Birding Communities

This seminar explores and builds communities around a charismatic and conspicuous class of animals: birds. The irony is that birds are marvelously diverse and abundant, but birding is associated with a narrow and privileged sector of society. Birding provides an excellent case to explore the politics of inclusion and exclusion around race, economic status, gender, dis/ability, citizenship, sexuality in relations with nature. While studying these politics of access and authority worldwide and historically, we create our own community of knowledge and practice by going birding with adults or schoolchildren. Participants in this seminar will learn from interdisciplinary scholarship, school children, and not least, the birds. History matters. Think globally. Bird locally.