The frequency of dramatic weather events, floods, droughts, and the mobilisations around environmental and climate justice bring matters of rapid environmental degradation, species extinction and global warming into critical visibility, and underscore the urgency for collective action. This course introduces students to feminist, queer and indigenous knowledges and activisms around the nexus of ecological and sexual politics. The course examines feminist critiques of the nature-culture divide, human exceptionalism, eco-heteronormativity, petrocultures and their alternatives. Case studies into companion species, petro-sexual relations and queer and speculative feminisms investigate the implications for rethinking bodies, care, reproduction and queer feminist politics with and beyond rights-based frameworks.

The frequency of dramatic weather events, floods, droughts, and the mobilisations around environmental and climate justice bring matters of rapid environmental degradation, species extinction and global warming into critical visibility, and underscore the urgency for collective action. This course introduces students to feminist, queer and indigenous knowledges and activisms around the nexus of ecological and sexual politics. The course examines feminist critiques of the nature-culture divide, human exceptionalism, eco-heteronormativity, petrocultures and their alternatives. Case studies into companion species, petro-sexual relations and queer and speculative feminisms investigate the implications for rethinking bodies, care, reproduction and queer feminist politics with and beyond rights-based frameworks.

1. To develop a critical appreciation of the entanglements of gender, nature and culture

2. To explore classic and contemporary conceptions of natureculture, matter(ing), materiality, nature and society

3. To rethink key feminist concepts such as sex, care, agency, response-ability and cosmopolitics from more than human perspectives

4. To undertake (gender) analysis of inanimate matters in and around ‘us’

5. To advance students’ English academic and creative writing skills

This course will  be divided between short introductions and a discussion of weekly required readings. Class discussions will be prepared by small groups of students who will meet online with the class teacher before class and will be responsible for this session.

You will receive detailed feedback on two written assignments.

 

a detailed syllabus will be distributed at the beginning of the semester. weekly topics include extractivism and exterminism; queer ecologies, anthropcentrism; anthropocene, petrocultures, companion species; care for the more than human world; mutltispecies resistance; indigenous analytics and epistemologies.

GOMEZ-BARRIS, Macarena (2017) The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Durham: Duke University.

HALBERSTAM, Jack (2020) Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire. Durham: Duke University Press.

HARAWAY, Donna (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Prickly Paradigm Press.

KIRKSEY, Eben (Ed.) (2014) The Multispecies Salon. Durham: Duke University Press.

MORTIMER SANDILANDS, Catriona and Bruce ERICKSON (eds) Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 

Assessment will be continuous and includes individual and group work through the semester. Instead of a final exam students will write a final paper, individually or in pairs.

Individual work:

Ø  Active participation in weekly class discussions: 25 %

Ø  Short concept paper (700 words): write about a concept from the course further readings that you find interesting: where does it come from, how is it defined? Illustrate what the concepts allow us to sense and do by providing your own example. 15%

Ø  Creative writing paper/weather writing (600 words): write a short piece based on a fieldtrip we do together – you can add drawings, photographs and sound recordings.  5: 10%

Group work (in small groups of 2-4 students)

Ø  Choose a session that you want to run with your peers: prepare a summary of the main course reading (500 words) and 3-4 questions for class discussion: 15

Ø  Final paper: analyse and expand on a course topic of your choice, including the creative writing and drawi on further readings and at least two main readings (2500 words individually or 3500 words in pairs). A short 200 word abstract is due before the last class. 35%