ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2

The course is primarily addressed to students of the Master Degree in Environmental Humanities who have already attended 'Environmental Anthropology 1, mod.1 and 2. The participation of students of other programmes can be authorised upon agreement with the instructors.

The course draws on the previous two modules of ‘Environmental Anthropology’. These have provided the students with the necessary skills to look at the relationship between human beings, society, and the environment through the perspective of social and cultural anthropology and a basic understanding of ethnography. This course focuses on how to practice multispecies ethnography and on the epistemology that grounds it. Multispecies ethnography will be contextualized within the current ecological crisis and in relation to the topic of 'extinction'. Through group and individual presentations, students will enhance their ability for collective work, critical and independent thinking.

Students are required to have already attended 'Environmental Anthropology 1, mod.1 and 2

The theme of this course is 'Multispecies ethnography in times of extinction'. After an introduction to multispecies ethnography, its methods and epistemological implications, we will analyse and dicuss various texts related to it.

Compulsory:
- Bird Rose, D. 2011. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
- Govindrajan, R. 2018. Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Introduction and one chapter)
- Povinelli, E. A. 2021. Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press. (Introduction)
- Kirksey, S. E., & Helmreich, S. (2010). The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545-576.


Optional:
- Swanson, H. A., Lien, M. E., & Ween, G. B. (2018). Domestication Gone Wild: Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations: Duke University Press.
- Lorimer, J. 2020. The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Lyons, K.M. 2020. Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics: Duke University Press.
- Povinelli, E. A. 2021. Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
- van Dooren, T. 2014. Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction. New York: Columbia University Press.
- van Dooren, T. 2022. A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions. Boston: MIT Press.
- Myers, N. 2015. Edenic Apocalypse: Singapore’s End-of-Time Botanical Tourism. In E. Turpin & H. Davis (Eds.), Art in the Anthropocene. Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (pp. 5-16). London: Open Humanities Press.
- Hustak, C., & Myers, N. (2012). Involutionary Momentum: Affective Ecologies and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounters. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 23(3), 74-118.

Attendance is not mandatory, but it determines the assessment methods:
A) Attending students: the final grade will include 1) the level of involvement and participation in classes. Attending students are expected to follow and participate in classes, intervening and animating the debate on the topics under consideration; 2) the quality of a group presentation. Small-groups of students will present a text (one article or book's chapter), encouraging questions and generating a discussion among colleagues; 3) the appropriateness of contents and language of a final written essay (between 3.000 and 4.000 words, bibliography included) aimed at exploring in depth and critically (that is: combining further references) a topic covered in the course.
B) Non-attending students: the final grade will include 1) the appropriateness of contents and language of a written essay (between 5.000 and 6.000 words, bibliography included) aimed at exploring in depth and critically (that is: combining further references) all the ‘compulsory’ publications. if willing, is possible to integrate with one or more 'optional' texts too.
To define yourself as 'attending', it is mandatory to have presented a text in class, actively participate in class discussions and it is not possible to miss more than 4 lessons out of the 15 scheduled.

The course is taught through a ixture of participative lectures, class discussion of selected articles and group presentations.

English

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Natural capital and environmental quality" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development