ESS307

Investigates the ways U.S. literary/media works have responded to environmental injustice, the unequal distribution of environmental hazards, resources, and power among race, gender, class and national groups. Since environmental injustice has a disproportionate impact on women, low-income populations, and people of color, students examine how a wide range of multi-ethnic texts--from comic books to music videos to novels--represent the environment in order to understand how the exploitation of nature is linked to the exploitation of people. May explore literary responses to urgent environmental justice issues like globalization, working conditions, food, factory, farming , water rights, health equity, toxic bodies, urban degradation, and the mining of natural resources. Considers the ways in which environmental injustices reflect and construct ideologies of racism, sexism, classism, and nationalism.