Last March, when the pandemic hit, I began this blog for my FYSM 1004 course. At the time, none of us were certain what was going to follow, how classes would continue, and how we would complete an in-person course online. It was a scramble with lots of improvisation and experiments and things that didn’t work. This blog was one of those things that didn’t work. As you’ll see, there are only four entries. And so why revive it now?
We’re now eight months into the pandemic, and by most accounts, entering the toughest period yet. Our course, unlike last year’s version, began as an online course; it’s still experimental and cobbled together in lots of ways but at least it’s not the product of a massive change from one day to the next. As I mentioned in my most recent podcast, large social changes come with new vocabularies and the pandemic is no exception. Words and phrases like “social distancing,” “masks,” “bubbles,” and “the new normal” have entered into our daily conversation. And the phrase that was prominent when I began this blog—“sheltering in place”—has now largely been replaced by “lockdown.” While I haven’t changed the name of this blog, I have been thinking about what this next period will bring and how many of us will again experience lockdowns of one version or another.
We’ve discussed in class how, when a new word enters our vocabulary, we begin to see it everywhere. We’ve also discussed, thanks to Mary’s prompting, the value of holding spaces without words or labels. In my Introduction to this blog’s first iteration, I focused on the tension between shelter as a word suggesting comfort and protection and shelter as word—when used in the context of “sheltering in place”—suggesting threat and potential violence. As our pandemic words have proliferated, they’ve begun to shape and define our lives in new ways. Sometimes they’ve taken attention away from other issues that still matter. Climate change, for example. And sometimes they’ve offered new angles on issues that command our attention. Again, climate change comes to mind.
The climate crisis is as urgent as it ever was. Early on in the pandemic, someone sent me this tweet: “Imagine if the media reported on the climate crisis like it does on the coronavirus. Headline news every day, constantly releasing an updated death toll, analyzing whether world leaders are doing enough, most importantly, making public believe this is something to take seriously.” This sort of attention, of course, is precisely what the climate crisis needs: news media dedicated to the climate crisis; emergency funding available for green technologies and renewables; mental health facilities to address climate grief and related syndromes; a shared recognition of how closely bound climate change is to social and economic inequality; a shared recognition of how climate change has a disproportionately devastating impact on BIPOC communities; world leaders brought to account for their response to the climate crisis both locally and globally; and so on. Climate change, in these contexts, would be part of a collective conversation in which we all participate and in which we are all aware of the stakes. An immediate crisis will often displace another crisis (or crises) that seems distant or less urgent. But one of the goals of this course is to think about all of these crises together—to notice their interconnections—and to use cultural works as prompts for that thinking. (I can’t resist adding that another goal is to think about words like the words I’ve just used here. Is “crisis” the best word for what I want to say, for example? How does it work? Are there other words that would work better? Just over a year ago The Guardian newspaper decided to replace the phrase climate change with the phrase climate crisis. This decision reflected their view that words make a difference. I agree. It was a call to attention. It asked us to notice not a change but a crisis—or rather, to notice a change as a crisis. But it is also a reminder to think about the words we use and to ask about their effectiveness.)
As we enter the cooler weather—snow is on the forecast for this week—I thought I’d try this blog form again as another forum for our class. I’d like to use it as a place where we think about climate change together. The one good thing about sudden changes is that things get stirred up. The university is no exception. My modes of teaching have changed in almost every way in response to the pandemic. And so, I thought, why not also experiment with new ways of working with the course material? Going forward, I’m not sure what form this blog will take. But just as new words emerge to describe existing conditions, I thought I’d proliferate the forms this course can take.
Comments