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Jointly offered to students from São Paulo and Münster, this course explores how questions of urban health intersect with the emotional, political, and atmospheric dimensions of climate change. As part of a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) format, students from both cities meet online in shared seminar sessions and work together in transnational teams.
Across both cities, climate anxiety has become a crucial lens through which ecological crises are felt, debated, and politicized. Rather than treating it as an individual psychological condition, the course approaches climate anxiety as a collective, affective, and spatial phenomenon embedded in distinct socio-environmental and political contexts. In São Paulo, the impacts of Amazon deforestation and seasonal fires became materially present through toxic air during the 2023–2024 fire seasons, while in Münster ambitious environmental policies, a strong cycling and sustainability culture, and an active, student-driven climate movement shape public debates in which climate anxiety is often framed as a matter of social responsibility and political agency. These contrasting urban situations allow students to investigate how emotions, climate, and city life intertwine to produce differentiated experiences of (urban) health and vulnerability.
Taught in English and German, the course introduces key concepts such as climate anxiety, ecological grief, solastalgia, and other eco-emotions. Drawing on urban and human geography, gender studies, and decolonial and postcolonial thought, it critically addresses global debates on climate inequalities, environmental racism, and planetary and urban health. Through comparative analysis of discourses, lived experiences, and affective atmospheres in both cities, students develop a situated and context-sensitive understanding of how climate emotions are shaped by historical, political, and social structures. |
eG