Feminisms in Environment and Development
Course Description
DEVS 862-004
Popular mainstream “women and environment” development discourses see nature as an ‘unruly’ force that disproportionately impacts women during environmental or climate change crises. Instead of pursuing this line of thinking, this seminar on Feminisms in Environment and Development will foreground “feminist ecologies” highlighting the dynamic interdependencies between society and nature that colonial processes have disrupted. Discussions will shed light on how people dynamically interact with nature through their intersectional subjectivities, embodied knowledges, and care for land, water, forests and the commons. The seminar also recognizes that women’s bodies are their first territory: however, growing neoliberal accumulation and corporate control of resources that extract nature also exploit feminized and racialized bodies, their labor and resources, thus keeping them persistently unequal and marginalized. Students will also familiarize themselves with present efforts to include gender discourses in sustainable development debates and policy prescriptions. They will critically analyze how “gender” has been co-opted or accommodated by ‘smart’ climate and environmental interventions that sidestep justice for exploited segments of nature and society.
A mixed senior undergraduate/graduate level course with limited space for DEVS MA graduate students who may not take more than one such mixed course.