ASIAN 2257 - [Vanishing World: Religious Reflections on the Climate Crisis, Mass Extinction and Ecosystem Collapse]

(crosslisted) RELST 2257
(ETM-AS) (KCM-AG)

Fall. Not offered: 2024-2025. Next offered: 2025-2026. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

J.M. Law.

We are living in a period of mass extinctions of animals, insects, plants and mega-flora (trees) and widescale climate disruption. Our paradigms for making sense of what is being called “the great unraveling” are inadequate. In this course, we explore how various religious traditions have regarded the possible sentience of the non-human world and how discourses of apocalypse, cycles of dissolution and renewal, and stewardship, conservation and interdependence shape the ways religious people are responding to this emerging reality of unraveling ecosystems. We examine how protest movements have incorporated religious symbolism and actions. The goal of this course is to explore the ways that people relate to these realities at the level of what it means to be a human being in this moment. How are religious traditions responding to these emerging crises? How do traditions draw on existing paradigms and in what ways do religious communities address the dissonance when existing systems of understanding fail to account for the current realities? How do religious traditions offer moral imperatives for addressing these issues?