Task students with proposing a neologism and a golden spike placement to expose the rhetoricity of historicizing the Anthropocene¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

In this assignment, students forward a unique neologism and advocate a placement for the golden spike, "a stratigraphic marker designating epochal transformation." By arguing for a particular placement, students study moments of historic rupture at the intersection of culture, technology, extraction politics, globalization, science, and knowledge, and demonstrate "the rhetoricity of the Anthropocene's historicization." Each proposed spike outlines a rhetorical proposition highlighting a unique set of planetary concerns worthy of political action.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Prior engagement with the Anthropocene term and its competing neologisms

Constraints¶

Target Learners¶

• upper-level undergraduate communication studies students

Target Learning Goals¶

• analyzing the communicative and ideological dimensions of scientific epoch designation
• linking historical rupture to contemporary political concerns

Affordances¶

• Critique Language Includes Critique Of Humanism

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Rife, T. S. (2025). Critical Communication Pedagogy at the End of the World. Journal of Communication Pedagogy. https://doi.org/10.31446/JCP.2025.1.07