AUTUMN 2016
CHID 480: Grappling with Environmental Destruction: A Writing Course (Logan O'Laughlin)
This course turns to environmental studies, feminist studies, and critical animal studies in order to grapple with the realities of environmental destruction. We will look at multiple sites of unsustainable practices including pollution, toxic waste dumping, resource extraction, and animal agriculture. In analyzing patterns of environmental destruction as well as environmental protection discourses, we will strategically apply an intersectional framework to assess how both value certain lives and disregard others. More specifically, we will analyze how racism, colonialism, sexism, transphobia and speciesism shape our environment and our discussions of protecting it. Course materials will include scholarly texts, activist works, and popular media.
Because this course has an emphasis on writing, we will also be thinking about how writing can be a useful medium to resist environmental destruction. In order to hone their writing skills, students will be regularly writing and reviewing each other’s work in class (primarily on Wednesdays) as well as reviewing each other’s collaborative writing projects. Additionally, I will meet with each of you twice over the quarter to discuss your writing in detail, once in groups and once individually. Because students inevitably have different strengths and weaknesses, I will offer optional readings about writing to help bolster your writing skills throughout the quarter. Moreover, this course includes an optional service-learning component for students who are interested in more extensive reflection through working with a local environmental protection organization.
WINTER 2017
CHID 250: Environmental Feminisms and Queer Ecologies (Logan O'Laughlin)
This course incorporates lenses of environmental studies, feminist studies, and queer theory. We will trace the genealogy of ecofeminisms, feminist environmentalisms, and queer ecologies, and will analyze academic ecofeminist texts and popular representations of environmental protection to understand how racism, colonialism, sexism, and transphobia shape our environments and our discussions of protecting it. This course surveys several key environmental topics such as the effects of toxic chemicals on humans and wildlife and the environmental repercussions of animal agriculture.
CHID 480: Food for Thought (Nancy White)
Food for Thought examines the topic of food through a variety of lenses—food as sustenance in times of hardship, food as a way to bring family together, food as a source of childhood and childlike amazement, food as an economically and politically charged entity, food as a form of memoir, and food as a career (amongst others). The topic for the course—food—has been chosen because of its universality and significance. As humans, we must interact with food on a daily basis. Sometimes these interactions are commonplace and banal, but they can also be charged and difficult, satisfying and rewarding, or influential and life-changing. In this course, we will explore the decisions we make every day when we eat (as well as the decisions made for us) in order to think about where the food we eat comes from, how it gets to us, and who affects that journey.
SPRING 2017
CHID 250: Human and Nonhuman Animal Bodies in Literature and Film (Nancy White)
The interests of human and nonhuman animals are sometimes at odds with one another and with the planet. Some animals are viewed (by humans) as sympathetic, others as valuable, and still others are viewed as pests. From resource allocation to food production to public policy, decisions are made based on human preferences and carried out by those with power. While the sovereignty of humans is often exerted over nonhuman animals, this course will also question the boundaries of the human body and its place “at the top of the food chain.” Human and Nonhuman Animal Bodies will interrogate the role of bodies (human and nonhuman) in society by examining literary and filmic works in which they feature prominently. Some questions we will investigate are: Whose bodies are subjugated and whose are elevated? Why do we prefer certain bodies to others and what kinds of choices do we make based on those preferences? Where do our bodies end and where do others begin? Who exerts power over human and nonhuman bodies and to what end?