ENST 371 - Human, Posthuman, Non-Human

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as POLI 371) How do we define “the human”? In terms of action, individual capabilities, legal subjectivity, anatomy and physiology, relationships, communities, language, or bodily life? What are the politics of these definitions? Who and what have been and are included and excluded from these definitions, and to what effect? And how do these historical and contemporary inclusions and exclusions-always bound up with questions of race and gender-orient our politics in the Anthropocene (the geological “era of the human”), as the globe faces radical environmental change (with radically disparate impacts)? In this course, we take a variety of approaches to these questions, which may include dominant Western theorizations of the human; enslavement, conquest, and modern humanity; gender, sex, and the human; non-human animals; and humans and non-human objects. Annie Menzel.

One 2-hour period.