Naturecultures: Speculative Futures in Environmental Justice

Catalog description

The stories we tell about the world open the possibilities of certain futures, while foreclosing other imaginable ones. This course reveals how Western historical, theoretical, and scientific ways of knowing (epistemology) understood/understands both women and nature as inferior and thus needing to be controlled. Pushing back against the ideas of any inherent binary separations between men/women or nature/culture, we will examine ecofeminism as a theoretical location within both feminist and environmental philosophies and as a social movement. Learning from the intertwined history of environment and gender, that have led to both personal and global inequity and disaster, we will also engage solutions that imagine different futures. Recognising that solutions to environmental problems require a feminist attunement, we can start to understand the implications that our ethical commitments have to the future of life on the planet.