Martin Japtok (Palomar College)
mjap@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel seeks papers from scholars working across the disciplines interested in employing interdisciplinary or otherwise innovative methodologies aimed at facilitating teaching and learning about the Anthropocene at all levels.

Analyzing the Anthropocene, or the “Age of Man,” poses unique challenges for the classroom context. How does one “teach” the Anthropocene? How might we use the lenses of Rob Nixon’s “slow violence” or Christian Parenti’s “catastrophic convergence” to add a critical dimension to current teaching? Can we envision ways to work around administrative and standardizing obstacles – and even transcend that physical and ideological place we call classroom? This is essential, for, as Paulo Freire asserts, “critical consciousness is brought about not through an intellectual effort alone, but through praxis – through the authentic union of action and reflection.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge in the pedagogical context is standardization itself – the normalization of repetition to the point where it renders practices and their related problems invisible. How can a practitioner innovate in an environment in which canon and other elements of curricular content are, essentially, cloned? The answer may be found embedded in this year’s PAMLA conference theme: “Send in the Clowns.” Clowning around creatively and collaboratively can counter both disciplinary divisions and cloned methodologies. Maybe making the problems of cloned systems more visible and less palatable – even to administrators – starts with an otherwise suit-and-tie instructor sporting a proverbial big red nose…and a circus of new ideas.

This panel invites papers from educators, scholars, and visionaries from all disciplines. By exploring the methodological intersection of critical pedagogy, the consumption economy, and post-industrial society, this panel seeks to uncover how we might creatively manifest the Anthropocene into teachable moments. Perhaps by comprehensively considering the Anthropocene in these ways, we may better equip our students with the critical perspectives they will need in the post-Anthropocene world. Related topics this panel might consider in a pedagogical context include: rewilding the world, cultural (r)evolution, technocracy, sustainability, post-humanism, ecopoetics, student-centered learning, citizen students, democracy, globalization, capitalism, geopolitics, sharing economy, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, human exceptionalism, and teaching beyond the test.