AF AMER 117
Ecologies of Empire, Liberation, and Resistance
Description
Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Exploration of critical conjunctures in Black experience related to ongoing planetary ecological crisis. Study of ways in which colonial conquests exploited land, nature, and more-than-human worlds-as well as Black, poor, and indigenous people-in name of building imperial projects. Through this process, examination of how empire profoundly altered ecologies, social organization, and human-nature relationships and these historical transformations. Starting point of study is concept of ethno-class man or homo-economicus. Consideration of social differences-especially race, gender, and class-as central constructs of capitalism and imperialism that lead to natural resource extraction, labor exploitation, technoscientific knowledge, industrial development, and climate and ecological crises. Examination of political economy-and decolonial and political ecological perspectives on, and responses to-climate change. Study draws upon experiences, popular literature, and scholarship from Black communities in Africa, Caribbean, and Latin America. P/NP or letter grading.
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