Culture and Environment

4.0 credits

This course explores the relationship between human societies and the natural environment. Drawing on scholarship in anthropology, political ecology, and environmental studies, we will consider how humans conceptualize and engage with the natural world, attend to the varied roles that animals, plants, and matter play in social life, and assess the unequal distribution of environmental risk and damage. The course will address questions of ethics and responsibility vis-à-vis the ecological violence wrought by climate change, biodiversity loss, development, and resource extraction.