ENGLISH 190VE: Voices of Environmental Justice

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2022

Professor,  Sarah Dimick

Monday & Wednesday 3:00-4:15pm

Course Site

 

This course considers the relationships between systems of human injustice and environmental
issues—including industrial disasters, ocean acidification, and resource extraction. We examine
environmental justice writing and artwork with a transnational, interconnected approach. For
example, we ask how Imbolo Mbue’s depiction of pipeline spills in the fictional town of Kosawa
connects to Native American resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. We link a poem
documenting silicosis in the lungs of West Virginian coal miners to a novel portraying the aftermath
of the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal. We compare a nonfiction account of Kenyan women
resisting deforestation and an iPhone app reclaiming public access along the Malibu coast. We
explore questions of voice, genre, and narrative, cataloguing the strategies writers and artists use to
reach a global audience.