Inside the Greenhouse:
Utilizing Media to Communicate Positive Solutions for Climate Change
ENVS 4100-01

Course Description

The objectives for this course are (1) to generate multimodal compositions on the subject of climate change and (2) engage with various dimensions and issues associated with sustainability. We work to deepen our understanding of how issues associated with climate change are/can be communicated, by analyzing previously created expressions from a variety of media (interactive theatre, film, fine art, performance art, television programming, blogs for examples) and then by creating our own work. Throughout the semester, we will appraise and extract effective methods and techniques in ongoing student work and apply them to what will emerge as Inside the Greenhouse (ITG) programming.

The interdisciplinary approach taken up here seeks to capture, value and interrogate the complexity of multi-scale and contemporary climate science, policy and politics as well as the challenges of performance and communication of these issues. Our motivations here spring from an expansive view of climate science and policy in society, where more formal scientific and policy work is part of, rather than separate from, public uptake. Representational practices of various sorts play key roles in interpretation, framing climate change for policy, politics and the public, and drawing attention to how to make sense of the changing world. Mediated portrayals – from television news to live performance – are critical links between people’s everyday realities and experiences, and the ways in which these are discussed at a distance between science, policy and public actors.

The chosen title of the course – Inside the Greenhouse – acknowledges that, to varying degrees, we are all implicated in, part of, and responsible for greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. So in the course we treat this ‘greenhouse’ as a living laboratory, an intentional place for growing new ideas and evaluating possibilities to confront climate change through a range of mitigation and adaptation strategies.      

As a project of Grace and Gordon Gamm funds initiated at the University of Colorado-level, we necessarily harness the tools and perspectives from both the Environmental Studies program, and the Department of Theater and Dance in order to accomplish these goals.