Topics in Aesthetics and Poetics: Aesthetics & Ecology

How can aesthetic theory and art practices confront the dilemmas raised by anthropogenic climate change? Rather than rethinking aesthetics from the perspective of ecology, this seminar recovers aesthetic thought as an untapped resource for conceptualizing complex entanglements between human and more-than-human worlds. We will explore an undercurrent of ecological thinking in German aesthetics from its Leibnizian roots to Kant and Adorno before attending to the return of interconnectivity as a central problem in contemporary aesthetics of relation, resonance, or the environment.