Water worlds. Social inquiry in a fluid medium

Undergraduate / Graduate

What can we learn from water about the human condition and social life? The planet's surface is mostly water and so are our own bodies. We tend, however, to see water as something beyond us, an entity we live with rather than amidst, within, or even as. In this course, we will query water as a relational medium, a simultaneously necessary and destabilizing presence in human affairs. When it floods, water becomes catastrophe; when dammed, it becomes a market good; when contaminated, it becomes a political weapon. What problems and possibilities follow from different ways of relating to water? Through readings in history, anthropology, and media studies, we will examine the concepts and methods that a so-called "water turn" in the social sciences lends to our understandings of capital, power, affect, and spacetime. What do we gain from thinking of oceans, lakes, and rivers but also people as "waterbodies"? How do we adopt an "amphibious" perspective on seemingly dry problems in social life? What does "hydrosociality" teach us about how to read or write environmental stories? Course assessment will involve leading class discussion and a final project of your own design. It is open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates with instructor consent.