Ecocide: Reckoning with Environmental Destruction

Undergraduate / Graduate

Ecocide is defined as a crime against the environment, originating from legal debate in the context of the Vietnam War. Taking Vietnam as our starting point, this course engages with a wide range of materials (from novels to poetry to ethnographic studies) and different places (Ukraine, Vanuatu, Iraq, Palestine, and many others) in order to examine the broader context in which the campaign to criminalize environmental destruction emerged. We discuss what forms of environmental justice we can envision and pursue today, and debate possibilities and limitations of legal accountability. The readings are inter- and multidisciplinary, drawing from environmental humanities, anthropology, legal studies, history, and other fields. The assignments include a possibility to develop one's own research topic, which could take the form of a traditional paper or a critical-creative project (video essay, poster, other creative forms).