297C1
Advanced graduate seminar
SoSe 20: Discarded. The matter of plastics and waste
Sandra Calkins
Information for students
This seminar is offered via online teaching.
Comments
We live in a throw-away society. Waste is implicated in daily practices of consumption, bodily care and hygiene, and provides a vantage point for critical reflection on human-environment relations and global economic processes. This class introduces to the field of “discard studies” and examines the production, disposal and management of waste, and plastics in particular. We look at the temporalities of materials that we discard and connect these to questions of environmental justice, class, race and gender, anxieties about pollution and dirt, and historically shifting concerns about public health and hygiene. Students gain a deeper understanding of categories of waste and value, the transformation of value and meaning through recycling, and question of stigma related to waste handling and management. They critically analyze these and other themes and what they tell us about contemporary social life through readings, field trips, writing and reflections on their own practices of consumption and waste production.
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13 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Tue, 2020-04-21 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-04-28 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-05 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-12 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-19 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-05-26 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-02 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-09 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-16 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-23 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-06-30 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-07-07 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2020-07-14 14:00 - 16:00