Spring 2021
GEOG 520/WMNST 597 Seminar in Human Geography: Who Cares? The Geography of Care, Vulnerability and Responsibility
- Semester: Spring 2021
- Instructor: Lorraine Dowler
- Office: 203 Walker Building
- E-mail: lxd17@psu.edu
- Office hours: TBD
- Class time: Wednesday, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
Description
Popular notions of care have centered on the self. However, if we lived in a world in which we were properly cared for, would self-care have the same appeal? Is this focus on the self, symptomatic of societal failure? This class will focus on the existing and evolving relationalities of care. We will focus on the places, and scales of contemporary care in order to conceptualize care as a progressive action that unlike popular understandings, obliges states, institutions and individuals to actively care across distance and diversity. For this reason, this class will engage feminist, race and other critical theories of embodied displacements in order to reject exclusionary, colonial and privileged understandings of care.