Spanish: Decolonizing the Environment

Focus on a particular cultural topic in the Hispanic world such as regional studies, or current conflicts on ecology, ethnicity, or gender. May repeat for credit with different content. Topics vary by offering; periodic offering at intervals that may exceed four years. Prerequisite: SPAN 3615, SPAN 3620, SPAN 3665, or SPAN 3670; or Instructor permission.

Prereq: SPAN 3610 PACE students by permission and override.

The uneven nature of environmental impacts reveals both the systemic character of problems and the coloniality at the root of the power imbalances and unequal relations that have led the planet to its current state. In this course, student will broaden their critical capacity to examine socio-environmental issues and discourses in the context of Latin America, by exploring the constitutive nature of coloniality in the modern world order. Employing an approach identified as the environmental humanities, we will critically engage worldviews from the Global South and consider the concept of coloniality as a means to identify practices and legacies of European colonialism which have become integrated in contemporary societies and forms of knowledge. We will read fiction and non-fiction —by writers Octavio Paz, Isabel Allende, Luis Sepúlveda, Diana Luque, Walter Mignolo, Patricia Stambuk, Arturo Escobar, and Gloria Gonzalez—, and examine visual representations –archival photographs, film, and images circulating in public domains—. Case studies from Mexico and South America will raise questions of sustainability ethics and social equity, alongside ecological concerns. We will employ a critical approach that recognizes people’s local histories —of dispossession, racism, patriarchal subjugation, and ongoing power imbalances—, and explore expressions of indigenous voices to creatively see how the many forms of existence on the Earth can integrate into a world made of many worlds –a Pluriverse.

Attend class and be prepared to discuss and debate the topic assigned for the day, in Spanish. Being prepared means having read or viewed the assigned materials carefully, generate questions, and meaningfully participate in daily discussion.

One short exam, two short reading/viewing responses, one essay and a longer research project. Students will receive access to attend the NECLAS (or New England Council for Latin American Studies) Conference at UVM.