Charles Corwin

Amid global environmental and political turmoil and local grassroots activism, we will traverse regenerative urban spaces with different organizational frameworks and ideas about what it means to be with others and what it means to include the non-human. This course explores these new modes of being, with fellow humans and among other species and things, in a changing world. The course is structured around critical readings, as well as community-based projects in North Lawndale. This course generally meets at Homan Square 5-6 times a term.

In this course, students will engage with theoretical and historical perspectives of environmental inequalities on a global and regional scale. The course examines community responses and policy solutions to environmental problems, particularly at the intersection of environmental quality and public health and race, gender, and class inequities. We also discuss environmentalism amid colonial and capitalist power structures. Southeast Chicago and Little Village, two Chicago communities with rich histories of environmental activism, serve as local case studies. The readings for this course include works from Rachel Stein, who writes on environmental activism and gender; Anna Tsing, an anthropologist concerned with human/nature interactions at the edges of global capitalism; Robert Brulle, a scholar/activist writing on current environmental movements; Kyle Whyte, who writes from an indigenous perspective on the relationships of indigenous peoples and climate activism. We will also review policy papers from the National Resource Defense Council and other advocacy groups. Course work includes weekly reading responses and a final project that brings together knowledge and action on environmental justice, either through a strategy paper or an artistic project. This course generally meets at Homan Square 5-6 times a term.