Nathalie Arnold

While the climate crisis presents urgent scientific challenges, climate issues are also deeply political, economic, cultural, and epistemological. While news outlets routinely cover climate events in Europe and the USA, far less is said about the colonial histories and entrenched inequalities that put communities of colour at far greater risk of climate-related devastation. Despite producing a minute fraction of the world's carbon emissions, historically marginalized communities consistently suffer the worst effects of planetary warming. Grounded in contemporary anthropology, this course asks: How do marginalized communities across the world respond to climate inequalities? What alternative visions and modes of co-existence might diverse meteorologies and ways of constructing 'nature' suggest? How does 'climate denial' emerge, and what does climate justice look like? We will consider sources from: Botswana, Namibia, Uganda, Zanzibar, the Amazon, Palestine, India, Bangladesh, Norway, and Puerto Rico. This course counts toward the Five College African Studies Certificate KEYWORDS:Climate, ethnography, Africana, Africa, Global South

The ancient Swahili city-states of the East African coast have played a crucial role in world history, especially across the African continent, the Indian Ocean, and Europe. The Swahili coast has been a key site of exchange and mixing between African, Islamic, and Indian Ocean knowledges, practices, and languages. Today, Swahili fashions, cuisines, and literatures, together with the Swahili language, play crucial roles in social and imaginative life in East Africa and beyond. Swahili is spoken by 82 million people across the world. In African-American communities, Swahili - the language of Kwanzaa - has played a key role in spiritual practices. Today, translations of literary works from Swahili into English increasingly bring Swahili narratives into direct conversation with English-language readerships. Through an exploration of ethnography, life history, Swahili literature and film, this course introduces students to diverse 'Swahili worlds,' from East Africa to Oman, Europe and the United States. KEYWORDS:Africana, Africa, Swahili, literature, film

The peoples, philosophies, arts, and cultural resources of Africa have made and continue to make fundamental contributions to every society on earth - particularly to visionings of humanity, justice, liberation, and community. Yet, from the imperial United States, Africa is often the least considered continent, its diverse peoples and realities obscured by racist stereotypes rooted in the long and ongoing history of European colonialisms and empire. This introduction to African narratives, focused on key historical, modern and contemporary African texts of different genres, unfolds in three parts. Through early epic poems, we encounter precolonial African kingdoms; next, we engage anti-colonial texts and confront European imperialism in Africa; we end the semester by engaging contemporary fictions and philosophy. Works we may consider include: Sundiata and Mwindo, Fanon, Cesaire, Diop, Kenyatta, p'Bitek, Lumumba, wa Thion'go, Achebe, Ba, Biko, el Sadawi, Rugero,Tadjo and Sarr. Keywords:Africa, African literature, politics, colonialism, decolonisation

Across the world, humans have viewed animals as: ancestors, teachers, friends, members of the family, meat, workers, pests, and threats. Everywhere, the 'human' is defined in relation to the 'animal.' Yet this relation is construed in diverse and contradictory ways. Ideas about what it means to 'be (an) animal' have long structured visions of belonging and otherness, as well as violence, racism, and oppression. As animals vanish or recede from human settlements, their images proliferate around us. Drawing on cultural, legal, and gender studies, multispecies ethnography, literature, and history, this seminar looks at varied human relationships to animals, animals' diverse roles in society, history, and the arts, and how ideas about 'animals' shape our sense of 'being human.' While we will write and research regularly, major assignments include: a personal essay, an annotated bibliography and an independent project in a form of students' choice. Keywords:animal studies,animals,trasspecies,ethnography,multispecies

Across the world, humans have viewed animals as: ancestors, teachers, friends, members of the family, meat, workers, pests, and threats. Everywhere, the 'human' is defined in relation to the 'animal.' Yet this relation is construed in diverse and contradictory ways. Ideas about what it means to 'be (an) animal' have long structured visions of belonging and otherness, as well as violence, racism, and oppression. As animals vanish or recede from human settlements, their images proliferate around us. Drawing on cultural, legal, and gender studies, multispecies ethnography, literature, and history, this seminar looks at varied human relationships to animals, animals' diverse roles in society, history, and the arts, and how ideas about 'animals' shape our sense of 'being human.' While we will write and research regularly, major assignments include: a personal essay, a report on a site observation, and an independent project in a form of students' choice. Keywords: animals, animal studies, multispecies, posthumanism, anthropology.

While climate change affects all life on the planet, historically vulnerable and marginalized communities across the world are consistently at the greatest risk of devastation. As calls for climate justice multiply, the urgency of writing, speaking, and creating wisely about climate is clear. Grounded in ethnography about diverse communities' experiences and responses to climate change while drawing on film, literature, and the visual arts, this course asks: How do marginalized communities across the world respond to climate inequalities? What is the relationship between capitalism and the climate? How does thinking the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, or the posthuman affect our views of planetary issues? How does 'climate denial' emerge, and what do 'climate justice' and resilience look like? While we will regularly practice writing and research, major assignments include: a family or community weather history and an independent project in a form of students' choice.