U.S. colleges are developing ‘cli-fi’ curricula

By Dan Bloom

Danny Bloom
Danny Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — One of my mentors in the world of sci-fi literature is the famous SF novelist David Brin, who I first met a few years ago here at San Diego Jewish World (and who is the son of Herb Brin, the late publisher of the Jewish Heritage newspapers of  Southern California).

I once asked him about how climate change themes have been influencing sci-fi novels and movies, and he told me: “Global warming and flooding were important in my 1989 novel Earth but they were earlier in the film Soylent Green based on Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room, Make room!‘”

Well, Brin and others leading the way, sci-fi isn’t going away from the literary scene by any means, but there’s a new kid on the block, and more and more colleges are offering classes on the rising new genre of “cli-fi.” Academia is waking up to the trials and tribulations of ‘cli-fi,’ and it’s a trend worth watching.

This spring semester five colleges nationwide have cli-fi literature classes on tap, with both undergrad and graduate level courses involved. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This year, 2015, is shaping up to be the Year of Cli-Fi in academia, and not just in North America, but in Britain and Australia as well.

With such publications as the New York Times (”College Classes Use Art to Brace for Climate Change”) and Time magazine reporting on the new genre in 2014, and with an Associated Press wire story going nationwide to 1,500 newspapers in December as well,  several universities and colleges in the United States have taken up the call and are part of a telling new trend in higher education.

The Chronicle of Higher Education newspaper in Washington, D.C., which covers American academic issues in a variety of subject areas, has assigned a staff reporter to look into the rise of cli fi in the academy as well, according to sources.

Joining professors at Temple University in Philadelphia in the east and the University of Oregon out west, three other colleges are offering cli-fi courses this semester: Holyoke Community College in western Masschusetts, the University of Delaware and the State University of New York in Geneseo (SUNY Geneseo).

There is, of course, a long and storied history of teaching sci-fi at colleges across the country, with several universities even setting up literature departments that specialize in sci-fi research, writing and novels. Now cli-fi is joining the academic world and finding a room of its own there as well.

Elizabeth Trobaugh and Steve Winters at Holyoke Community College are team-teaching a climate-themed literature class this semester titled “Cli Fi: Stories and Science from the Coming Climate Apocalypse.”

When I told Trobaugh that I planned to write a news story about her course, she replied: “Thank you for your interest in what we are doing this semester. Professor Winters and I thought we were onto something, and your email confirms our conviction that cli-fi is indeed on the rise, and this is the moment (as Macklemore says in the song) to catch the wave.”

Stephen Siperstein, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon in Eugene who was profiled in the New York Times article last April, is also teaching a cli-fi literature class this semester, with his undergrad students posting weekly class blogs about what they are reading and how they are reacting to the new genre of fiction.

At Temple Universtiy, Ted Howell, also a doctoral student, is teaching an undergraduate class titled “Cli-fi: Science Fiction, Climate Change, and Apocalypse” with about 30 students enrolled. They are also keeping weekly blogs about the course, using them to interact online outside of class with their professor and fellow students.

“The first two texts we read this semester, The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, were written way before ‘climate change’ as we understand it was a real concern, but part of what I’m doing by assigning them is investigating what it means to talk about ‘climate change’ in books written in an earlier era,” Howell said in an email.

At SUNY Geneseo in upstate new York, Professor Ken Cooper is teaching a class this semester titled “Reader and Text: Cli-Fi”.

“We will begin by analyzing some print and electronic texts from the emergent genre of ”cli-fi”: renditions of the present and future inflected by anthropogenic climate change,” Cooper told his students by way of introduction. ”Representative works may include Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Cuaron’s Children of Men, and the Cape Farewell/ADRIFT project. There will be at least one zombie apocalypse.”

Professor Siohban Carroll at the University of Delaware is a specialist in 19th century British literature, and told me in a recent Tweet: “I’m sort of teaching a 19th Century ‘cli-fi’ class right now at the graduate level. This week: Mary Shelley and the Anthropocene.”

*
Bloom, based in Taiwan, is an inveterate web surfer and cli-fi enthusiast.  Your signed comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com

2 thoughts on “U.S. colleges are developing ‘cli-fi’ curricula”

  1. Dan, fascinating article. I’ve been “under the weather” lately and therefore way behind on reading my emails so this article was an appropriate pick me up. The courses and schools you mentioned show an appreciated acknowledgement by the academic science fiction as literature community to the reality of climate change. By the way, do you remember the writer Andre Norton? I started reading the novels when in junior high and read every book published by her. Didn’t realize till college the writer was a woman.

  2. Yea. Clifi as in science fiction which where climate change belongs, because that is all it is. There have been articles on all the fudged data used to prove climate change, but nothing on this has made it to the popular press. There is money to be made for those who get funded to pursue the study.

Comments are closed.