Ben Mylius

How do we imagine environmental futures that are neither apocalyptic nor utopian? And how can we present these futures in interesting and tangible ways? This seminar will explore these questions through making. We will work together to design, create, and install a public show about technology and environmental futures. Class members will take on different roles—curators, writers, artists, designers, producers—based on their skills and interests. Seminar meetings will focus on futures methods, exhibition theory, and collaborative planning. Individual conferences will provide opportunities to develop role-specific work and connect individual contributions to the broader exhibition concept. Our topics may include: speculative design methods; curatorial practice; “middle-ground” futures; alternative environmental narratives.

How do we understand humans and their relationship to nature—and how do these understandings shape the ways we design our societies, relate to each other and the natural world, and imagine our world into the future? This lecture course will introduce political theory through environmental questions, focusing on two central themes. First: how does introducing a concern for “the Earth” or “ecology” deepen, and often complicate, our understanding of key political concepts like justice, freedom, democracy, and power? Second: how do the perspectives and methods of political theory relate to those of other disciplines—ecology, climate science, history, anthropology—which approach similar questions in very different ways? We will begin by examining what political theory is and exploring how different understandings of human nature and the natural world have shaped political thinking across traditions. We will then explore how environmental concerns reshape core political questions about governance, collective action, and social change—and how we might imagine and practice political futures within planetary limits.

How do humans respond to existential threats? This seminar will examine psychological and political patterns that emerge during crises—environmental catastrophe, economic collapse, pandemics, and rapid technological change. We will explore how fear shapes desires for certainty, belonging, and control; how communities form through inclusion and exclusion; and how perceived existential threats reshape relationships between individuals, groups, authority, and the broader-than-human world. Drawing on psychology, political theory, and environmental studies, we will consider some of what is known or hypothesized about destructive and constructive individual and collective responses to crises. Some of our topics may include: mortality salience, terror management theory, in-group/out-group dynamics, scapegoating and purification fantasies, imagined histories, the appeal of hierarchy under threat (including toward the natural world), the feedback loops that intensify these patterns, and alternative forms of belonging and solidarity. The course will emphasize collaborative inquiry: we are all trying to understand what humans are capable of in dark times, including recognizing these patterns in ourselves and exploring how we might work with rather than against our shared vulnerability in the present.

What is technology, and how does it shape our relationship with nature—especially amid environmental crisis? These questions might sound abstract, but they are central to how we understand the causes of environmental issues and the kinds of responses we think are possible. Some environmental thinkers see technology as the source of all our ecological and social problems; others see it as the solution to them. In order to evaluate these positions, let alone identify our own, we need to understand what different thinkers mean by technology, how deep down its mediation goes, and why it is so often framed as either the cause of our problems or a silver bullet fix. In this course, we will approach these questions by broadening what counts as technology. We start with familiar examples: things like solar, or artificial intelligence (AI). But then we ask what happens to our thinking as we expand the category. How does our view of “environmental problems” change if we imagine agriculture as a form of technology? Or writing? Or even language itself? Drawing on work from environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and philosophy, we will explore perspectives that see technology as fundamental to human existence, perspectives that see it as alienating or destructive, and perspectives that see it as enabling care and attention. Our goal will be, working together, to understand how different ways of thinking about technology open or foreclose different responses to environmental crisis. Lectures will introduce conceptual frameworks through readings, discussion, and collaborative exercises. Group conferences will provide opportunities for students to examine specific technologies, building practical skills in technological analysis and developing their own perspectives. Some of our topics may include: philosophy of technology; perception and mediation; writing and symbolic thought; AI and computational systems; technologies; Indigenous technological traditions; separation and embeddedness.