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Writing the Climate - CED00222C

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  • Department: Centre for Lifelong Learning
  • Credit value: 10 credits
  • Credit level: C
  • Academic year of delivery: 2023-24
    • See module specification for other years: 2022-23

Module summary

Climate change has prompted an extraordinary number of literary responses, including the fictions of Octavia Butler, Richard Powers and Amitav Ghosh, the commentaries and journalism of Bill McKibben, Amy Westervelt and George Monbiot, and the work of activists such as Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate. This module will explore these responses, considering how writers have represented climate change, its causes and possible futures, how they have related it to other social justice issues (including racial and gender equality); and what possible solutions they have imagined.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Summer Term 2023-24

Module aims

The modules aims to explore the wide range of writing to have emerged from the climate crisis, from novels, poems and essays to scientific reports, investigative journalism, and political commentary. This module will introduce students to the some of the common arguments and debates about climate change, as well as the ways in which these debates have been framed by some different modes and genres of writing. The module will also examine how different writers, and types of writing, have responded to the evolving nature of the climate crisis, and in particular how some writers have linked climate change to other social, historical and political questions such as race, empire, and gender equality.

Module learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

  • Critically evaluate texts relating to climate change
  • Examine and evaluate some of the common arguments about climate change and the climate crisis
  • Develop and articulate their own arguments about climate change and the climate crisis.
  • Describe and evaluate different styles and genres of climate writing
  • Situate the different styles and genres of climate writing within wider cultural, historical and political debates.

Indicative assessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Module feedback

The tutor will give regular individual verbal and written feedback throughout the module on work submitted.

The assessment feedback is as per the university’s guidelines with regard to timings.

Indicative reading

  • Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
  • Ayana Elizabth Johnson and Katherine Wilkinson eds., All We Can Save (Penguin Ransom House 2020)
  • Richard Power, The Overstory (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018)
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020)
  • Amy Westerveldt, Drilled (Critical Frequencies Media)
  • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (2018)
  • David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (Allen Lane, 2019)


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University constantly explores ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary. In some instances it may be appropriate for the University to notify and consult with affected students about module changes in accordance with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.