Culture and Inequality in Environmentalism

This course examines environmentalism as a cultural, political, and deeply unequal social project. Moving from the rise of the American conservation movement to contemporary debates about climate responsibility, ecotourism, leisure, and urban wildlife, we ask: Who gets to define nature? Who benefits from environmental protection, and who is excluded? Drawing on historical, global, and qualitative research, students explore environmental justice, conservation dialectics, multispecies coexistence, and everyday practices such as recreation and citizen science. Through case studies across urban, rural, and conservation spaces, we analyze how race, class, gender, and power shape environmental values, activism, and everyday environmental practices.