ENGL 103 A17: Case Studies in Research: Climate Futurisms

C. Scott

This ENGL 103 section, “Climate Futurisms,” is invested in thinking about human society and culture in relation to climate changes as environmental stressors become exacerbated in near-future settings—and then mapping these issues as seen through speculative fictions about the future offered to us by Indigenous writers (and other artistic creators and knowledge keepers). These scenarios are necessarily seen through both the lens of fiction as we examine how authors speculate the future, but also through the lenses of scientific, cultural, and other contributions from the present day that inflect the storyworlds of the impacted characters. What is lost, gained, or altered for human populations as the world that we know adapts or fails to adapt to elements like climate change, resource scarcity, ecological unknowns, pandemics, and/or evolution, etc.?
Specifically in connection with works by Indigenous writers, we will also consider the past and the present, as well as our interaction with those understandings of the world. That is, the concept of such speculated “futures” is necessarily complicated by the various histories, traumas, achievements, and experiences of Indigenous peoples not only as they (re-)encounter both hereditary culture and settler-colonial processes arising from the past and present, but also as the related narratives are delivered through a variety of modes, temporalities, and mediums. In part, some of these imaginings about the future are disturbing and, even, dystopian, but we will also necessarily consider what Grace L. Dillon has coined “Indigenous Futurisms”—a term suggesting the imperative and opportunity of forward, generative, and healing cultural movement as conceived by Indigenous creators.