Course Description

While the ideas associated with Eco-feminism and Queer Ecology have changed the conceptual apparatus of environmental humanities, their intersectionality needs introspection from a global lens. Otherwise these phrases, which are intended to achieve radical goals, can become tools for essentialization which re-iterate heteronormativity. For instance, the development of a visual culture which equates Women or Queer bodies as being one with abstract Nature. Images of the earth wrapped around in the arms of an non-masculine/LGBTQ subjectivity have become common visual representations of what these terms connote. These depictions are transgressive to a point but also problematic as there is a threat of mimicking or homogenizing. This course originated towards locating cultural specificities that inform the gender and ecological perspectives within a particular context. Before analyzing the global visual culture(s), that is films and well known photographs, we will look at critical and literary texts. This will be helpful in terms of locating the regional intricacies as well as enable us to establish central lenses that will guide our analysis. How is, for example, Virginia Woolf’s relationship with Water different from the radical portrayals of water ecologies by Arundhati Roy? Despite writing in different historical periods and belonging to completely different geographical and political realms, there are continuities in the writings of female/queer identities. Students will read relevant sections from the works of Michel Foucault, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva among others.

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