Course Schedule

Start > Leuphana Bachelor (B.A./B.Eng./B.Sc./LL.B.) -> Major Kulturwissenschaften (bis Studienbeginn WiSe 22/23) -> Subjektivität und Macht

Lehrveranstaltungen

Ecofeminism and Queer Ecology (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Chiara Stefanoni

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Dienstag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 02.04.2024 - 05.07.2024 | C 14.102 a Seminarraum

Inhalt: "Mother nature," "stepmother" nature, virgin earth, mother earth, inert matter..in different societies and cultures we find that conceptualizations of nature are gendered and that a connection between nature and women is established. Typically this connection revolves around the topic of reproduction and generativity. Thus, it is crucial to address the complex ways in which the triad of nature, gender, and sexuality unfolds. In particular, what happens when we address this issue in times of ecological crisis and exploitation of nature? It is not by chance that Françoise d’Eaubonne’s 1974 inaugural book of ecofeminism, Le féminisme ou la mort, has been translated into English for the first time in 2020 amid lockdown. The contemporary ecological crisis has once again brought the issue of nature and its domination to the center of debate. Ecofeminism has been the first activist movement and theoretical stream to reflect on environmental degradation as fundamentally linked to gender oppression and to claim the necessity of ecologism within feminism and feminism within ecologism. Ecofeminists not only diagnose problems and their causes but also try to think of possible solutions and alternatives. In this seminar, we will first introduce the main tenets of ecofeminism and follow a trajectory from seminal works to subsequent elaborations. In particular, we will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different ecofeminist proposals. One important question will be around "essentialism" (Are women essentially "closer to nature"? Who is a woman?) and heteronormative assumptions around reproduction. Thus we will follow a trajectory that will lead us from queer ecofeminism to queer ecologies. In this last section, we will explore and map out queer ecology’s major concerns in relation to various threads of scholarly inquiry along which this field has emerged – such as critical animal studies and posthumanism.