Earth Matters: Soil, Society and the Humanities
| Module title | Earth Matters: Soil, Society and the Humanities |
|---|---|
| Module code | HIC2037 |
| Academic year | 2024/5 |
| Credits | 15 |
| Module staff | Dr Jim Scown (Lecturer) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 10 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 16 |
|---|
Module description
How does soil nourish you? How do you nourish soil? This module asks you to examine our past and future relationships with the earth beneath your feet. In a combination of fieldtrips, lectures and collaborative seminars, you will learn about the entwined and often violent histories of landscapes, cultures, and ideas of the soil from 1800 to the present, in both local and global contexts. You will explore links between soils and past and present ideas of agriculture, environment, race and nation. And, through decolonial practice and philosophies of care, you will be invited to consider how to cultivate just futures for soils and all the beings, human and more-than-human, that shape and depend on them.
Module aims - intentions of the module
This module introduces you to soils, along with a range of societal and environmental issues that relate to the ways they are valued and cared for, through approaches from the environmental humanities, history, and literary ecocriticism. You will also engage with insights from scientists, farmers and decolonial thinkers and gain experience working across disciplines on complex, societal challenges. Together we will explore the environmental and imperial histories of soils in the context of our present emergencies and the urgent project of cultivating just futures.
The module addresses the following questions:
- What is soil? How do soils shape the world around us and how do we shape them?
- In what ways does a focus on soils and the earth transform our understanding of the pasts and futures of environmental breakdown, agriculture, and imperialism?
- How can we think and work with soils to imagine and cultivate just and sustainable futures? What might this look like?
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. Demonstrate a keen awareness of the ways soils emerge from entwined social and ecological histories, and how ideas of the soil and soils themselves arise together across time.
- 2. Express a broad understanding of the links between histories of violence, extraction and imperialism and present emergencies such as climate breakdown, environmental degradation, and racism as they play out through soils.
- 3. Engage with and apply a range of theoretical and practical approaches in the contexts of cultivating just futures.
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 4. Draw links between long histories of environmental degradation, imperialism and extraction and assess their complex and contested genealogies.
- 5. Respond critically and creatively to the interdisciplinary study of environment, race, and imperialism.
- 6. Deploy the study of the past in strategically presentist ways to deepen our understanding of ecological and social emergencies today.
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 7. Construct and present a clear and compelling argument and respond confidently to questions from an informed audience.
- 8. Synthesise, and critically and empathetically handle, diverse source materials, including academic sources and from locations and individuals outside of the university.
- 9. Apply interdisciplinary research skills to complex, global challenges.
Syllabus plan
Whilst the content may vary from year to year, topics may include some or all of the following:
- The relationships between soils, cultivation and culture
- How to think with soils and radical ecologies
- Plantation ecologies
- Histories of soil cultivation and race
- Settler and indigenous soil knowledges
- Decolonisation and philosophies of care
- Empire and ideas of ‘improvement’
- Agricultural revolutions
- Belonging and nationalism
- Soils and health
- Queer soils
- Soils in science, art, and literature
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 28 | 122 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 10 | 10 x 1-hour thematic lectures. These provide a spine through which all students can be brought to a similar level of knowledge and through which ideas and debates can be transmitted. |
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 10 | 10 x 1-hour seminars. These will focus on particular aspects of the subject-matter, with a view to offering a more in-depth exploration and discussion than can be achieved in the lecture. Students will be expected to prepare fully for the seminar through independent study, reading, evaluation, and reflection, and to contribute their own thoughts on and interpretations of seminar material to the group. |
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 8 | 2x half-day (4-hour) field trips. These will help students develop a more practical understanding and appreciation of the issues examined in lectures and seminars. |
| Guided independent study | 122 | Private study for lectures and seminars. Preparation for formative assessment and coursework, including a significant amount of time on individual research reading, planning, and completing choice of summative assessments. |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan for summative assessment portfolio, explaining proposed project and rationale for choice of modes of assessment. | To be delivered orally in the seminar c. 10 minutes (approx. 1,000 words) | 1-9 | Oral and written |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio of work. Students choose TWO from the following: *Short creative written piece (poetry or prose), responding to a particular set of module themes, plus academic reflection *Poster presentation (to be presented in week 11), followed by short Q&A *Bibliographical review of soils in environmental humanities research *Blog, creative film, or podcast-style interview with/responding to a soil thinker and/or practitioner, plus academic reflection *Critical essay, responding to a particular set of module themes Students may work independently or in small groups (to be discussed with module tutor). | 100 | 2,750 words, weighted according to assessment as below: Creative prose: approx. 750 words Poetry: approx. 50 lines Academic reflection: 350 words 10-minute presentation, followed by short (3-4 minute) Q&A. 1350 words Blog: 750-1000 words Creative film: 1-2 mins Interview: 3 minutes Academic reflection: 350 words 1350 words | 1-9 | Oral and written |
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 | ||||
| 0 |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio | Portfolio (2,750 words) | 1-9 | Referral/Deferral Period |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken because of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
Clark, Nigel, and Myra J. Hird, ‘Deep Shit’, O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies, vol. 1 (2013), pp. 44-52.
Krzywoszynska, Anna, and Greta Marchesi, eds, ‘Conceiving Soils and Humans in the Anthropocene’, Environmental Humanities, vol. 12, no. 1 (2020), pp. 190-287.
Latour, Bruno, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (Polity, 2018).
Lyons, Kristina M., Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke University Press, 2020).
McNeill, John Robert, ‘The Lithosphere and Pedosphere: The Crust of the Earth’, in Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 22-49.
Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds, (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
Puig De La Bellacasa, Maria, 'Embracing Breakdown: Soil Ecopoethics and the Ambivalences of Remediation', in Reactivating Elements, ed. by Dimitris Papadopoulos, María Puig de la Bellacasa, and Natasha Myers (Duke University Press, 2022), pp. 196–230.
Salazar, Juan Francisco, et al., eds, Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).
Shiva, Vandana, Soil, Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity (Zed Books, 2016).
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, et al., eds, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
| Credit value | 15 |
|---|---|
| NQF level (module) | 4 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Origin date | 12/01/2024 |
| Last revision date | 14/03/2024 |
