Cli-fi (climate fiction) and stories are vehicles for exploring climate futurism, or imaging possible climate futures for all life on our planet. Imaginative future casting is grounded in history and science. The Human/Nature Institute is committed to thoughtful dialogue and active engagement with ideas in the spirit of the Freirean approach to reading the word and reading the world. We have selected texts that challenge us–teachers and students– to grapple with what it means to be human and a part of- rather than apart from- nature.

To this end, we will engage in practices that center on active, student-centered learning pedagogies including embodied literary experiences in Literacy Unbound, fieldwork, seminars, content creation, and arts integration.

Literacy Unbound

The Literacy Unbound approach invites participants to embody literature and story by integrating reading, writing, and discussion with drama, music, dance, film, and visual art, experimenting with the layering of mode and medium, the interplay between physical and digital space, and the remixing of text on text.

Predicated on a belief in the power of play in the classroom, Literacy Unbound seeks to unbind traditional approaches to the teaching of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, troubling the artificial divide between critical and creative thinking, demonstrating that intellectual rigor ultimately thrives when both are engaged. To see the Literacy Unbound process in action: https://vimeo.com/150386640

Fieldwork

Place is central to our Institute. Together, we explore stories, places, and environmental sciences connected to the North Bay region surrounding Sonoma State. Visit the Fieldwork page to learn more about our journeys.

Action Plans

Learning experiences, such as fieldwork and literary exploration lead to the development of curricular “Action Plans” for teachers’ use in their own classrooms. For dissemination, participants, with the support of the institute faculty and peers, will curate interdisciplinary resources for other secondary teachers and their own students around a wide range of themes related to climate futurism.

NEH Principles of Civility for Professional Development Programs

Our Institute adheres to the Principles of Civility for NEH Professional Development Programs, as outlined in our Participant Expectations.

The Human/Nature Institute starts with the idea of imagined futures in cli-fi through teen protagonists. Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower is our cornerstone text and serves as a thematic thread that weaves myriad ways that climate-related stories are situated in time and place and told in everyday texts, such as the news media and social media. Thematic threads range from big or so-called wicked problems such as environmental, political, and social instability to individual tensions from a youth perspective, such as love, friendship, family, and hope for the future.

Cli-fi is a thought experiment. The genre invites teachers and students into alternative worlds to explore “storytelling as participation” in what philosopher Maxine Greene called the “social imagination.” And, when cli-fi is also dystopian, there is still hope– hope in writing it (time for change) and hope in reading it, especially through characters who find agency in worlds bereft of opportunities for change.

CORE TEXTS:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

First, cli-fi and literary study invites participants into imagined futures. Starting with Octavia Butler’s Sower enables us to engage with a central text that explores complex problems that include human impact and sustainability of earth’s resources, as well as inter-related issues ranging from systems like those of government and economies to the human need to imbue our existence with meaning. The main character in the Sower, 15-year-old Olamina, speaks to us through journal entries about her experiences in a dystopian America, specifically Southern California. Olamina is self-aware and understands that her youth presents both opportunity and complication, especially in relation to the other people in her life. Initially, it seems as though her aspirations for a better life are constrained by her positionality and context. And yet, she introduces Earthseed, a religion that “finds” and compels her to conclude that “God is Change.” Visiting scholar Pam Bedore examines ways to teach dystopian literature with care and hope. Includes complementary literature such as LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and Jemisin’s “The Ones Who Stay and Fight.”

Learn more about Octavia Butler in the New York Times’ interactive article, The Visions of Octavia Butler.

Feed by MT Anderson

This dystopian novel takes us from our inquiry into exodus in response to the limits of our natural and built worlds to examining the role technology plays in disrupting our conceptions of what it means to be human. For study with adolescents, it creates opportunities to examine the promise and peril of technological advances. Our visiting scholar, Megan Musgrave, will lead us through pedagogical approaches in inquiry and embodied exploration of tech-related issues. This text is paired with Westerfield’s Stupid Perfect World and excerpts from Stewart’s Blue Gold. Learn innovative, active learning approaches such as Musgrave’s version of “The Scarcity Project” from Westerfield’s novella.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

In a dystopian future fueled in part by climate disaster, non-Native people have lost the ability to dream. Native people’s dreams are literally in their DNA and their marrow is harvested to produce a serum to treat dreamlessness in others. Frenchie, the protagonist, like Olamina in Butler’s Sower, is a young person forced into an exodus. And, like Olamina, he grapples with loads and survival as well as friendship, family, and healing. In writing the novel, Dimaline said, “I wanted Indigenous youth to see themselves in the future.” Our exploration includes guidance from Redbud Resource Group’s Trelasa Baratta on Native perspectives and E. Sybil Durand’s expertise in students-centered approaches to YA for healing and restoration.

ADDITIONAL TEXTS:

Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference

Authors Richard Beach, Jeff Share, and Allen Webb have created an “essential resource for middle and high school English language arts teachers to help their students understand and address the urgent issues and challenges facing life on Earth today.” Participants will learn about ways into teaching climate change with practical examples from classroom teachers. Richard Beach and Allen Webb will support participants in developing Action Plans.

Selections from Digital Citizenship in Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Literature

Megan Musgrave, one of our featured visiting faculty, examines the relationships between literature, cyberspace, and young adults in our time. The Human/Nature connection explores our relationships through and in technology.

OTHER & EXCERPTED TEXTS:

• The Visions of Octavia Butler (Lynell George & Ainslee Alem Robson, 2022)

• Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (Imarisha, brown, & Thomas, eds., 2015)

• “Happy Endings” (Margaret Atwood)

• The Paradox of Preservation: Wilderness and Working Landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore (Laura Alice Watt, 2016)

• Wildness: Relations of People and Place (Gavin Horn & John Hausdoerffer, Eds., 2017)

• Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene (Mary Fifield & Kristin Thiel, Eds., 2021)

• Tales of the Russian River: Stumptown Stories (John C. Schubert, 2013)

• Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West (Lauren Redniss, 2021)

• Becoming Story: A Journey among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors (Greg Sarris, 2022)

• Earth Education, Interbeing, and Deep Ecology (Anderson & Guyas, 2012)

• Lord of the Animals (F. French, 1997)

• The Last Cuentista (Donna Barba Higuera, 2021)

• The Ministry for the Future: A Novel (Ken Stanley Robinson, 2020)

• “Youth Media as Narrative Assemblage: Examining New Literacies at an Urban High School” (Karina Jocson, 2012)

• The Majestic Plastic Bag: A Mockumentary (Greenlife Blog)

• “Reconsidering Student Inquiry through Digital Narrative Nonfiction.” English Journal (Fawn Canady, Chyllis Scott, & Troy Hicks, 2019)

• “We’re Trying to Take Action” Transformative Agency, Role Re-mediation, and the Complexities of Youth Participatory Culture (Betrand, González & Durand, 2017)

• Provocation in the Company of Others: Learning through Provisional and Improvisational Spaces. Teachers College Record (Erick Gordon & R. Vinz, 2015)

The 2023 Human/Nature Climate Futurism institute is a 3-week, combined format NEH Summer Institute. We aim to develop sustained, collaborative relationships with our participants throughout 2023.

Participants will attend portions of the program synchronously online and for two weeks on-site at Sonoma State University in the North Bay Area of California.

Participants will convene for 2 virtual events in May of 2023 for webinars with the Human/Nature Project Team and guest scholars Allen Webb, and Richard Beach. Dates/times for these 90-minute webinars are yet to be determined. (If participants must miss an online session, we will provide recordings).

The on-site programming at SSU begins on the afternoon of Sunday, June 11th through Friday, June 23rd, as described in more detail below.

Participants will convene four times, virtually, in the late summer and fall of 2023 to share Action Plans and support for curriculum development with Human/Nature scholars and experts. Dates/times for these 90-minute webinars are yet to be determined. (If participants must miss an online session, we will provide recordings).

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Pre-institute (online): Tuesday, May 2nd 2023 & Tuesday, May 16th

Two webinars with the Project Team and guest scholars and authors of Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents Richard Beach and Allen Webb. After the webinars, participants will receive, by email, a total of 10 daily temptations to explore, write about, and curate cultural artifacts in a digital journal.

Participants will read the core texts prior to the Institute and curate 3 artifacts relating to their personal inquiry.

Main Institute (Onsite at SSU): Sunday, June 11 to Friday, June 23rd

Sunday, June 11th, 4:00-6:00 PM: Residence check-in and opening reception, “Future Casting: The year 2023 Time Capsule from the lens of 2123.”

Monday, June 12th: Literacy Unbound (movement as literary experience); Parable of the Sower seminar and pedagogical approaches with Pam Bedore. The seminar begins with an overview of utopia/dystopia/apocalypse and a background on Butler’s oeuvre and influence (including Octavia’s Brood). Topics are far-ranging for scholarship, from climate to trauma, race, gender, slavery, and religion. Learn more about hyperempathy in Sower over the next several days!

Tuesday, June 13th– AM: Sower seminar and pedagogy with Pam Bedore. Bedore will also focus on close reading exercises, developing questions and assignments, and emphasizing thinking about inclusion (UDL). Literacy Unbound: “On the Road with Lauren Olamina” with Erick Gordon and Fawn Canady. PM: Action Plans with Troy Hicks and Gina Baleria. Tour of Studio Blue.

Wednesday, June 14th– AM: Sower finale and Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” with Pam Bedore. Includes LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and Jemisin’s “The Ones Who Stay and Fight.” Create a speculative reading list (including YA). PM: Writing Marathon at Sonoma Developmental Center. Optional “late” night programming: Film, Trust Me with an introduction by Troy Hicks.

Thursday, June 15th– AM: M.T. Anderson’s Feed with Megan Musgrave. PM: Critical Digital Media with Troy, Fawn, and Gina. Action plans.

Friday, June 16th– AM: Feed with Westerfield’s Stupid Perfect World and Stewart’s Blue Gold led by Megan Musgrave. Includes The Scarcity Project and other pedagogical approaches exploring our digitally interfaced lives. PM: Makerspace rapid prototyping of Artifact from the Future (McGonigal, 2021) with Fawn and Erick. Optional late-night programming: Film, 2040 with an introduction by Fawn Canady.

Saturday, June 17th– AM: Storymapping with Troy, Fawn, and Gina. PM: Fieldwork at Osborn Preserve with Claudia Luke and Suzanne DeCoursey. Includes “reading the landscape” with teacher-artist Catherine Sky. SSU and Osborn are located on the traditional homelands of the indigenous peoples collectively known as Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo. See the Fieldwork page for more about our excursions.

Sunday, June 18th [Optional]– Benziger Family Winery sustainable and innovative farming tour in Glenn Ellen. Benziger is adjacent to the Jack London State Park and Museum. Reading: Greg Saris’s (local author and Chairman of the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria) “Osprey Talks to Me One Day”; history- and environmental science-related excerpts about the history of the water and forests of the Russian River.

Monday, June 19th– AM: Redbud Resource Group’s “Native 101” and the traditional ecological perspective with Trelasa Baratta. Introduction to The Marrow Thieves with a focus on restoration and healing with Sybil Durand and guest scholar, Theresa Burruel Stone. PM: Fieldwork with Claudia Luke and Suzanne DeCoursey: Russian River, Fish Ladder, and Guerneville or “Stump Town”.

Tuesday, June 20th– AM: Seminar on The Marrow Thieves and Youth Participatory Action Research with Sybil Durand. PM: Action plans and Charette protocol with Project Team and Theresa Burruel Stone. Optional Late Programming: Fim, Tending the Wild with an introduction by Trelasa on traditional ecological knowledge in California (TEK).

Wednesday, June 21st– Fieldwork at Point Reyes Field Station and the Hagmaier House with Claudia Luke and Suzanne DeCoursey. Examine evidence of contemporary human impacts on water across the state. PM: Optional Action Planning time.

Thursday, June 22nd– AM: Fieldwork, California Academy of Sciences and soundscaping at the Wave Organ. Late PM: Seminar with author Stefan Kiesbye on writing about the ‘everyday’ aspects of climate change. Reception and reading from Fire & Water, “Smokeland.”

Friday, June 23rd– AM: Writing workshop with author Stefan Kiesbye and Action Plans. PM: Fieldwork at the Armstrong Redwoods with Claudia Luke and Suzanne DeCoursey, wrapping up our exploration of the future of water in our region with a visit to an area where water and fire meet. We end with a Literacy Unbound finale at the Redwood Forest Amphitheater, including an excerpt from the YA novel, The Last Cuentista.

Saturday, June 24th– Check Out.

Post-Institute (4 meetings, online): Late Summer and Fall (TBD)

GO DEEPER: LINK TO SCHEDULE