Listed in: Black Studies, as BLST-162 | English, as ENGL-162
C. Rhonda Cobham-Sander (Section 01)
(Offered as ENGL 162 and BLST 162 [D]) African and African-descended people have a long-documented and intimate relationship to the natural world as a source of healing, nurture, and wealth. However, for a people who were stripped of their land in colonial Africa, exploited to work the land by European enslavers in the New World, and hung from trees in the American South, and who still have a precarious relationship to water in such places as Flint, Michigan, and post-Maria Puerto Rico, inhabiting the earth is complicated. How might we begin to tell this entangled history? What kinds of stories have Africans and their descendants developed to address their relationship with nature? What does the term “environmental justice” even mean to and for people of African descent today?
In this course, we will encounter a range of texts, including slave narratives, novels, poems, visual art, and performance written by and about Black subjects, to begin to understand how various authors, artists, and activists represent the rich relationship between blackness and the natural world. Readings may include works by Olaudah Equiano, W. E. B Du Bois, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Zora Neale Hurston, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, T. Dungy, Britt Rusert, Kimberly N. Ruffin, among others.
Limited to 18 students. Ten seats reserved for first-year students. Fall semester. Professor Cobham-Sander.
How to handle overenrollment: Preference given to first-year students. Other students will be admitted on a first come, first served basis, once first-year students have been accommodated.
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: TBA
Section 01
M 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM SCCE C101
W 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM SCCE C101
| ISBN | Title | Publisher | Author(s) | Comment | Book Store | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One Day I will Write about this Place | 2011 | Wainaina, Binyavanga | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Arrow of God | 1989 | Achbe, Chinua | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Salvage the Bones | 2011 | Ward, Jesmyn | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| My Garden Book | 1999 | Kincaid, Jamaica | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Blind Spot | 2017 | Cole, Teju | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| The Book of Delights | 2019 | Gay, Ross | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| M-Archive After the End of the World | 2018 | Gumbs, Alexis Pauline | Amherst Books | TBD |
These books are available locally at Amherst Books.