The Earth speaks: cultural trauma and climate change narratives in media

Abstract

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.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jeffrey Stepnisky