Introduction to Environmental Humanities

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course introduces students to key concepts and texts in environmental humanities, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies of race, gender, sexuality, capital, nation, and globalization. The course examines the conceptual foundations that support humanistic analyses of environmental issues, climate crisis, and the ethics of justice and care. In turn, this critical analysis can serve as the basis for responding to the urgency of calls for environmental action.

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students will learn what difference humanistic studies make to understanding environmental issues and climate crisis. The course will prepare students to:


Identify humanistic methods and how they contribute to understanding the world;

Demonstrate critical approaches to reading and representing environments;

Engage ethical questions related to the environment; and

Apply concepts from the course to synthesize the student’s use of humanistic approaches to address urgent environmental questions.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Ashley Dawson
  Info
• 3 points

Intro to Environmental Humanities Discus

Discussion Section

Discussion Section

• W 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
• W 11:10 a.m.-noon
• 0 points

Critical Approaches in Social and Cultur

This course examines the conceptual foundations that support feminist and queer analyses of racial capitalism, security and incarceration, the politics of life and health, and colonial and postcolonial studies, among others. Open to all students; required for the major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE).

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Marisa Solomon
  Info
• 3 points

CRITICAL APPROACHES-DISC

CRITICAL APPROACHES-DISCUSSION

• R 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• R 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Samuel Davis
  Info
• 0 points

INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISMS

PRACTICING INTERSECTIONALITY

Enrollment for this class is by instructor approval and an application is required. Please fill out the form here: 
https://forms.gle/bPsV7rcf5RWB35PM9

This introductory course for the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE) as well as Majors/Minors in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is open to all students. We focus on the critical study of social difference as an interdisciplinary practice, using texts with diverse modes of argumentation and evidence to analyze social differences as fundamentally entangled and co-produced. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of this course, the professor will frequently be joined by other faculty and guest speakers who bring distinct disciplinary and subject matter expertise. Some keywords for this course include hybridity, diaspora, borderlands, migration, and intersectionality.

• T 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• 3 points

INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISMS DISCUSSION SECT

N/A

• R 10 a.m.-10:50 a.m.
• R 11 a.m.-11:50 a.m.
• 0 points

Environmental Humanities in Action

Environ Humanities in Ac

Some of the central questions in the study of environmental humanities focus on human action, its context, and its effects. Thus, one major contribution of the environmental humanities is to study and consider how we conceptualize action, relations (both between humans and environments and among humans), and even the meaning of human being. The environmental humanities places these conceptual questions in the context of value and values, as well as questions of how values are materialized in practice. This course considers all of these questions through the study both theories of action in the context of environmental humanities and research into existing projects that are informed by and can inform the study of environmental humanities.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Janet Jakobsen
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

FEMINIST THEORY

Prerequisites: LIMITED TO 20 BY INSTRUC PERM; ATTEND FIRST CLASS

This course provides a theoretical itinerary to the emergence of contemporary queer theory and engagement with some contemporary legacies of the movement. The goal is not to be exhaustive nor to establish a correct history of queer theory but to engage students in the task of understanding and creating intellectual genealogies.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Marisa Solomon
  Info
• 4 points

GENDERED CONTROVERSIES

Love and sex have long been studied as historical constructs influenced by social, political, and economic dimensions. This course aims to expand this discourse by incorporating the often-overlooked lens of technological mediation. Beginning with the premise that romantic love is deeply shaped by the affordances of the technology of the time, a critical awareness of technological mediation in romance –especially of digital technologies, i.e. online dating, social media, or cybersex— allows for a deeper understanding of how social categories such as gender, race, class, ability, or sexuality are technologically-mediated, thereby informing our societal and cultural perceptions of love, dating, and sex. 

 

Sandra Moyano-Ariza is Term Assistant Professor of WGSS and Research Director at BCRW. Her research works at the intersection of pop culture, philosophy, and digital technologies, with interests in the fields of media studies and digital scholarship, contemporary feminist theory, critical race theory, posthumanism, and affect theory.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Sandra Moyano-Ariza
  Info
• 4 points

HIST APPROACHES FEMINIST QUES

Comparative study of gender, race, and sexuality through specific historical, socio-cultural contexts in which these systems of power have operated. With a focus on social contexts of slavery, colonialism, and modern capitalism for the elaboration of sex-gender categories and systems across historical time.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 4 points

Senior Seminar I (Barnard)

SENIOR SEMINAR I

Student-designed capstone research projects offer practical lessons about how knowledge is produced, the relationship between knowledge and power, and the application of interdisciplinary feminist methodologies.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Manijeh Moradian
  Info
• Instructor: Alexander Pittman
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

Independent Study

INDEPENDENT STUDY

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Rebecca Jordan-Young
  Wikipedia Info
• 1-4 points

Modes of Living: Feminist and Critical

Feminist & Critical Appro

Connecting cultural and social issues to ethical questions, this course in feminist and critical interdisciplinary studies offers students the opportunity to consider the relationship between values and value in different modes of living. All too often in public discourse ethical values are invoked but not clearly articulated in terms of their meaning, parameters, and relation to each other. This research seminar investigates values through a semester-long consideration of a single overarching question. This version of the course focuses on the environmental humanities, but other instantiations may use this method to consider different issues. Here, the values commonly invoked in public discussions of the environment are considered in relation to each other, placed in larger analytic contexts, and applied. The final section of the course brings the study of values together with a study of major environmental issues, with a focus on inter-relations amongst those issues. The course uses these interdisciplinary and critical approaches that have become central to feminist ethics as the basis for students developing a major semester-long research project on a question of their own choosing.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Janet Jakobsen
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Decolonization and Feminist Critique

DECOLONIZATION & FEMINIST

This advanced seminar examines historical, social, cultural, and theoretical propositions for decolonizing praxis and their complex relations to feminist critique. How do we understand Western European colonialism and coloniality as modes, conditions, and institutions of power, dispossession, subjugation, and subjection continuing into the present? What are the methods, practices, and vision enacted and proposed by the colonized for undoing and radically transforming the determinate logics, instruments, and structures of colonialism as these persist in the present moment? We will consider how gender and sexuality as well as race – as technologies of social organization, codes of valuation, and modes of survival – shape colonialism and the struggles against it. We will inquire into their significance to projects of decolonization. How might decolonization envision and make possible other ways of life?

• W 11:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Neferti Tadiar
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Planetary Questions

PLANETARY QUESTIONS

This advanced seminar examines important approaches, issues, perspectives, and themes related to planetary concerns of environmental crisis, climate change, life sustainability, and multi-species flourishing, with a focus on feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and queer perspectives. Topics for discussion and study include the global pandemic,  histories of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism,

Prereqs: BOTH 1 WMST Intro course PLUS any WGSS 'Foundation' course, OR instructor permission.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Neferti Tadiar
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points