The Earth speaks: cultural trauma and climate change narratives in media
Author
Faculty Advisor
Date
2025
Keywords
cultural trauma, climate change
Abstract (summary)
This honours project argues that climate change represents a form of cultural trauma for human societies and our relationship with the Earth as an active agent. While ecological crises are often framed through scientific or political lenses, this research emphasizes their profound social and cultural dimensions. Drawing from cultural trauma theory, disaster sociology, and environmental thought on the Anthropocene, the project examines how narratives construct meaning around environmental harm, responsibility, and the evolving relationship between humans and the Earth.
Central to this work is recognizing the Earth not as a passive backdrop to human action, but as a sentient, responsive force that both absorbs and reacts to human-driven harm. The project maps how the Earth is cast as victim, villain, antagonist, or protagonist within climate stories through narrative analysis of literature, activism, and media.
Focusing on narratives from the Global North, it interrogates how dominant discourses reflect and shape collective meaning-making around the environmental crisis. Ultimately, the project offers a new way of interpreting the climate crisis: as a prolonged cultural trauma that demands social reckoning and a reimagining of humanity’s place within a living, remembering world.
Publication Information
DOI
Notes
Presented on April 17, 2025 at Student Research Day held at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.
Item Type
Student Presentation
Language
Rights
All Rights Reserved