The Literature of Climate Crisis

By Prof. Pramod K. Nayar | University of Hyderabad

Learners enrolled: 242

ABOUT THE COURSE:

This course is a survey of the Literature of Climate Crisis. Focusing principally on poetry, fiction and graphic novels from the 1990s (when ‘climate change’ enters the public discourse following the first Earth Summit), it provides an introduction to the aesthetics, form and politics of environmental literature from around the world. It concludes with a section on environmental justice.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Literary Studies scholars

Summary

Course Status :	Upcoming
Course Type :	Elective
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	8 weeks
Category :	Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit Points :	2
Level :	Undergraduate/Postgraduate
Start Date :	18 Aug 2025
End Date :	10 Oct 2025
Enrollment Ends :	18 Aug 2025
Exam Registration Ends :	29 Aug 2025
Exam Date :	25 Oct 2025 IST
NCrF Level	4.5 — 8.0

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1: Introduction: From the Literature of the Environment to the Literatures of Climate Crisis

Lesson 1: Literature and the Environment

Lesson 2: Why Literature in the Age of Climate Crisis I

Lesson 3: Why Literature in the Age of Climate Crisis II

Lesson 4: The Poetics of Unsettlement – Saradindu Bhattacharya (University of Hyderabad)

Lesson 5: Poetry as Response to Environmental Crisis – Saradindu Bhattacharya (University

of Hyderabad)

Week 2: The Literatures of Climate Crisis

Lesson 1: Postcolonial Environmental Novel – Shubham Bhattacharjee (Swami Vivekananda

University, Kolkata)

Lesson 2: Postcolonial Environmental Crisis in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh –

Shubham Bhattacharjee (Swami Vivekananda University, Kolkata)

Lesson 3: The Environmental Memoir

Lesson 4: Indian Graphic Novels and Environmental Consciousness – Priyanka Tripathi (IIT

Patna)

Lesson 5: The Environmental Graphic Novel: Group Discussion – Akshata S. Pai (Sai

University) and Pramod K Nayar (University of Hyderabad)

Week 3: The Wild, the Feral, the Unmappable

Lesson 1: The Idea of Wilderness

Lesson 2: Carnal Geographies I

Lesson 3: Carnal Geographies II

Lesson 4: Bogs, Swamps, and Watery Bodies

Lesson 5: The Post-natural

Week 4: Extinction, Nostalgia, Rewilding

Lesson 1: Anthropocentrism and Speciesism

Lesson 2: Writing Extinction

Lesson 3: The World is Ending, or, How to Make Sense of Extinction? I – Asijit Datta

(SCMC Pune)

Lesson 4: The World is Ending, or, How to Make Sense of Extinction? II – Asijit Datta

(SCMC Pune)

Lesson 5: Rewilding

Week 5: Multispecies Writing

Lesson 1: Creaturescapes: Multispecies Vulnerabilities

Lesson 2: Multispecies Writing – V. K. Karthika (NIT Tiruchirappalli)

Lesson 3: Biomutation Narratives I: Introduction – Neeraja Sundaram (Azim Premji

University)

Lesson 4: Biomutation Narratives II: Case Studies – Neeraja Sundaram (Azim Premji

University)

Lesson 5: Multispecies Writing: Group Discussion – Neeraja Sundaram (Azim Premji

University), Saradindu Bhattacharya, and Pramod K Nayar (University of Hyderabad)

Week 6: Habitats, Habitation and The World

Lesson 1: Habitats and Habitation I

Lesson 2: Habitats and Habitation II

Lesson 3: Ecological Grief

Lesson 4: The Re-enchantment of the World

Lesson 5: Extinction: Group Discussion - Akshata S. Pai (Sai University), Asijit Datta

(SCMC Pune), and Pramod K Nayar (University of Hyderabad)

Week 7: Environmental Justice and Literature I

Lesson 1: Colonialism, Neocolonialism and the Environment

Lesson 2: Waste, Toxic Environments and ‘Sacrifice Zones’

Lesson 3: Nature-Care and Stewardship in Postcolonial Poetry

Lesson 4: The Literature of Extractivism – Goutam Karmakar (University of Hyderabad)

Lesson 5: Postcolonialism and Ecological Thought

Week 8: Environmental Justice and Literature II

Lesson 1: The Oceanic Experience of Indian Indenture – Anjali Singh (Mohan Lal Sukhadia

University, Udaipur)

Lesson 2: The Neo-slave Novel

Lesson 3: The Literature of Animal Rights/Justice – Krishnanunni Hari (BITS Pilani,

Hyderabad Campus)

Lesson 4: Ecopedagogy and Literary Studies – Sayan Dey (Bayan College, Purdue University

Northwest)

Lesson 5: Environmentality

Books and references

Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism. Wiley Blackwell, 2005.
Nayar, Pramod K. Ecoprecarity:Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2019.
---.Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge, 2024.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth. Allegories of the Anthropocene. Duke, 2019.
Heise, Ursula. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford, 2008.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth, Jill Didur and Anthony Carrigan. Eds. Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches. Routledge, 2015.
Chao, Sophie, Karin Bolender and Eben Kirksey. Eds. The Promise of Multispecies Justice. Duke, 2022.
Herman, David. Narratology Beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life. Oxford, 2018.
Pali, Brunilda, Miranda Forsyth and Felicity Tepper. Eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Instructor bio

Prof. Pramod K. Nayar

University of Hyderabad

Prof. Pramod K Nayar is Senior Professor of English and the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad. Winner of the Visitor’s Award for Best Research in Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences from the President of India (2018), he is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the English Association. His newest books include Vulnerable Earth (Cambridge UP 2024), Nuclear Cultures (Routledge 2023), Alzheimer’s Disease Memoirs (Springer 2022), and The Human Rights Graphic Novel (2020). His essays have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies, Postcolonial Text, Kunapipi, Biography, Celebrity Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Ariel, Changing English, Narrative and several other journals.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams : October 25, 2025 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 6 assignments out of the total 8 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Madras .It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team

SWAYAM Helpline / Support