Events, Involvement, and News

Stay tuned for the course description for this topics course.

Stay tuned for this course description.

This course brings environmental studies and critical race theory perspectives to bear on gender and sexuality studies, taking “eco-feminism” as an identity, an object of analysis, and as a methodological approach. While “Feminism” in practice need not be (though often is) gender-specific, as a political and academic practice it often carries racialized inflections. The term, “eco”, from the Greek “oikos,” has multiple translations: “dwelling,” “household,” “home,” “family” and “hearth,” laying the foundation for examining the roles that gender and sexuality play in changing forms of kinship, citizenship, and (environmental) politics beyond and within the concept of the human. These different meanings of the “eco” in economy and ecology shape scholarly analyses as well as the lived experiences for those do not feel “at home” in a white hetero-normative structure. This course emphasizes creative thinking and offers opportunities for community engagement.

Stay tuned for this course description.

Stay tuned for this course description.

In this course students will explore literary, visual, and many other cultural representations of genders and sexualities impacted by illness and disability. We will move through the legacies of freak shows, sterilization laws, medical racism, and the institutionalization of the “unfit” into present day eugenics and the impact of pandemics then and now. We will pursue questions such as “What are the differences between disability rights and disability justice? Who can claim disability identity? What is the relationship between disability, illness, and race? Is disability gendered? And why is it so difficult to conceptualize a sex life for people with disabilities?” Alongside developing analytical and critical thinking skills through academic discussion and writing, students will also have the option to complete a creative, critical or scholarly final project of their choosing.

Stay tuned for the course description for this topics course.

Concentrating social and ecological environments as well as the that of the body, this course focuses on the toxic effects of late industrialism on epigenetics and maternal/fetal health.  Heavy metals and many a chemical can move through human and nonhuman bodies, passing the blood-brain barrier, swimming through amniotic fluid, and changing the body chemistry of all living organisms. While heavy metal and chemical contaminants often have a marked visibility on the landscape, their impact on human health is not always so easily detected, except in fetal development. Through the figures of the mother-and-child and of nature’s body – often gendered female, public health officials and environmental scientists, call for eliminating the toxic “body burden” placed on human and nonhuman bodies, for a less weighted future. This class delves into these gendered calls, examining the intersections with considerations of race, class, and what constitutes “able” bodies.