Overview
As extinction narratives proliferate to grapple with the contemporary global ecological moment, this course facilitates critical attention to the concept of extinction at work in these narratives. In scientific, literary, and popular writings, we find warnings of an imminent mass extinction event brought on by anthropogenic climate disturbances. How is extinction conceptualized in different texts and what role does it play in shaping ecopolitical imaginaries? The way that the phenomenon of extinction is conceptualized influences which political, cultural, economic, and/or technical responses are considered and thus has significant social and ecological consequences. We will investigate how the concept of extinction is variously used as a motivator for action, a cause of political paralysis, an impetus for technological solutions, and a way of predicting and/or over-determining the future. We will explore texts that engage the concept of extinction to shift our consideration of and response to the loss of nonhuman species, as well as those that critique the very deployment of the concept of extinction in contemporary environmental discourse.
Although grappling with extinctions of plants, nonhuman animals, ecosystems, and the lifeways that emerge from and are entangled with them is a novel activity for those whose reflections have only recently been activated by the current climate crisis, there are many for whom grappling with the end of the world is not new. The concept of extinction is often used to name the “end of the world” as a futural event towards which “we” are all heading. This tendency towards the homogenization of humanity produces a lack of attention to differential responsibilities and vulnerabilities in the face of biodiversity loss and to the modes of practice, relations, and systems of valuation that lead “us” “to the brink.” We will read texts by contemporary Indigenous thinkers that describe how the loss of their worlds has already happened and continues to happen, and how this loss of world involves plant and animal species, languages, and cultural practices which together make up the biocultural fabric of a world. We will consider how attending to the narratives of those who have already experienced bio-cultural loss affects possibilities for imagining different futures.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Analyze the role that the concept of extinction plays in a range of scholarly and popular discourses.
- Interpret how the concept of extinction is framed in different texts as well as how the concept itself frames the way we understand and act in response to the socio-ecological drivers of extinction.
- Explicate a range of theoretical approaches to extinction as a socio-ecological problem as well as extinction as a discourse.
- Compare and contrast different extinction narratives and assess their adequacy for responding to bio-cultural loss.
Evaluation
To receive credit for MAIS 752, students must participate in the online activities, complete and submit all of the assignments, and achieve a final mark of at least C− (60 percent).
Students will be evaluated on their understanding of the concepts presented in the course and on their ability to apply those concepts. The final grade in the course will be based on the marks achieved for the following activities.
| Activity | Weight |
| Weekly Discussion Forum Participation | 25% |
| Short Analysis | 10% |
| Short Essay | 20% |
| Research Proposal | 10% |
| Peer Review | 10% |
| Final Essay | 25% |
| Total | 100% |
Materials
Digital course materials
Links to the following course materials will be made available in the course:
Salazar Parreñas, Juno. 2018. Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation. Duke University Press.
All other materials will be available online.