Middlebury

ENVS1035A-W20

The Politics of Hope

The Politics of Hope
We are frequently told we must “never give up hope.” But what is at stake in hoping? In this course we will interrogate this ubiquitous injunction to hope. We will analyze contemporary debates about the possibility of hope in the face of uncertain planetary futures to consider the affective politics of how, in what ways, toward what ends, and why we hope. At what point does hope become misplaced, turning into a “cruel optimism”? How is hope mobilized politically? How are different futurities distributed among different groups? And what might happen if we let go of commonly-held yet narrowly-conceived hopes and tried imagining something different? this course counts as a social science cognate for environmental studies majors.
Course Reference Number (CRN):
11543
Subject Code:
ENVS
Course Number:
1035
Section Identifier:
A

Course

ENVS 1035

All Sections in Winter 2020

Winter 2020

ENVS1035A-W20 Lecture (Suarez)