AFRS 234 - Race, Space and Nature

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as ENST 234 and GEOG 234) Ideas about “race” and “nature” are intimately bound up with the production of space. Historically, essentialist theories about racial difference served to legitimize and naturalize oppression, dispossession, and enslavement. Racism and white privilege have also long been present in how non-human natures are understood and managed in rural and urban environments, and have contributed to the uneven socio-spatial distribution of environmental harms. This course draws on political ecology, environmental justice, and theories of racial capitalism to apprehend and deconstruct the historical and contemporary relationships between race, space, and nature. Potential topics may include: connections between race, property, and land; the plantation as a socio-ecological phenomenon; environmental racism; Eurocentric ideologies of nature; and racialized exclusion and eviction in the creation of National Parks in North America and Africa. Ashley Fent.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS