Black Ecologies (EARTHSYS 146J, ENGLISH 146, FEMGEN 146B)

Black literature and media have long served as important sites of ecological thought and as blueprints for resistance to the combined matrices of imperialism, racialized dispossession, and extractivism. In exploring key works by Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, adrienne maree brown, Julie Dash, and others, we will unpack and complicate the idea of the human, and prioritize intersectional approaches to thinking with the violence of climate catastrophe. In so doing, we will approach ecology as both subject and method, and investigate possibilities for radically other futures outside the entrapments of racial capitalism and environmental degradation. While our course texts index the disastrous effects of racial capitalism and accompanying ecocide, they also chart different modes of thinking-living-acting where "Black livingness" (McKittrick) is a central aspect of ecology.