CAST 350 - War Ecologies: Militarisms, Technoscience, and the Environment

FC ARHU CD WADV

4 credits
This seminar is concerned with the co-constitution of military, technoscientific, and ecological violence. Drawing on works in feminist security studies, queer and feminist STS, Asian American studies, and the environmental humanities, this course examines these processes at their points of collision. We consider how violence can contain both ruin and repair, how militarism and science work together to produce enduring environmental changes, and how war is not an event but a complex set of historical and ecological relations. Students will attend to the ecological dimensions of militarism and science by exploring examples such as nuclear weapons testing, chemical warfare, ecocide, and the making of colonial laboratories. In doing so, they will gain a better understanding of the material and affective relations of power that produce ongoing conflicts, organize violence, and shape the environment and peoples’ relationships to it. Recommended Preparation: previous coursework in Comparative American studies.