Abstract
The Anthropocene is the human age. Its undeniable significance has been ascribed across disciplines from geology, to cultural studies, to fine art. Through reflective analysis, this paper explores the role and significance of creative practice, the found object, and the use of object-based adventures in teaching the Anthropocene. It also considers the role of virtual object-based learning in a digital age through a “Gallery of Late Humanity”, through the reflexive lens of a lecturer who teaches both environmental sciences and cultural geography. These methods successfully encouraged learning across and beyond the disciplinary boundaries of geography and fine art, providing creative re-imaginings, visualisations and understandings of the Anthropocene. These approaches illustrate how the quotidian materialities of home can be reconfigured as a field site for the late Anthropocene.
Highlights
An introduction to teaching the AnthropoceneGeologists have described the Anthropocene as the “...appearance and increased abundance of anthropogenic deposits...and biotic turnover” (Lewis and Maslin 2015: 171), providing empirical insight into our human creations and widespread destruction (Waters et al 2014)
When I begin my teaching on Anthropocene culture, regardless of discipline, I start with the declaration that we are all human - but what is “we”? and what even, is “human”? Humans are not alone in the animal kingdom as teachers and learners, and this seems like an interesting place to begin my interdisciplinary object-based teaching exploration
The Anthropocene field day allowed students to engage across the disciplinary boundaries of geography and fine art, which resulted in positive learning experiences for both groups
Summary
Geologists have described the Anthropocene as the “...appearance and increased abundance of anthropogenic deposits...and biotic turnover” (Lewis and Maslin 2015: 171), providing empirical insight into our human creations and widespread destruction (Waters et al 2014). For geology and environmental science students, learning the Anthropocene is often inherently objectbased and material by nature. It is undertaken through the physical sampling and analysis of anthropogenic materials taken from our environmental deposits, from oceanic micro-plastics to artificial radionuclides, or the “techno-fossils” of landfill detritus (Zalasiewicz et al 2016). These traces are explored through the anthropogenic tactility of the laboratory. Within the social sciences and humanities, an object-based learning approach has been less common, beyond the domains of material culture and museum studies (Chatterjee, and Hannan 2016). From my perspective as a cultural geographer, the Anthropocene is a cultural, environmental and technoscientific phenomenon - and its constituent human objects and materialities offer important sensory insights into what it means to be human
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