WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2022-2023       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Toxic Sovereignties: Life after Environmental Collapse

ANTH 319
Fall 2022
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: SISP 319
Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate

What politics emerge at the borders of life and nonlife? Representations of the human species as being on the brink of environmental collapse have become increasingly common, as the specters of climate change and cataclysmic environmental disaster seem to bear down ever more heavily upon us. At the same time, the increasing entanglement of human bodies with various forms of chemical and otherwise man-made pollutants presage a slightly different future, one in which, if the human species does not outright disappear, it will be fundamentally transformed. This course explores different forms of political and social action that have emerged in response to these seemingly epochal shifts with a particular emphasis on the ever-mutating concept of sovereignty. Our goal is to explore the ways in which the shifting borders between human life and its artificially produced absence can serve as productive sites of new political forms and transformations of older ones, even as they also generate tremendous social and cultural anxiety.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ANTH
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT)(ENVS-MN)(ENVS)(STS)
Past Enrollment Probability: Less than 50%

Last Updated on APR-18-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459