ESPM 149
Bodies, Difference, and the Environment
This course centers the body as a key analytic to understanding the more-than-human world. The sick, injured, and disabled body is a central and reoccurring theme within environmental scholarship, as is its opposite, the healthy, robust, and fit body. In this class we will explore the sociopolitical and ethical relationships between altered bodily capacity, vulnerability, dependency, and systems of violence to nature and people, while attending to the sometimes troubling ways conversations around ecological health and fitness are informed by social inequality
Topics
- 1.) To read critically, carefully, generously, creatively, and playfully; 2.) To develop questions of and from course texts; 3.) To develop an understanding of identity formation, intersectionality, and social inequality 4.) To identify the ways in which cultural beliefs about “nature” have been shaped by categories of human difference 5.) To recognize that perceptions of “nature” have social, political, and economic effects that in turn impact our bodies 6.) To discuss the methods that have been used to critique, resist, and challenge traditional Western understandings of “nature.”
Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027