AFST 463 - Contemporary Ecologies

Credits: 4

Contemporary Ecologies: Imaging Survival offers an introduction to and hands-on experience of ecological aesthetics. Drawing from African and Asian diasporic art, theory, literatures, and the feminist, queer, urban, and virtual perspectives they engender, we will bring analysis and imagination to bear on rising sea levels, tsunami, drought, coral reefs, and expanding cityscapes such as Nairobi and Beijing. Eschewing the lens of pessimism that foresees insurmountable problems and bleak futures for humans and non-humans, especially in the southern hemisphere, we will examine the interconnections of power, landscapes, and mindscapes through engagement with visual, sonic, and multi-media cosmologies of transformation. Offered every Fall.