Anthropology 265 - Race and Nature in Africa

Institution:

Bard College

Subject:

Description:

Africana Studies, Environmental Studies, GIS, Human Rights Western fantasies have historically represented Africa as the embodiment of a mythical, primordial wilderness. Within this evocative imagery, nature is racialized, and Africans are constructed as existing in a state closer to nature. Conrad's Heart of Darkness perhaps best exemplifies this process, through its exploration of the "savage"dimensions of colonialism in the African interior. Imperial discourses often relied on these tropes of savagery and barbarism to link understandings of natural history with ideas about racial difference. This course investigates the racialization of nature under imperial regimes, and considers the continuing legacies in postcolonial situations. How have certain ethnic identities, for example, been linked to nature? How do these associations reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities? How is race invoked in struggles for land and resource rights? Through an exploration of ethnographic accounts, historical analyses, and works of fiction based in Africa, this course offers a new way of deciphering cultural representations of nature, and the fundamentally political agendas that lie within them.

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.bard.edu

Phone Number:

(845) 758-6822

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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