English: Early Climate Fiction

Education facts

Code: ENGC20

<p>Please note that Swedish is not a requirement to take this course.</p><p>In this course, we will read a variety of texts in terms of how these works depict and theorize the environment, and we will examine concepts such as "environment", "apocalypse", "climate", and "environmentalism" in terms of how they are imagined, shaped, and created by specific cultural contexts. As an academic practice and a theoretical model, ecocriticism first manifested itself in 1990s era studies of eigtheenth and nineteenth-century literature and culture in English. Environmentalism, as a social movement, is a product of the 1960s and was sparked in the United States by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. In the twenty-first century, ecocriticism has developed into a burgeoning field at many universities around the world. In this course, we will study early climate fiction in English, seeking to redefine the genre not as an innovation of the late twentieth century but rather a continuation of the earlier impulses in science fiction that began in the late 1800s. We will cover well-known authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. G. Wells and less well-known ones such as Clare Winger Harris and Thea von Harbou.</p>

Entry requirements

Admission to the course requires at least 30 credits (högskolepoäng) in completed first-cycle courses in the subject English.

Education offerings

Each offering has its own dates and conditions. Closed offerings are retained as history and do not mean that a new application is open.

• English: Early Climate Fiction

  Lund University

  Start date: 23 March 2026

  End date: 7 June 2026

  Pace of study: 50 %