Bottom Ecologies: Blackness, Queerness, and the Environment

Catalog description

How have Black queer communities — and minoritarian communities more broadly — transformed environments of shame and disposability into sources of erotic power, pleasure, and collective survival? Building on Toni Morrison’s “Sula” and theories from Black feminisms, queer-of-color critique, and Black ecological thought, this course views the “bottom” as Black queer ecological thought. We will trace how Black queer communities generate counter-knowledge, reshape racialized and sexual subjectivities, and challenge conventional environmental discourse by queering ecological analysis. Ultimately, this course examines the “bottom” as both a sexual position and an ecological site historically raced, and marked as disposable, dirty, abject. Readings from Morrison, Jennifer Nash, Audre Lorde, Darieck Scott, Juana María Rodríguez, Kathryn Bond Stockton, and Leo Bersani will guide our exploration of how landscapes of racial abjection and erotic desire converge, offering new critical tools for environmental humanities.