Winter 2009 • HUM 596D | BCULST 593

Topics in Cultural Studies: Environmental Politics
Instructor: Benjamin Gardner (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell)
W 5:45-10:05 pm UW2 221
Registrar - Time Schedule

Why do struggles over the environment incite such passion? What does it mean to defend nature? How do our understandings of the environment influence our beliefs, values, and interests? This course looks at environmental politics as a theoretical and methodological way to understand the relationship between environmental issues and problems and contemporary struggles over culture, economy, and society. The course will prepare students to ask how and why political, economic, and social dynamics get left out of common understandings of environmental use and management.

Winter 2009 • HUM 596E | BCULST 584

Issues in Media Culture: Representation & the Political
Instructor: Susan Harewood (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell)
W 5:45-10:05 pm Location TBA
Registrar - Time Schedule

Questions of justice and representation are fraught with challenges to which the scholar, activist, media practitioner must iteratively return in any move towards ethical media practices. In this course, students will explore communication scholars’ efforts to theorize “negative portrayals,” “positive portrayals,” and “reality” as they have examined media representational practices. The course will examine the ways relations of power produce media representations and are produced in media representations. Students will develop the analytical tools to consider and critically evaluate the epistemological assumptions which guide continuing efforts to challenge injurious representations in media scholarship, in mainstream media practices, and in alternate media practices.