AC Courses

Everyone is a learner in the new and contested terrain of the Anthropocene. The AC Courses draw connections between emerging constellations of ideas and knowledge practices.

In this new geologic age, we must make sense of the changing planetary situation as it is tied to varying local contexts—all facing rapidly increasing eco-political urgencies and transformative challenges at different speeds and intensities. Reckoning with this dilemma, the Anthropocene Curriculum (AC), a project by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, AC Courses—a new, collectively produced, multi-pathway online format exploring modes of learning in the Anthropocene that are shaped by and responsive to its ongoing transformations. An intuitive online format, the AC Courses act as an orientation tool, offering curated pathways through existing research published on the project’s research platform, anthropocene-curriculum.org, while also introducing newly commissioned material.

Each Course is thematic and consists of up to four pathways conceived by scientists, academics, artists, and activists from the worldwide AC network. On entering each pathway, readers encounter an overarching synopsis text and are invited to navigate through a selection of carefully chosen research objects arranged in a designed sequence—from essays to films and other media, to case studies and research projects—in response to the Course topic. Every pathway is complemented by a newly commissioned contribution from the pathway author/s, offering fresh perspectives on the Course’s core concerns, and cross-connecting their own research and practice with contemporary debate by reflecting on larger cultural and political questions related to Anthropocene discourse.

Now live on the platform, Course 0: On Curricula, the inaugural AC Course, opens with a pathway authored by the AC Team, accompanied by pathways from Jamie Allen, Joe Underhill, and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, which invite readers to ponder what it means to develop a curriculum in or for the Anthropocene—and to ask, how might we question the contexts in which knowledge is produced, and how they shape its form and value? Also live is Course 1: Archiving, with pathways from Shannon Mattern, Jason Ludwig and Tim Schütz, Catherine Russell, which delves deep into how records come to exist as knowledge infrastructures, proposing that archives are not only accumulations of historical records, but also a means to better understand the present, offering opportunities for anti-colonial reckoning via acknowledgement and repair. Coming in January and February 2022, the next Courses in this series will grapple with how to enact and sustain processes of Consensus Building in these complex times, the limits and change-making possibilities of Communicating in the Anthropocene, and how Sensing strategies shape the ways one constructs and responds to planetary-scale transformations.

Further activating the AC digital platform as an evolving site of co-producing and communicating knowledge, the second series of AC Courses will be published later in 2022.

Press contact
Jan Trautmann, Haus der Kulturen der Welt: T +49 30 39787 192 / presse [​at​] hkw.de

The Anthropocene Curriculum is developed by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW, Berlin) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG, Berlin), in collaboration with many partners worldwide. It is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media due to a ruling of the German Bundestag, and the Federal Foreign Office.

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Minister of State for Culture and the Media as well as by the Federal Foreign Office.