Intersecting Bodies, Selves and Environments

3 credits · Undergraduate

The traditional view of the relation between humans and nonhuman nature is regarded by many as dualistic insofar as it posits not only a distinction and separation between humans and nonhuman nature but regards humans as superior to nonhuman nature, on either religious, metaphysical, moral, or even evolutionary, grounds. In this course, we examine three different strategies for overcoming this view. We begin by examining phenomenological attempts to overcome dualistic accounts of the relations between perceiver and perceived, mind and body, and mind and world. In the next section, we discuss attempts by radical ecologists and ecofeminists to establish a nondualist view of the relation between humans and nature. In the concluding section of the course, we consider some postmodern and posthumanist strategies for overcoming dualistic thinking about nature and culture, including the wilderness debates and indigenous knowledge. FORMATS: Seminar