51³ÉÈËÁÔÆæ

Course Description

Summary

Nature has played a key role in shaping social life in the Americas. Yet nature refuses easy definition. This course reflects on the many presences of nature and their uses across the Americas. In this course, we will learn how the agency of germs, cattle, and sugar shaped the formation of European conceit, how some of the earliest capitalistic ventures were built atop the cultivated abundance of (decimated) indigenous communities, how local entanglements of village life in the Amazon dispute any overarching distinction of what is human and what is nature, and how the state and capital invest heavily in maintaining such distinctions of human and nature at the frontiers of power and profit. The overarching premise of this course is straightforward: the unfolding history of life itself in the Americas has indelibly shaped much of what counts as Nature today and much of what makes the Americas a distinct region.