AFAM 301 | Environmental Racism

Environmental justice can only occur with rich and complex understandings of the intersections of culture, ecology, politics, history, and community. This course seeks to understand the persistence of environmental racism in an inclusive and historicized landscape, one that considers multiple forms of knowledge and expertise and embodies the idea that imagining a more equitable, sustainable future is not possible without a grounded notion of the past and its present articulations. The course will use transdisciplinary perspectives to trace economic and environmental processes over time, situate them within rich cultural bodies of knowledge, and consider the differential impacts of inequalities on a range of regions and peoples. Students will undertake place-based case studies, examinations of broad patterns, commodity- and resource-specific process tracing, and engage with the surrounding human and natural environment. Consequently, this course demands a full critical engagement across disciplines and landscapes, and with each other and the local community.