Class Description
This course is designed to get participants thinking about questions of place and politics in the Anthropocene. The garden, long associated with beauty and transcendence in the Euro-American imaginary, will serve as the focal point to discussions of settler colonialism, climate change, and popular resistance.
This course asks: What does it mean to tend a garden in a time of climate upheaval? Who gets access to land? What kinds of relationships do people have with land in the United States and Canada? What are the political implications? And what sorts of land-based movements might point the way to reckoning differently with the past and building towards a habitable future?
All virtual classes are recorded and made available to participants registered in the class. These recordings are password-protected and available for up to two weeks after the class ends.
Quinn Monette is a gardener, student, and poet from Virginia. Her work concerns place and politics in the era of global climate change.
What to Expect
Format: Virtual
Class Capacity: 18
Class Style: Mostly discussion; participation-based
Materials List
Required
- Digital Course Packet
- Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book). Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2001. ISBN: 0374527768
- Rinaldo Walcott, On Property. Biblioasis, 2021. ISBN: 9781771964074
- Dir. Alanis Obomsawin, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, ACPAV, 1993. Available to watch on YouTube or the Internet Archive.
Recommended
Selected readings from these books are included in the Digital Course Packet. We will not read the entirety of each book, but they are listed here for your reference.
- Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN: 978-0521497572
- William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, 2003 (Revised Ed.). ISBN: 978-0809016341
- Max Liboiron, Pollution is Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-1478014133
First Reading
- Please read selections from Ceremonies of Possession (Patricia Seed, 1995) and Changes in the Land (William Cronon, revised ed., 2003) in the Digital Course Packet.
- Please read “A Landscape of Resistance” from Atlas Obscura.
A Brief Syllabus
- How We Got Here
- Scaling the Anthropocene
- Gardens of Earthly Delights
- Land as Relation/Land as Commodity
- Modes of Resistance
- Other Gardens are Possible
Cost and Registration
6 Sessions, $245 ($220.50 for Newberry members, seniors, and students). Learn about becoming a member.
We offer our classes at three different price options: Regular ($245), Community Supported ($225), and Sponsor ($265). Following the models of other institutions, we want to ensure that our classes are accessible to a wider audience while continuing to support our instructors. You may choose the price that best fits your situation when registering through Learning Stream.
To register multiple people for this class, please go through the course calendar in Learning Stream, our registration platform. When you select the course and register, you’ll be prompted to add another registrant.
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