240530 VO MM3 Chemical and toxic worlds (2025S)

This VO course critically examines the ecological devastation and health-related consequences brought about by technological advancements. Through engagement with toxic materials, imaginaries, and futurities, the course explores the many ways in which humans and more-than-human beings have experienced toxicity and health deterioration in the Anthropocene, as well as how they have coexisted with various chemicals. The anthropological texts analyzed in this VO course offer diverse perspectives on the alternative worlds that may emerge from environmental pollution, anthropogenic climate change, radioactive contaminations, species extinction, and the proposed Anthropocene epoch—along with the bleak futures they compel us to envision. Additionally, the course demonstrates how disciplines such as Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies expand our frameworks for engaging with the Anthropocene and chemical entanglements, both in the present and the future. It also explores alternative terms for defining and conceptualizing the intricate relationships between the environment, humans, and more-than-human beings, including chemicals.
Throughout the VO course, students will critically examine historically, socially, and politically charged terms such as Anthropocene, toxicity, and chemicals, while considering post- and decolonial alternative metaphors for describing our era. The course aims to enhance students’ capacity to grapple with both immediate and long-term futures amid ongoing ecological crises and to foster a sustained reflection on how to live wisely on a damaged planet. By engaging with toxicity and chemicals in all their contradictions—as both objects of study and analytical tools—students will develop new perspectives on the material dimensions of social difference, the politics of evidence, the nature of health, and the very concept of nature itself. The course will trace how experiences of toxicity and chemical exposure connect humans to broader histories, socio-political processes, gender dynamics, and alternative ways of being.
Furthermore, students will explore how alternative conceptualizations of the Anthropocene, chemical worlds, and toxicity both rely on and challenge familiar geographies of colonialism, state sovereignty, power structures, and rigid categories of gender, health, well-being, and the environment. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically evaluate debates on environmental justice across diverse global contexts; understand key issues related to toxicity and chemical exposure in both the Global South and North; examine the links between environmental toxicity, pollution, health issues, and socio-economic and political vulnerability; analyze how the production of scientific and biomedical expertise is shaped by the management of race, gender, disability, class, and other social categories—and how such expertise is influenced by broader socio-political and economic forces; and investigate the politics of scientific evidence and the ways in which authoritative knowledge is shaped by discursive practices.