School of Media, Arts and Humanities

Media, Arts, and Humanities modules have links to SDGs 3 Health and Wellbeing; 4 Quality Education; 5 Gender Equality; 10 Reduced Inequality; 12 Responsible Production and Consumption, and 16 Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions.

Critical perspectives on aspects of gender, diversity and society are central to current teaching across disciplines in the School of Media Arts and Humanities. Many modules engage students in historical, creative and political approaches to environmental thinking. Historical and theoretical modules look at social, economic and political issues, focusing on cultural representation and relations, as well as consideration of sustainability in the business of arts and media.

This teaching provides valuable context for the SDGs, as well as fostering responsible cultural consumption and production.

Current sustainability related undergraduate modules in Media, Arts, and Humanities include:

The availability of the above modules depends on your chosen course of study. Please follow the module links to see which degree courses offer this module and look at your course prospectus to see whether modules are core or optional.

Case study: Hope and fear - Cultures, climates and ecologies

The Hope and Fear: Cultures, Climates, Ecologies module draws together tutors from across the arts, humanities, and the geographical and social sciences to provide a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective on the relationship between people and their environments. The terms ‘environment’, ‘climate’, and ‘ecology’ are both metaphorical and literal here, for example, cultures have their own ‘ecologies’.

The module considers how relationships with ‘environment’ affect the wellbeing of people and the wellbeing of the environment. Students study the environment through many frames, such as how it is represented through anthropological accounts of non-Western cultures, in literature, cinema, acoustic ecology, car culture, and other forms. The module asks where our cultural and built environment ends, where something else begins, and how we inhabit both.

The module uses ten workshop sessions to explore its interdisciplinary material and address a range of thematic and conceptual concerns, including:

  • Narratives: how do we narrativise and understand the often incomprehensible scale of climate change?
  • Crisis & Fear/Hope & Fear: Yes, climate change is bad, but the module seeks to encourage positive energy and intervention. Environmentalism has a long and strong history of resistance and hope;
  • The Social and the Natural: where does each end/begin? Can such points really be said to exist?
  • Ecology in all its meanings and implications. We have “ecologies” of many things;
  • Prosperity: economic vs. indigenous prosperity; how does prosperity work? What is it? Who wants it?
  • Conservation: what is this and how can it help or hinder a more enlightened future?