About

The class

This is the course website for ES 480: Radical Responses to Climate Catastrophe, an upper-year seminar in the Environmental Studies department at the University of Victoria. Full syllabus here, schedule here.

The content

This class foregrounds perspectives that seek to turn away from—or move beyond—dominant approaches to social and political change like protest, institutional reform, and individual ethics.

While we will explore some critiques of these dominant tendencies, the focus will be on other ways of working together to transform the conditions under which we live. This includes direct action, mutual aid, deep relationships, deschooling, and re-skilling.

We will also be examining the various assumptions, tensions, and resonances between different perspectives. In doing so, we will be seeking to understand the implications for our own lives: what do these responses offer us, individually and collectively, based on our varied values, commitments, and social locations? How might we reflect on what to give up on, what skills to cultivate, where to put our time and energy, and how we might learn to

The structure

We are also questioning what this catastrophe means for a class. Why study or read or write when the world is on fire? And how can learning be more open-ended, creative, collaborative, and meaningful?

The course draws inspiration from ‘ungrading‘ and other attempts to rethink conventional grading and assessment. Students get grades, but they’re based on a holistic assessment of growth, learning, participation, and contributions to the course.

Students are encouraged rethink writing: if you don’t have to write a conventional essay to be graded by an instructor, what would you create, who would you be in dialogue with, and how would you assess your own work?

The instructor

My name is Nick Montgomery I’m a sessional instructor at various universities, including UVic. I’m interested in questions of social and ecological transformation: how can we cultivate regenerative forms of life that depart from the catastrophic status quo? In pursuing these questions, I’ve been influenced by currents of anarchism, permaculture, political ecology, affect theory, feminism, and Indigeneity, among others. In addition to teaching at UVic, I also work on autonomy-oriented affordable housing, climate adaptation, forest gardening, and subsistence projects. I did my MA at UVic in Political Science and CSPT, and my PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University.

Thanks

Unlike academic writing, course design is often unacknowledged, unpaid, and there aren’t as many ways to acknowledge our inspiration and sources. Others have supported and inspired the development of this course, but any errors or oversights are my own.

This course is inspired in particular by Jesse Stommel’s work and courses on ungrading. I am also indebted to my collaboration with Lorelei Hanson at AthabascaU, where we co-designed a different course based on this approach. Thanks also to Gerry Gourlay at UVic’s Division of Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation (LTSI) for her thoughtful comments and suggestions on drafts of the Syllabus and other elements of the course.