The concept of “non-human people” applies to many entities who (while not human) have been understood to share the world with humans. Kami, fairies, nymphs, the Wind and the Sun are among the various persons who are recognized to be intimately connected to (or synonymous with) natural features.
Beginning with Eastern Canadian Indigenous traditions and ending in Europe, this course will provide a cross-cultural survey of various non-human people spanning the Americas, Japan, China, India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe.
This seminar-style course is based around weekly discussions in which we bring early modern primary source readings about these entities into conversation with secondary sources on environmental historical theory.
In this way, this course seeks to decentre anthropocentric historical narratives by examining perspectives that understand the environment to have agency, will and personhood (rather than comprising passive matter to be extracted and shaped). Each week some time will be spent exploring the historical roots of these sources, and the legacies they leave today in (for example) organizations seeking legal rights for certain natural features as non-human people or the habitations thereof.
