We came together through a graduate seminar at the University of British Columbia. This course aims to develop an intersectional, critical approach to the Anthropocene as a proposed geologic epoch but also an integrative lens through which to study contemporary human-environment relations. What is at stake is beyond each of us individually and, therefore, calls for interdisciplinary understanding, new forms of pedagogy, and deep societal mutations. 

This seminar offers tools to ask hard and often neglected questions about who embodies the anthropos and to think carefully, collaboratively, and critically about the concepts and methods of analysis deployed in various disciplinary spheres. Given that the issues facing us in this era of rapid global change are inherently interdisciplinary in nature, we aim to foster collaborative scholarship between students (and faculty) from a variety of scholarly backgrounds. 

Through the joint production of a new digital and public-facing output, we are engaging in the practice of open science. This is aimed at generating the kinds of researcher-practitioners needed to collectively lead society towards sustainable, resilient, and just futures. 

Acknowledgment: UBC’s Point Grey Campus is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. Theland it is situated on has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam people, who for millennia have passed on in their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site.