About this course
This seminar engages with an array of questions about the humans, plants, animals, and material things that make the environment. What are the distinctions and motivations that determine how we categorize living and non-living objects? Is the human body part of the material world? Is the human body an autonomous entity, or is it a community? Are trees autonomous entities or members of communities? We recognize that humans have shaped the environment, but to what extent do nonhuman objects shape human society? If rivers and trees have material presence and impact, do they have agency? Do they have rights? Exploring the new materialism, posthumanism, actor-network theory, and deep ecology, this seminar goes beyond the model of nature vs. culture and asks instead how the human body and the environment—the world from which we are apart and of which we are a part—are simultaneously material and social. Finally, it asks what is at stake in such a perspective.
4 credit hours