PHIL/ES 308: Environmental Aesthetics

DRAFT: Subject to Change

Wellesley College, Fall 2023

The world around us is rich with aesthetic qualities. It is beautiful, awesome, enchanting, and sublime. Places have moods, vibes, atmospheres, and ambiances. How can we think rigorously and systematically about the aesthetics of the natural and built environment? What role, if any, should aesthetics play in environmentalism, environmental policy, and our relationship with the world we live in? This course will focus on contemporary philosophical work that seeks to answer these questions. Themes may include the place of science, imagination, history, and culture in aesthetic judgment, the role of aesthetics in conservation, and the relationship between aesthetics and climate change.

Readings:

1. Intro

2.  Getting Aesthetic Life in Focus 1

• Dominic McIver Lopes, Bence Nanay, and Nick Riggle, Aesthetic Life and Why it Matters, Chps. 1 and 2

  • Interviews with Nanay and Riggle at Polite Conversations

3. Getting Aesthetic Life in Focus 2

• Dominic McIver Lopes, Bence Nanay, and Nick Riggle, Aesthetic Life and Why it Matters, Chp. 3

  • Interview with Lopes at Polite Conversations

• Qull Kukla, "Knowing Things and Going Places"

Further Reading:

• • Sherri Irvin, "The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience"

4. Scientific Cognitivism and its Critics

• Allen Carlson, "Appreciation and the Natural Environment"

• Patricia Matthew, "Scientific Knowledge and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature"

• Marcia Muelder Eaton, "Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature"

5. The Awesome and the Sublime

• Sandra Shapshay, "A Two-Tiered Theory of the Sublime"

• Taylor Stone, "Re-envisioning the Nocturnal Sublime: On the Ethics and Aesthetics of Nighttime Lighting"

Further Reading:

• • Katie McShane, "The Role of Awe in Environmental Ethics"

  • Helen de Cruz, "The Necessity of Awe"

6. The Ugly, the Damaged, and the Disorienting

• María José Alcaraz León, "On the Aesthetic Appreciation of Damaged Environments"

• Emily Brady, "The Ugly Truth: Negative Aesthetics and Environment"

• Marcello Di Paola and Serena Ciccarelli, "The Disorienting Aesthetics of Mashed-Up Anthropocene Environments"

Further Reading:

• • Yuriko Saito, "The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature"

  • Emily Brady, "Global Climate Change and Aesthetics"

7. Character, Mood, Ambience, Atmosphere

• Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 103-129

• Angelika Krebs, "Stimmung: From Mood to Atmosphere"

• Emily Brady, "Aesthetic Character and Aesthetic Integrity in Environmental Conservation"

Further Reading:

• Wangheng Chen, "Beauty and the Urban Environment" from Chinese Environmental Aesthetics

8. Mediated Experience of the Environment

• Glen Parsons, "Appreciating Nature Through Film"

• Nicholas Whittaker, "Filming Nature"

• Tea Lobo, "Selfie and World: On Instagrammable Places and Technologies for Capturing Them"

Further Reading: 

• Christoph Bareither, "Difficult heritage and digital media: ‘selfie culture’ and emotional practices at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe"

9. Movement, Agency, and the Built Environment 1

• Jenefer Robinson, "On Being Moved by Architecture"

• Thi Nguyen, "The Arts of Action"

• Jonathan Maskit, "Urban Mobility—Urban Discovery: A Phenomenological Aesthetics for Urban Environments"

Further Reading: 

• • David Gissen, "Of a Weaker Nature: Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity," in The Architecture of Disability

10. Movement, Agency, and the Built Environment 2

• Quill Kukla, "Inhabiting Space" in City Living

• David Gissen, "The Urbanization of Disability" in The Architecture of Disability

Further Reading:

• • Thi Nguyen, "The Aesthetic Homogenization of Cities"

11. Further Case Studies (pick one or two)

• Elizabeth Scarbrough, "The Cape Romano Dome Home: Urban Exploration and the Aesthetic Allure of Abandoned Places"

• "Thermal Delight" at 99% Invisible 

• David Gissen, "Dankness" from Subnature: Architecture's Other Environments

• Ted Gracyk, "The Mississippi River in the Land of 10,000 Lakes" at Aesthetics for Birds

• Arnold Berleant, "The Critical Aesthetics of Disney World"

• More options coming...

12. Peer Editing Workshop 1

13. Peer Editing Workshop 2