Environmental Art: Research through Art/Art through Research
HIST 297
Fall 2025
| Section:
01
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| This course may be repeated for credit. |
| Crosslisting:
CSPL 297, ENVS 296, STS 297 |
How can communities understand the conditions wrought by fossil fuel infrastructure and anthropogenic climate change? How should they confront environmental crisis and imagine ecological futures? What can we know about our environment, and what eludes us? Co-taught with visiting artist-composer Ari Benjamin Meyers, this class is a practical experiment in "Research through Art," and "Art through Research" (Dombois, 2009) focusing on the site of coal and oil-fired power plant shuttered amid heavy flooding during Hurricane Sandy. The landscapes of Manresa Island (South Norwalk, CT) include an abandoned turbine hall, a birch forest on a coal ash dump, and an array of wetland and coastal habitats. Participants will use practice-based research methods to develop works of art engaging with the site in its past, present, and future conditions. The course models artistic research methods with reference to a specific site and set of environmental conditions, bringing together students from arts/performance, sciences, humanities, and social sciences to produce site-specific works in a coastal ecosystem transformed by fossil fuel infrastructure. At the heart of this course is a concern with what it means to be uncertain. The sciences provide tools to address problems of uncertainty. Practices of research, within and beyond the sciences, gather varied approaches to not knowing. Artists employ methods drawn from multiple academic disciplines (ethnography, sociology, history, the sciences), media (technoscience, video, audio, installation, multimedia), and sites of research (archive, laboratory, biome, habitat). While artists may engage many of the same practices as academic researchers, their works break the analytic frame. Art may be prescriptive or descriptive, didactic or agnostic, pointed or indeterminate; it may delight, frustrate, provoke, agitate, or inspire. Art may be curious or inquire; it may also make space for the experience of uncertainty. How does uncertainty make us feel? How should we respond? Students across disciplines -- performance, visual arts, music, ecology, biology, geochemistry, history, religion, sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, government, etc. -- are encouraged to submit a statement of interest for permission of instructor (POI). The purpose of the POI is to secure a collaborative balance of students across disciplines, toward the production of environmental art that engages a broad public. This course will require 4-6 scheduled site visits to Manresa Island in South Norwalk, CT, requiring students to leave campus by 12 p.m. Friday and return by 5 p.m. Transportation will be provided. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS HIST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (Environmental Studies Minor)(Environmental Studies)(History Minor)(History) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
| Instructor(s): Fullilove,Courtney Times: .....F. 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: TBA |
Permission of Instructor Required
Enrollment capacity: 15 | Permission of instructor approval will be granted by the instructor during pre-registration through the Electronic Portfolio. Click "Add to My Courses" and "To request a POI electronically, click here" to submit your request. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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