No, folks, this is not a “climate change is a myth” course. Rumours of our board members’ defection to the alt-right are, politely put, greatly exaggerated. This course’s intellectual foundation is that anthropogenic climate change (a) possible, (b) happening and (c) one of the most important issues of our day.
That stated, even the most ardent climate denialist can benefit from this course because it is not about the science of climate but the social science of how people think about the interactions between their society’s behaviour and the climate; because the reality is that human beings began thinking their political and moral choices affected our climate long before they ever did.
This course will begin by introducing the climate epoch that just ended, the Holocene, and how this warming episode helped to shape not just the human species but the species with which settled humans evolved, dogs, ungulates and grains, most significantly. It will then look at the interaction among human cultures, economies and migrations in the three most recent pre-industrial climate episodes:
- The Darkening of the Sun (535-750)
- The Fourteenth Century Downturn (1320-1400)
- The Little Ice Age (1550-1700)
We will do this through the lens of literature, history and political economy and feature such diverse sources as Procopius’s Secret History, the Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzifal and the chronicles of the Hernan de Soto’s expedition to discover the Mississippi.
In the final episodes of the course, we will bring this together to inform our analysis of how our contemporary society is responding to the threat of the climate crisis in the shadow of the stillborn COP climate conferences, through works such as Game of Thrones.
Difficulty Level
This course’s lecture content requires no prior specialized knowledge and is based on general knowledge widely available to any high school graduate who keeps up with the news. Students are assumed to have been educated within the traditions of European and Euro-creole societies of the Global North. Students unfamiliar with the basics of European history and literature should alert the instructor prior to the start of the course so that supplemental material and readings can be generated.
Modularity
Each lecture can function as a stand-alone presentation, meaning that students wishing to purchase individual classes, instead the full course will be able to do so.
Format
Each class will last between sixty and one hundred and twenty minutes. Lectures will range for forty to eighty minutes in length with the remaining time set aside for discussion.
Texts
As with previous courses, students are not required to read anything to fully appreciate course contents or understand the lectures. However, students interested in doing background reading or going into greater depth on a particular class’s topic should notify the instructor by the end of the previous class.
We will not be using any academic articles for core course functions, although students may request texts on which articles are based that they can peruse in their own time.
The instructor has written on some of the subjects on which he will be lecturing. Interested students can check out readings on stuartparker.ca:
What if we’re too prepared for the end of the world?
The invention of landscape
Can you secede from reality?
Cost
We have kept our prices frozen at 2020 levels, charging just $150 for the whole thirteen episodes or $12.50 per session.
Course Schedule
We will convene via Zoom at 8pm Pacific, 7pm Mountain, 5pm Eastern and 12 noon Greenwich.
| Date | Lecture |
| November 6th | Course introduction and climate history |
| November 11th | The Darkening of the Sun as geo-political event |
| November 13th | Gregory of Tours, Procopius, Justinian, Gregory the Great and Augustine of Canterbury |
| November 18th | From Bede to Mallory: the Darkening of the Sun in literature |
| November 20th | The fourteenth-century downturn, wool and plague |
| November 25th | 1321 and the birth of the modern conspiracy theory |
| November 27th | The virgin soil epidemics and the first anthropogenic climate event |
| December 2nd | The Little Ice Age and the politics of imperial conspiracy |
| December 4th | Science and faith-based skepticism: Svante Arrhenius versus Joseph Rockefeller |
| December 9th | Velikovsky, Nibley and the neo-catastrophists |
| December 11th | 1990, climate apocalypticism and its mythological origins |
| December 16th | Climate denial and the rise of the literary reverse-oracle |
| December 18th | Course conclusion |
Due to technical issues we are working hard to resolve, if you would like to register using Visa or Mastercard, you need to navigate to our JotForm/Stripe credit card donation page, on JotForm. To do so, you must copy and paste the following text into your browser (minus the quotation marks):
“https://form.jotform.com/233492506173557”
or use this QR code:
Alternatively, you can pay your tuition via Interac or Paypal to donate@losaltos.ca and then notify the instructor at stuart@losaltos.ca of the course you have registered for and the classes you wish to attend.
