AAS 6623

Natures of U.S. Empire

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

What is the relationship between nature and empire? While the concept of the Anthropocene (the geological epoch of human-driven planetary change) has highlighted the entanglements between “human” and “natural” history, many scholars have critiqued its universalizing turn. This course asks how U.S. imperialism – as a primary motor of the capitalist and imperialist world system – constructs and operationalizes ideas of nature, natural history, natural resources, and the like. This course also asks how individuals and groups in the imperial cores and peripheries use ideas of nature to critique and resist U.S. imperialism. We will read scholarship from various disciplines (e.g. Kohout, Megan Black, Paulette Steeves, DeLoughrey, Liboiron, Marzec, Crawford) and engage with cultural productions like fiction, film, and poetry (e.g. by Asturias, Karen Tei Yamashita, Imbolo Mbue).

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