The University of Florida's Cli-Fi Working Group offers cli-fi course Spring 2016 Semester

Course ENL 2930

A UF course listed below, taught by members of the Cli-Fi Working Group,  includes substantial cli-fi, dystopian and utopian literary content.

 Spring 2016 |  Fall 2015

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Spring 2016

UNDERGRADUATE COURST

ENL 2930.

 

Taught by Professor Terry Harpold (Dept. of English),

 

“Cli-Fi [Climate-Change Fiction]”

“Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us, the possible consequences, and the possible solutions.” – Isaac Asimov

As we move into an era of increased climate instability, scientific analysis of climate change is central to our understanding of physical systems of our planet and the impact of these systems on human life. Climate-change fiction, aka Cli-Fi (CF), the distinctive literary form of our time, bridges elite and popular cultures and broadly engages enthusiasts and scholars alike in the work of imagining our possible climate futures.

Areas of scientific, intellectual, and artistic inquiry are converging in the new genre of “cli-fi" -- print and graphic fiction and film grounded in scientific realities of environmental change, and projecting the resulting transformations of our societies, politics, and cultures.

In this course we will read major works in this emerging literary genre from the late 19th through the early 21st Centuries.

ENL 2930 coincides with an international colloquium at UF on “Imagining Climate Change: Science and Literature in Dialogue” (February 17–18, 2016). The instructor (Terry Harpold) is one of the organizers of the colloquium, which is co-sponsored by La France-Florida Research Institute, The Center for African Studies, The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Department of English, the Florida Climate Institute at the University of Florida, the Science Fiction Working Group, the UF Smathers Libraries, and the UF Water Institute. Colloquium events are made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

See http://imagining-climate.clas.ufl.edu for a complete schedule of events.
This course is a humanities (H) subject area course in UF’s General Education Program and carries “Cluster A” credit toward UF’s Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability Studies.