Description:

Wondering how sustainability relates to what you teach or how it relates to the pandemic? It's easy to assume that sustainability is just about reducing our collective environmental footprint and letting the ""experts"" figure out how to do that. While this approach is a foundational component of sustainability, the field is much more comprehensive and visionary. Sustainability explores how human institutions and communities can function without undermining the ecological and social systems on which human life depends. We are seeing dynamic play out in the pandemic right now. The sustainability field's emerging focus on justice as a component of sustainability emphasizes the equal role of healthy social systems in pursuing environmental sustainability. In other words, sustainability addresses the intersection of environmental, social, and economic goals. Seen through this lens, almost all of us have something that we can contribute to improving our students' comprehension about sustainability.

This presentation focuses on the role of arts and humanities in particular. For a specific example, will share ways in which sustainability can be infused into MUSC 102: World Music and Culture. For instance, we will review a unit based on the film Landfill Harmonic where a community makes functioning musical instruments entirely from items found in a local landfill. The instruments created in the film serve as extreme examples of upcycling -- an effort that can support sustainability initiatives -- and there are layers of discussion that can apply to other aspects of sustainability and other subject areas. We will also investigate the field of ecomusicology and profile particular musicians that can be taught in World Music and Culture or in other courses looking to integrate humanities and sustainability. These examples also illuminate the opportunities to creatively and intentionally incorporate multimedia in our courses as a tool for teaching online during a pandemic.

Objectives:

1. Connect their own course material or areas of expertise to the theory of sustainability

2. Identify ways in which they and their students can contribute to sustainability in their own fields and/or communities

3. Incorporate audiovisual materials intentionally into coursework"