rendered disposable in the name of capital, development, and militarized control.
The course will thus consider not only ontological and epistemological approaches (such as Karen Barad’s agential realism, Donna Haraway’s proposals, or Timothy Mortons concepts of dark ecology and hypoerobjects), but also the intersections of theory and practice in political, economic, and cultural contexts of the ecological crisis. The wide interdisciplinarity of the perspectives presented—ranging from philosophy and literary studies to social sciences and postcolonial studies—makes the lecture relevant not only for students of the humanities, but also for those from other fields seeking a critical understanding of the entanglements between humans, technology, environment, and global politics.

Type of course

general courses

Mode

Remote learning

Course coordinators

Monika Kostro
Paweł Piszczatowski

Learning outcomes

– students know the basic currents of contemporary environmental humanities and posthumanism (e.g. new materialism, ecocriticism, ecopoetics, ecofeminism, critical animal studies, etc.),
– students know the basic concepts and terms in the field of posthumanism and environmental humanities (e.g. cyborg, agential realism, posthuman, natureculture, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene, dark ecology, ecology without nature, ANT, etc.),
– students are familiar with and able to apply critical categories addressing global inequalities and environmental violence (e.g. Rob Nixon’s “slow violence,” Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, environmentalism of the poor),
– students understand the connections between postcolonial legacies, the global extractive economy, and the ecological crisis,
– students can navigate interdisciplinary discourses across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences,
– students understand the relationships between scientific discourse, life practices, politics, and planetary phenomena in the context of the ecological crisis on Earth.

Assessment criteria

For the general university subjects offered in the ZIP 2.0 Programme the mandatory method of verifying the assumed learning outcomes is a pre-test and post-test prepared by the lecturer in accordance with the specific nature of the subject, enabling the verification of the increase in knowledge and skills.

Test

Bibliography

– Bakke, Monika, Bio-transfiguracje. Sztuka i estetyka posthumanizmu, Poznań 2015;
– Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things, Durham/London 2010;
– Barad, Karen, Posthumanistyczna performatywność: ku zrozumieniu, jak materia zaczyna mieć znaczenie, przeł. Joanna Bednarek, w: Agnieszka Gajewska (red.), Teorie wywrotowe. Antologia przekładów, Poznań 2012, s. 323–360;
– Braidotti, Rosi, Po człowieku, przeł. Joanna Bednarek, Agnieszka Kowalczyk, Warszawa 2014;
– Domańska, Ewa, Humanistyka ekologiczna, w: „Teksty Drugie” 2013, 1-2, s. 13-32;
– Fiedorczuk, Julia, Gerardo Beltrán, Ekopoetyka. Ekologiczna obrona poezji, Warszawa 2020;
– Haraway, Donna, Manifest cyborgów, przeł. Sławomir Królak, Ewa Majewska. w: „Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki”, 1 (3), 2003, s. 49–87;
– Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham/London 2016;
– Mbembe, Acille, Polityka wrogości, Nekropolityka, przeł. Katarzyna Bojarska, Urszula Kropiwiec, Kraków 2018.
Moore, Jason W. (ed.), Antropocen czy kapitałocen? Natura, historia i kryzys kapitalizmu, przeł. Krzysztof Hoffmann, Patryk Szaj, Weronika Szwebs, Gdańsk 2025.
– Morton, Timothy, Dark Ecology. For a Logic of Future Coexistence, New York 2016.
– Nixon, Rob, Powolna przemoc i ekologia ubogich, przeł. Tymon Adamczewski, Tomasz Dobrogoszcz, Katarzyna Więckowska, Gdańsk 2025.

Additional information

Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 3300-WHŚ(KZ)-OG in USOSweb