Call for Proposals: An Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators, an edited collection |
DEADLINE MARCH 1, 2021. Please complete this survey as your submission.
This book project seeks submissions that address the following question: "how can educators, activists, and community leaders help students navigate the emotional aspects of ecological degradation and social injustice in the age of climate disruption (including pandemics)?" In response to educators' requests for more resources to help their students (and colleagues) manage the emotional register of teaching about climate change and climate justice across a variety of disciplines, this book will provide a toolkit of college-level teaching strategies addressing the affective dimensions of climate change that can be applicable across disciplines, as well as in non-academic or co-curricular settings.
We encourage proposals from diverse fields and professions (educators, scholars, community activists, educational staff [library, counseling, student life], artists, game designers, filmmakers and beyond), as well as students, about how they integrate emotion into climate justice programming and teaching. Proposals can take the form of a discrete module, assignment, or worksheet, a pedagogical essay, or personal testimony.
We envision an accessible, easy-to-use format, which can be a resource for moments before a class begins, as well as for a deeper dive into transforming educational strategies. We propose a “cookbook” style format, a variety of sections, including testimonies, theoretical pieces, assignment ideas (“recipes”), and larger instructional combinations (“menus”). The book seeks to be illustrative of the ideas and tools educators might need to better equip their students for a climate-changed future. We are also interested in student testimonies that share journeys or moments of empowerment, transformation, or emotional growth in the context of higher education.
Written proposals should be no more than 350 words, not including footnotes.
BACKGROUND
Co-editors Jennifer Atkinson and Sarah Jaquette Ray organized a workshop in July 2020 through the Rachel Carson Center, “An Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.” This book project extends that conversation and responds to the clear demand for more teaching tools. As was discussed in July, feelings of environmental grief, nihilism, eco-depression, and climate anxiety are becoming more common within the Climate Generation (current college-aged people). Meanwhile, educators across disciplines often lack the knowledge and resources to help those students deal with these feelings. Further, many educators persist in communicating the scale and urgency of our unfolding crisis without addressing its impact on students’ ability to learn, much less address and adapt to climate change. And they often don't adequately address the intersections of racial justice, privilege, trauma, colonialism, and power in climate change and its solutions. Exemplified by the COVID pandemic and recent movements for racial justice, our challenge today is to ensure that students don't just have the analyses and content they need to address the climate crisis, but that they also have the existential tenacity to stay engaged in climate justice for the long haul.
This book project seeks to stage a conversation between activist traditions, environmental humanists and psychologists, ESS educators, students, and contributors from any other discipline engaged in difficult issues like biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental injustice. We are asking contributors to share new pedagogical tools/strategies, resources and practices for an interdisciplinary toolkit for effective teaching in the age of climate disruption. As we explore ways to support students grappling with the emotional fallout of the Anthropocene, what emotional, spiritual, psychological, and existential skills are needed to take up the
We encourage proposals from diverse fields and professions (educators, scholars, community activists, educational staff [library, counseling, student life], artists, game designers, filmmakers and beyond), as well as students, about how they integrate emotion into climate justice programming and teaching. Proposals can take the form of a discrete module, assignment, or worksheet, a pedagogical essay, or personal testimony.
We envision an accessible, easy-to-use format, which can be a resource for moments before a class begins, as well as for a deeper dive into transforming educational strategies. We propose a “cookbook” style format, a variety of sections, including testimonies, theoretical pieces, assignment ideas (“recipes”), and larger instructional combinations (“menus”). The book seeks to be illustrative of the ideas and tools educators might need to better equip their students for a climate-changed future. We are also interested in student testimonies that share journeys or moments of empowerment, transformation, or emotional growth in the context of higher education.
Written proposals should be no more than 350 words, not including footnotes.
BACKGROUND
Co-editors Jennifer Atkinson and Sarah Jaquette Ray organized a workshop in July 2020 through the Rachel Carson Center, “An Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.” This book project extends that conversation and responds to the clear demand for more teaching tools. As was discussed in July, feelings of environmental grief, nihilism, eco-depression, and climate anxiety are becoming more common within the Climate Generation (current college-aged people). Meanwhile, educators across disciplines often lack the knowledge and resources to help those students deal with these feelings. Further, many educators persist in communicating the scale and urgency of our unfolding crisis without addressing its impact on students’ ability to learn, much less address and adapt to climate change. And they often don't adequately address the intersections of racial justice, privilege, trauma, colonialism, and power in climate change and its solutions. Exemplified by the COVID pandemic and recent movements for racial justice, our challenge today is to ensure that students don't just have the analyses and content they need to address the climate crisis, but that they also have the existential tenacity to stay engaged in climate justice for the long haul.
This book project seeks to stage a conversation between activist traditions, environmental humanists and psychologists, ESS educators, students, and contributors from any other discipline engaged in difficult issues like biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental injustice. We are asking contributors to share new pedagogical tools/strategies, resources and practices for an interdisciplinary toolkit for effective teaching in the age of climate disruption. As we explore ways to support students grappling with the emotional fallout of the Anthropocene, what emotional, spiritual, psychological, and existential skills are needed to take up the