SHAPING THE NATURAL WORLD: HUMAN-EVMNT RELATNS & CONSEQUENS in Fall 2023 (CM1099FB15)

This course addresses how humans have ‘made’ the natural world conceptually (through ideas about nature, ecosystem, organism, and ecology) as well as materially– through millennia of direct action in and on landscapes and territories. We will account for the role of perception, imagination, culture and ideology as well as the social and spatial practices that materially shape landscape through geopolitical conflicts, international responses to the climate crisis, the legal personhood of glaciers and rivers, art, climate activism and conservation practices. From the gardens of Haifa to the glacial terrain of Nunavut and the shifting aridity line of the Negev desert, this course is structured with selective case studies that interrogate material practices, ideas of nature, and their consequences for ecological systems in which the human and the nonhuman are not as distinct as one might think.