Flowing out of a workshop on Climate Distress held at SOAS in May 2024, Susan Wardell  contributed to this tool for Teaching Climate Distress, recently published on by Cultural Anthropology  https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/teaching-ecological-distress

The guide is a collaborative product, and as well as academic readings, the various contributors draw films, art projects, and creative writing. Susan’s section draws on the latter; and specifically, presents an exercise framed around the idea of a ‘Speculative Dictionary of Climate Emotion’. This is a concept she has  also brought into other spaces, through in-person workshops. Piloted in a workshop at Dublin City University in 2024, upcoming plans include workshop in Dunedin New Zealand, in association with the National Flash Fiction Day event, where participants will work on individual pieces of microfiction, as well as a collaborative visual ‘mega-zine’ based on these and other creative writing exercises. Meanwhile the description of a shorter version of the exercise within the teaching guide brings the possibility of tertiary teachers using it as a creative way to stimulative reflexive and critical discussions consideration of both the affective atmospheres of the Anthropocene, and the way these are framed through (old and new) languages of emotion.