Events & Activities

W ST 499x - (509) 335-0981

Gender, Sexuality, Race and Environment in Popular Culture:

Instructor: Dr. Noel Sturgeon, Chair and Professor, Women's Studies

sturgeon@wsu.edu

Required Reading: Required readings for the W ST 499 seminar will become available at the Bookie closer to the beginning of the fall semester.

Sturgeon, Noel. 2004. "'The Power is Yours, Planeteers!' Race, Gender and Sexuality in Children's Environmental Popular Culture," in Rachel Stein, ed., New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality and Activism. Rutgers University Press. Pp. 262-276.

Kamala Platt. 2004. "Environmental Justice Children's Literature: Depicting, Defending, and Celebrating Trees and Birds, Colors and People," in Sidney I. Dobrin and Kenneth B. Kidd, eds, Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism. Wayne State University Press. Pp. 183-197.

Required Attendance: Live, one-credit academic seminars

Tuesday, October 2nd in Yakima, WA

Thursday, October 4th in Grays Harbor, WA

Course Grade: pass/fail

Seminar Description: This seminar invites students to examine dominant and oppositional cultural patterns in contemporary films (especially children's films), which connect environmental issues with images of families, sexuality, gender, and race. It will introduce students to thinking in contemporary environmental justice, as a movement and a form of cultural criticism. Besides the readings our texts will be films such as March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, Over the Hedge, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ferngully, Free Willy, The Lion King, Once Upon a Forest, and others. Student papers will analyze a film of the student's choice, in a five page paper, using the analytical questions developed in our conversation together, and suggested by the readings.

Before the seminar date, students should read both articles and be prepared to discuss and questions or insights about the readings. Students should also view, on their own, the movies Happy Feet, Free Willy (the first movie), and Ferngully (so that we have some common movie texts to discuss). While viewing the movies, students should ask the following questions:

How are differences of race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality indicated in the film? What role do these differences play in bringing out the environmental problem and the resolution of the movie? How are these differences presented (as natural, as problematic (in need of resolution), as positive, etc.)? What are the causes of the environmental problem in this movie, and how are children asked to fix the problem? How do romantic and friendship subplots reflect ideas about nature, environmental problems, and social difference?

After the seminar, students will have two weeks to complete their five page (double-spaced, 12 font, 1 inch margins) papers and deliver them via email to the instructor.