A musician arrives with their instrument. They take their place on stage; they do not play; still, we listen for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. This is John Cage’s “4’33”: an influential work of music that produces no music, through which our attention is directed to the environs of each performance. Often understood as a modernist meditation on silence, Cage’s piece also shows how the concept of the environment depends on our aesthetic situation and participation: “4’33″ is silent only if we do not hear the noise that is always around us. In this class, we will think about “the environment” as a cultural, artistic, and even unnatural phenomenon. By examining aesthetic and cultural works that call attention to the material fabric of the world, we will ask: how did we come to understand the environment as a natural world set apart from human intervention—an object on which humans act? How can we change a world that is so much larger than us? How can we rethink the intricate relationships between nature and culture, our material world and our political acts?  Students will be required to analyze objects drawn from literature as well as art and architecture of various media and cultures. Additionally, we will refine our analyses through exposure to theoretical readings about the environment and the politics of ecological relation. The final will offer the option of a traditional research paper or a self-directed creative project, systematically developed over the course of the term.