Invasive Aliens:RaceNon-Human

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course considers the relationship between ideas about race and nonhuman animals, as well as “nature,” the environment, and the land, from the 18th century to the present. By considering natural historical, biological, and conservationist literature alongside contemporary responses from critical ethnic studies and other scholarly fields, we will develop the interpretive and analytical skills necessary to understand how certain groups of humans and non-humans have been represented as “invasive” and “alien” to settler colonial landscapes. We will apply the lessons from our intellectual history of ideas about race, nonhuman animals, and the “natural” world to consider several historical and contemporary cases where the tropes and conventions of racialization cross species lines, including in campaigns to manage the Japanese beetle and the Asian giant “murder” hornet; in controversies over dogfighting and the use of dogs in policing; and in anti-poaching campaigns within and beyond the United States. In doing so, we will ask: How do processes of racialization develop over time, according to specific geographical, ecological, and political conditions? How do colonial representations of the natural world inform racial ideology, and vice versa? What do struggles for racial, environmental, and interspecies justice have to learn from one another?