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ETHN 113A Decolonizing Geology

Announcements
SPECIAL FINAL PROJECT OFFICE HOURS - BY APPOINTMENT
Friday, May 31 9AM-1PM e-mail bt!
Monday, June 3 9AM-11AM e-mail bt by 930am or Monday evening e-mail bt by 7pm
• 051424: This link is for those who want to speak at the Regent's Meeting on Wednesday - you must sign up by 500pm on Tuesday, May 14 - here's the Link.
• 050924: Class today, Thursday May 9, will be an online discussion via a Jitsi link - please see the Links page and bt's e-mail. Office hours for today are cancelled. Please e-mail bt with your availability to connect online
• 050924: Video Presentation Assignment is cancelled. Final Project Instructions and Group Formation on Tuesday May 14. RAT 7 is due on Thursday May 16.
• 050724: Class today, Tuesday May 7, will be an online discussion via a Jitsi link - please see the Links page and bt's e-mail. Office hours for today are cancelled. Please e-mail bt with your availability to connect online.
• 050724: RAT-6 is now available and is 'due' on Thursday, May 9. Thanks for your patience.
•050724: Educational Hip Hop on Resistance
• 050724: How Students Helped End Apartheid Ironic seems too weak of an adjective here...
• 042624: Feedback on your critical analysis essay topics can be found as a comment on your RAT-4 post. If you haven't turned in your RAT-4 or any of your other RATs, please post them as soon as possible. Let bt know if you have any questions!
• 042324: Students Fight Escalating Repression on US Campuses
• 042324: Post a question or an answer on the ETHN 113A General Forum - go HERE.
• 042224: Online office hours today are cancelled. Sorry about that! E-mail me with your availability to set up a meeting.
• 041824: What to do if you need to miss a class. Attending class is important, but illness, work and family will sometimes get in the way. Here is what to do if you are going to miss a class:
1) If possible, give bt an e-mail heads-up ahead of time
2) Contribute to the reading discussion on one of the shared documents, post a question, answer or comment to the General Forum on the course web site (link to the right).
3) Obtain notes for the class from someone else in the class to keep up with what we talked about, also check out the slides on the Notes and Handouts page, and the images of the notes bt takes on the board.
4) If you wish, come to office hours for more in-depth info, or if you can't make it to office hours, e-mail bt with your availability to set up a time to meet.
• 040824: There's a word for this... British Runner Completes Challenge to Run Length of Africa
• 040724: Somdeep Sen on Settler Colonialism is Not an 'Academic Fad'
• 040724: Recruitment of Nurses from Global South Branded ‘New Form of Colonialism’
• 040424: Mukoma wa Ngugi, Kenyan American poet and author" “My father Ngugi wa Thiong’o physically abused my late mother. He would beat her up. Some of my earliest memories are of me going to visit her at my grandmother’s where she would seek refuge.” and "“We cannot use African culture to hide atrocities...” “My father beat up my mother. What is African about that?” Tafi Mhaka on Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Literary giant, revolutionary hero, domestic abuser
• 031524: Appalachians Against Pipelines (2024) Protester Climbs Inside Mountain Valley Pipeline, Blocks Work for 2 Days, Its Going Down, March 12
• 031424: Land Grabs and Vanishing Forests: Are ‘Clean’ Electric Vehicles to Blame?
• 030924: The Birthplace of the Atomic Bomb is Booming. Neighbors Worry That Could Make Them Sick
• 061323: Carey Baraka on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: three days with a giant of African literature
• 061223: Indigenous knowledge, bravery, vigilance: how young siblings survived in Colombia’s perilous jungle
• 060823: Eleven Dangerous Queers They Don’t Want You to Know About
• 060523: New Anti-Transgender Laws will Hurt Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Religious Expression
• 033023: Vatican rejects ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ justifying colonialism
• 032723: Kim Tallbear on Playing Indian Constitutes a Structural Form of Colonial Theft, and It Must be Tackled

ETHN 113A Decolonizing Geology /\ Spring 2024
Meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays 200-320PM P.D.T. HSS 2333B

Click on the Syllabus link to the right to see the 2024 ETHN 113A Syllabus

Download the 2024 ETHN 113A Flyer

The origins, development and practice of the Earth sciences have been closely tied to colonization, but these ties rarely are acknowledged, discussed, critiqued or used as a basis for rethinking present day practices and trends. In this course, we will deconstruct the historical relationship between colonialism and the Earth Sciences, discuss how this relationship has developed over time and explore practical methods for how the connections between the Earth Sciences (and, by extension, other fields of western science) and colonialism might be unwound.

Prior knowledge is neither assumed nor required - open to folx from all disciplines represented at UCSD! Please bring to the course a passion to learn from the texts, from the activists on the frontlines of struggles and from other folx in the class!

Learning Objectives
– Learn about and explore methods for deconstructing the knowledge system of the Earth sciences, revealing its historical path dependences and underlying assumptions
– Describe the interconnections between colonialism and the the Earth sciences
– Using cases studies, focus on the role of the Earth sciences in 'exploration,' resource extraction, hetero-patriarchal violence and resistance movements
– Investigate ways in which research, measurements, models, knowledge and education in the Earth sciences can be transformed to be part of a larger project of decolonization, and explore methods for empowering activists to push for these changes

Unlearning Objectives
-- Challenge the common assumption that the Earth Sciences are 'neutral.'
-- Question Earth Science's alliances with struggles about Climate Change, Extractivism, etc.
-- Critique Earth Science's 'moves towards innocence' wrt Anti-Blackness and Anti-Indigeneity

We will be referencing or reading selections from the following authors:
Linda Tuhiwai Smith Decolonizing Methodologies
Nick Estes Our History is the Future
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Audra Simpson Mohawk Interruptus // Theorizing Native Studies
Kanahus Manuel Decolonization: The Frontline Struggle
Wallace Stegner Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang Decolonization is not a metaphor
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Decolonising the Mind
Shawn Wilson Research is Ceremony
Melanie L Harris Ecowomanism: Black women, religion, and the environment
Jodi A.Byrd The Transit of Empire
Robert Frodeman Geological reasoning
Cindy Cleland Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method
Karin Animoto Ingersoll Waves of Knowing
Mishuana Goeman Ongoing storms and struggles: Gendered violence and resource exploitation
Toni Jensen Women in the Fracklands
Bernard Madley An American Genocide
Kyle Whyte The Dakota access pipeline, environmental injustice, and US colonialism
Klee Benally Uranium Mining at Grand Canyon // Accomplices Not Allies
Raúl Zibechi Territories in Resistance
Andrew Stuhl Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism and the Transformation of Inuit Lands
Kathryn Yusoff A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
Andrew Jolivétte Research Justice
Alison Wylie A plurality of pluralisms: Collaborative practice in archaeology

The current time (P.D.T.) in Kumeyaay Territory (so called San Diego) is:

ETHN 113A will be conducted on stolen, colonized, occupied, unceded Kumeyaay Land. Discussions about return of the Land and restoration of its Relationality will occur throughout the quarter.

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