Introductory Readings

•  How to Read Like a Writer by Mike Bunn
• The Trouble with Wilderness by William Cronon
• Where is the fiction about climate change? by Amitav Ghosh
  • Suggested – The Great Derangement: The Crisis of Imagination in the Era of Climate Change by Amitav Ghosh

Environmental Narratives Through Time

• The Climate of History: Four Theses by Dipesh Chakrabarty
• Environmentalism (1950s to 2000s) by Neil Stevens Fork
  • Suggested – Canadians and the natural environment to the twenty-first century by Neil Stevens Fork
• The Founding of Greenpeace: Bill Darnell shares the story by SEE Change Magazine
• News clipping: “Two different visions of the world” by Mike Nickerson
• News clipping: “Greenhouse effect scary, scientist says” by Jack Millar
•  Polar Bears and Energy-Efficient Lightbulbs: Strategies to Bring Climate Change Home by Rachel Slocum
• “The cultural politics of climate branding… the socialisation of the everyday sustainable consumption practices of citizens-consumers” by Julie Doyle et al.
• Documentary: Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes et al.
• Clippings: An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore
  • Suggested – An Inconvenient Truth: Truth To Power by Al Gore
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communication by Matthew Nisbet
  • Suggested – China, India, Germany

Critical Target Audiences

• Toward Intersectional Ecofeminist Communication Studies by Nori Ross Singer
• A growing force in the climate movement: Moms by Somini Sengupta   
• The Six Americas Project by Yale Climate Communication
• Eco-Types: Five Ways of Caring about the Environment by Emily Huddard Kennedy 
• How youth use scientific argumentation in civic participation on climate change by Lynne Zumo et al.
•  “Not a Big Climate Change Guy: Semiotic Gradients and Climate Discourse” by Paul C. Adams
• The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality  by Farhana Sultana
• Indigenous Resistance Lifts the Veil of Colonial Amnesia by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Communication Frameworks

• The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers by Robert Gifford
• This is Marketing by Seth Godin
• Entering Climate Change Communications Through the Side Door by Ezra Markowitz & Julie Sweetland
• Communicating climate change: Focus on the framing, not just the facts by Rose Hendricks
  • Suggested – Past-focused environmental comparisons promote proenvironmental outcomes for conservatives by Matthew Baldwin & Joris Lammers
• Video: Climate change and humour in a humanitarian context by Pablo Suarez
• Internet Memes, Media Frames, and the Conflicting Logics of Climate Change Discourse by Andrew Ross & Damian
• Laughter is the ultimate unifier. Can it work for climate action? by Claire Elise Thompson
• Seven principles for visual climate change communication by Climate Visuals
  • Suggested – Photo report: The air we breathe by Climate Visuals
• Visualizing Climate Change by Stephen Sheppard
• 10 points for Decolonial Futures by Musagetes
• Video: Memory, Explained by Vox + Netflix
• TED Talk: How (not) to tell a story  by Lam Thuy Vo

Writing Craft

• The 6 Emotional Arcs of Storytelling by No Film School
• Podcast: Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
• Video: 12 Ways to Write Better Sentences for Creative Writers by Ellen Brock
• The Role of Language in the Climate Change Debate by Kjersti Flottum
• How a bit of eavesdropping helped me write An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• Blog: Wired For Story by Lisa Cron
• Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller & Suzanna Miller
• Bird by Bird by Annie Dillard

Grappling With Hope

• Coming of Age At The End of Our World  by Daniel Sherrell
• Framing an Ecology of Hope by Graeme Wynn
• Video: What do you do when there is no hope? by Bayo Akomolafe & Toni Spencer
• Podcast: Living at the End of Our World by Know Your Enemy
• Unsettling truths: modernity, (de-)coloniality and Indigenous futures by Yin Paradies

You can find more content in our shared class resource list here.