In this course, we will explore the theoretical and methodological expansiveness of the planetary. What can the lens of the planetary bring to our work as scholars, thinkers, and creative practitioners? Thinking at this scale requires us to critique the notion of a unified or homogenized "world" as well as any system that claims to be able to categorize the world uniformly. Planetarity, as conceptualized by Gayatri Spivak (2015), can be a method to challenge universalizing or generalizing narratives. Rather than the global, which is often associated with capitalist or colonial projects, the planetary signals difference, indeterminacy, and uncanniness. Over the semester, we will explore three themes that delve into the planetary in various ways: Oceans, Sub/surface, and Atmosphere. The course will engage with scholars such as Melody Jue, whose work delves into the ocean as a media that saturates and shapes our actions in watery ways; Kristina Lyons, whose work brings us into vibrant relation with soils and alternative modes of thriving with the land amidst violence, Elizabeth Povinelli, who helps us to think about the connections between our biological existence and the planet's ecological continuity, and Tiffany Lethabo King, who care-fully pushes us through the concept of the shoal to re-imagine the relation between black and indigenous histories and futures. Working with these texts and their theoretical contributions to planetary thinking, alongside your own experiences and situated positionality, students will be engaged in an iterative and mindful development of methods that engages with and attends to difference. Students will use these themes as points of departure for their finals. For instance, students may draw on the fluid and ephemeral qualities of the atmospheric or the aquatic (such as geostationary orbit, climatic winds or ocean currents) to probe the ways in which sciences or discourses about these planetary aspects operate to create international policy, for instance, about satellite launches and maintenance. Or they may turn to forest root systems, to investigate alternative ideas of multispecies connection and communication in comparison to technological ways represented by the internet and AI. Another angle is for students to lean into the intimacy of breath and how that shapes our feelings of belonging in our own lives and to the lives of the histories we may read about or witness. Overall, students will have the opportunity to delve into the planetary as a way to hone their attention to the world and develop creative skills that can allow us to understand difference not as a threat, but as a site of potential.