Earth, Sea, City: Environmental Visions from the Lusophone World

What does the Portuguese-speaking world reveal about living on a changing planet? Centering environmental questions, this course explores forests and plantations, oceans and rivers, cities and informal settlements, and climate through literature, film, and visual art from Brazil, Lusophone Africa, and Portugal. Attending to histories of migration and empire, we’ll examine how Afro-diasporic cultures and Blackness, Indigenous knowledge, and gender shape relationships to land, water, and other-than-human worlds. Together, we’ll consider how creative works expose environmental inequalities, imagine alternative futures, and invite new ways of understanding ecology as inseparable from culture, power, and justice. Portuguese proficiency required - POBS 0400 or equivalent.