This interdisciplinary course explores the contemporary intersections of ecology, art, architecture, critical scholarship, and research practice. Borrowing the notion of the ‘expanded field’ from the art critic Rosalind Krauss, it does not treat ecology as a fixed and immutable topic, rather, it considers how societal, spatial and also aesthetic practices shape what ecology comes to mean, and how ecological questions, in turn, reshape those practices.
How is nature imagined and mobilized in present-day art, architectural, or urban projects? How to account for ecosotial relations—that is material, infrastructural, and embodied conditions that sustain collective life while remaining structurally undervalued, unevenly distributed, and often invisible? Acknowledging that incorporating ecological perspectives across other disciplines has material, aesthetic, and political consequences, the course brings together critical scholarship engaged with questions of power, reproduction, injustice, including feminist, queer, and decolonial perspectives, alongside artistic and activist practices. Given its limited scope, this course does not aim to provide an exhaustive analytical overview of the “expanded field” of ecology' Instead, it offers orienting points for understanding how dominant categories of nature, environment, and sustainability are produced, normalized, or challenged, and how they intersect with social difference, including class, race, gender, sexuality, and species. An interdisciplinary approach is used not only to critique existing frameworks, but also to explore alternative ways of thinking, sensing, and organizing ecological relations.
The course is structured as a series of workshops that combine individual and collective reading, co-learning, and viewing sessions. One session will be co-organized in collaboration with artists Yvette Bathgate & Jake Shepherd, based on their project a space to gather, a place to grow.
In addition, students will work in small groups to develop a contribution that engages critically with the course material. These contributions can offer a focused examination of a theme discussed in the course or reflect on the limits, tensions, and exclusions within the course’s framing. Students are encouraged to work experimentally with form and pedagogy, considering how their contribution directs attention, frames a problem, or opens a question, rather than aiming for comprehensive solutions.
More information about the course materials and reading will be provided in the Ecology in the Expanded Field folder.
More information about the Urban Studies program can be found at their website.