Arts, Aesthetics and Existential Resilience

<p>Existential resilience is about our wired-in ability to create and experience meaning, beauty and connection also in times of crisis and hardship. The course will give you theoretical understanding and practical skills relating to how arts and aesthetics can be a source of existential resilience.</p><p>The course is interdisciplinary and research-based, combining perspectives from the humanities with findings from medical and sustainability research. The course covers topics such as aesthetic empathy, presence, meaning, and imagination, as well as how existential resilience relates to the individual, community, and planetary levels of human life. You will discuss different paths to knowledge about art and aesthetics in relation to existential resilience, including empirical observations, philosophical approaches, introspection, and embodied experience. You will learn how creative and aesthetic experiences can be facilitated and communicated in different contexts to promote existential resilience.</p>