As feelings of eco-grief and climate anxiety grow, educators are grappling with how to help students learn about the violent systems causing climate change while simultaneously navigating the emotions this knowledge elicits. This book provides resources for developing emotional and existential tenacity in college classrooms so that students can stay engaged.
Featuring insights from scholars, educators, activists, artists, game designers, and others who are integrating emotional wisdom into climate justice education, this user-friendly guide offers a robust menu of interdisciplinary, plug-and-play teaching strategies, lesson plans, and activities to support student transformation and build resilience. The book also includes reflections from students who have taken classes that incorporate their emotions in the curricula. Galvanizing and practical, The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators will equip both educators and their students with tools for advancing climate justice.
Reviews
Listed as one of EcoLit’s “Best Environmental Books” of 2019, Gardenland explores gardening literature as a "fantasy genre" where people enact desires for sustainability, social justice, joyful labor, contact with nature, and more vibrant cities. The book examines texts from popular garden books and environmental writing to literary fiction and nonfiction (works by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, and Leslie Marmon Silko), “guerrilla gardening” manifestos, Hollywood film, and works of science fiction. As Gardenland moves across different historical moments where different fantasies shape the way we imagine our gardens, it reveals how a seemingly-specialized genre actually tells a much bigger story about who we are and the kinds of anxieties and desires that draw us to the soil. Ultimately, Atkinson argues, gardens are a place where people seek to inhabit modes of thought and practice otherwise suspended in everyday life.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications
The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators. Co-edited with Sarah Jaquette Ray. University of California Press. 2024
“Stories from our Future: Beyond the Binaries of Climate Hope and Grief.” In Teaching the Literature of Climate Change. Ed. Debra Rosenthal. Modern Language Association, 2024.
“How to Love a Burning World.” In Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World. Ed. Paul Bogard. University of Virginia Press, 2023.
"Eco-Grief and Climate Anxiety in the Classroom." In Contemplative Practices and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Bridging the Disciplines. Ed. Greta Gaard and Bengu Erguner-Tekinalp. Routledge, 2022.
“The Emotional Curriculum of Climate Justice Education: An Existential Toolkit.” Co-authored with Sarah Jaquette Ray. The CSU Journal of Sustainability and Climate Change. Vol 1, Article 6. (2021)
“Mourning climate loss: ritual and collective grief in the age of crisis.” CSPA Quarterly 32. (Spring 2021)
Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy and Everyday Practice. University of Georgia Press, 2018.
“Multi-Sensory Experience and Environmental Encounter: Rethinking the Sustainability of Humanities Education.” Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, Vol. 16, Nos. 2/3/4 (2015), 253–266.
“Comedies of Surplus.” In Earth Perfect? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden. Ed. Annette Giesecke and Naomi Jacobs. London: Black Dog Publishing (2012), 258-271.
“Seeds of Change: The New Place of Gardens in Contemporary Utopia.” Utopian Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2007), 237-260.
Essays and Journalism
Introduction to The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators. Climate Psychology Alliance of North America (CPA-NA). October, 2023.
Climate Grief: Our Greatest Ally? Resilience. Aug 27, 2020.
Exploring Climate Emotions: Six Short Reflections on “Facing It.” Arts & Climate Change. 2021
Why the Covid Gardening Boom is About More than Food. Earth Island Journal. June 10, 2020
The Impulse to Garden in Hard Times has Deep Roots. The Conversation. May 1, 2020
Gardening in Hard Times: A Hidden History from Jim Crow to Covid-19. Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Monthly Feature. June 2020
Addressing climate grief makes you a badass, not a snowflake. High Country News. May 29, 2018