SPAN 50.06 Framing Ecology and Gender
At a time when women from Argentina to Mexico are at the forefront of a transnational fight for environmental justice, this course focuses on Latin America to explore how images of these struggles and others circulate and inform our perception of ecological crisis. As we study a range of media, we will attend to the ways in which visual objects illuminate the imbrications of gender and environment in order to investigate problems such as extractivism and neocolonialism. Concentrating on film, photography, television, visual art, and graphic novels, we will consider the potential of images to challenge, resist, or perpetuate environmental devastation and the concomitant marginalization of women and LGBTQIA persons. Whether by exposing the toxicity of agribusiness in the Amazon or foregrounding enduring connections between heteronormativity and colonialism, the media and critical texts we will examine ask us to notice the inseparability of social and environmental violence. As we pay special attention to ecofeminism and the activism of Indigenous women across Latin America, we will search for new perspectives that allow us to imagine alternatives to capitalist environmental exploitation. This course is taught in English.
Instructor
24W: Broner