Instructors: Emmet von Stackelberg and Emily Gowen
Meeting time: Monday, 12:15-2:45 pm
Canvas Site
This tutorial charts some of the histories of capitalism’s relationship to nature. We will follow the extraction of different natural substances across eras, and trace how these substances were transformed into commodities. How have various historical figures—from nineteenth-century whalers and plantation owners to 20th century oil companies and film-makers to contemporary phone manufacturers—understood nature as a resource, and how did they exploit those resources? How did people think about commodities as part of or separate from the natural world? What were the consequences for humans, for landscapes, and for organisms, of using nature to generate profit? And how do different kinds of historical cultural productions grapple with, thematize, celebrate, or critique these transformations? Week by week, we will examine a single substance through the disciplinary lenses of literary studies, material analysis, and history, thinking rigorously about the long history of nature's exploitation and the cultures that emerged from it.
